by Alan Gold
She answered the respectful tap on her door, and her maid tentatively entered the darkened room, excusing herself, but telling Gertrude it was now past ten o’clock, and the messenger had instructed her to hand over the letter immediately as it was very urgent.
Gertrude tore open the envelope, and read the contents. She recognised the cursive Arabic script of King Faisal’s hand. My dear Miss Bell,
This afternoon at 2:00pm, I am informed that I am to address the French, British, American, and Italian delegations in the offices of M. Picot at the Foreign Ministry. Mr. Lawrence will be my translator. I would be very grateful if you could meet me half an hour beforehand, so that we could discuss the approach you believe I should take.
Your Friend, Faisal
~
“Run my bath,” she instructed her maid, a smile appearing on her face.
~
Three hours later, wearing a simple gray dress and pink jacket beneath her heavy black velour overcoat, crowned by a somewhat extravagant hat composed of ostrich feathers enmeshed in black voile, Gertrude Bell waited outside the French Foreign Ministry building, and gravely shook hands with King Faisal and Thomas Lawrence when they emerged from their carriage. As they walked the dozen meters to the nearby café, Gertrude said, “Sir, I fear I must remind you I am here as a friend of Faisal, and not as a counsel for the Arabs. My position in Paris is to represent the interests of Great Britain, and anything which I might say to you in this private meeting is the expression of my personal opinion, and not that of my government.”
The king nodded and remained silent until they were seated in the restaurant, and had ordered their coffees. The café was particularly hot and steamy, even though the people outside in the street were enjoying the freshness of the spring weather.
“As a friend of Faisal,” he said softly in Arabic so he couldn’t be overheard by the other patrons, even though Lawrence and she were the only ones who could understand the language, “What is your view of how we should approach this meeting with the victorious powers?”
“As a friend of Faisal, I would urge you to make the strongest case possible for being anointed King of Syria by the French. You hold the title of King of Syria as a gift from Great Britain, but under the Sykes-Picot Agreement we have also promised Syria to France. It is imperative you remain king in the eyes of the French, even though they will insist that you do so under their control. That is a battle which you must fight at another time, but your legitimacy as king must be maintained if control of Syria is passed from one country to another. Failure to gain French support today will cause your legitimacy to be questioned by the victorious powers, and that will be catastrophic for the cause of Arab nationalism.”
Lawrence nodded. “That’s what I’ve been telling Faisal for the past two months. But His Majesty seems oddly unwilling to engage with the French, and negotiate. Despite my entreaties, Faisal has avoided any confrontation. I said to him that—”
“And Faisal was quite right in not doing so,” interrupted Gertrude. “Since the end of hostilities, the Great Powers have been in the process of the settlement of post-war Europe. Even though oil was on everybody’s lips, the opportunity simply hasn’t existed before now to discuss Arabia. For Faisal to have come to Paris and thumped the table would have pre-empted everything. He would have been seen as quixotic, as impractical, and worse, as an unreasonable adventurer. The Great Powers here have only been thinking of the battlefields of Europe, of the loss of untold millions of British and French and Italian young men. They’re not thinking of the future, but of revenge and punishment and how best to bleed Germany dry so they can recoup some of their losses.
“But everybody knows that once their bloodlust is over, they’ll have to start dealing with the Middle East and the demise of the Ottoman Empire. By remaining majestic, by appearing as a calm and reasonable monarch in the corridors and chambers, Faisal has remained above the fray. Nobody knows what Faisal thinks, or how he is going to negotiate. The French would have loved a good excuse for turning aside from Faisal and telling the world that his matters were far too trivial for them to deal with now. But right at this very moment, none of the Great Powers has any idea what stance Faisal will take in negotiating the question of Arabic nationalism, and His Majesty remains an enigma. This call to address the Great Powers will be his first opportunity to present his case to people who have no idea what he will be asking for.”
Faisal smiled, and reached over to hold her hand. She was older than him by twenty years. It was an odd gesture, like that of a son to his mother. But she responded warmly, and squeezed his hand in return. They looked at each other, both in admiration and shared warmth. Thomas Lawrence wasn’t certain what was going on. Could the king and Gertie . . . no, it wasn’t possible. She was far too old for him . . .
Eventually, she let go of his hand, and said softly, “Faisal, if you negotiate and walk out of here as King of Syria, then the whole of Arabia can be yours. You could be the figurehead which leads the Arabs in unification, in nationalism. And if Lawrence stands behind you, you’ll be invincible. Your success here will enable you to put a stop to the aspirations of certain other leaders. But be warned, the French have no love of you or your objectives, and seek only their own advantage.”
He nodded, and wanted to hold her hand again; but propriety forbade him. Gertrude continued, “I shall be praying for you when you confront your makers.” Faisal didn’t smile, although Lawrence giggled. The pun didn’t translate into Arabic.
~
Faisal had chosen gold robes and a gold-braided headdress. Lawrence emulated the headdress, but chose instead to wear white robes in deference to the king’s standing. They walked over parquet floors, through massive oak double-doors, beneath blazing chandeliers, and past vast tables covered with maps and dispositions and flags. They were preceded by the Maître de la Bureau, wearing a formal black dinner suit, tails and white gloves. As the King approached a double door, somehow and miraculously it opened to admit them to yet another inner chamber, until they found themselves in a huge room with a view over the rue de Faubourg Saint- Honoré, a blazing log fire at one end spitting embers, and a table at which were seated the delegates from France, Italy, America and Great Britain.
The maître showed Faisal and Lawrence to the seats which had been placed before the table, as though they were schoolboys being called into the offices of the headmaster.
Faisal sat in the front seat, Lawrence at the seat behind his. The king smiled at the leaders of the world, men whose faces he knew so well, yet to whom he had only spoken on the few official occasions such as dinners or receptions. America’s president Woodrow Wilson, an intellectual patrician, spare and elegant, was desperate to create a league of all the nations of the world to ensure open and public debate stopped war ever erupting again on the face of the Earth. Beside him, and his diametric opposite, sat David Lloyd George, a provincial Welsh lawyer whose incendiary oratory had captured the hearts and minds of the British people, a brilliant and crafty man who had emasculated the House of Lords, and given real power back to the ordinary people. Next to him sat the premier of Italy, Vittorio Orlando, another lawyer and intellectual, but one whose emotions were too often expressed as outrage against Woodrow Wilson who opposed many of Italy’s territorial demands. And finally Faisal smiled at the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, the oldest man there by twenty years. Called the Tiger because of his passion as a speaker, Clemenceau was loved by the right-wing of the country, but hated by the workers and socialists, against whom he had fought all his life. And he was equally detested by Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George for his uncompromising stance against the defeated powers, wanting to punish them severely.
Clemenceau’s stance had led Lloyd George to shout at him during one of their discussions, “Treat Germany like this, and Germany will become Bolshevik, and where will that leave Europe?”
Clemenceau screamed back, “Don’t treat Germany like this, and France will becom
e Bolshevik, which is a much more terrifying proposition.”
But today there appeared to be harmony in the room, as Lawrence translated Faisal’s words, paying greetings and prayers and thanks to the assembly on behalf of the Arabic peoples and the nations who professed Islam.
And then Faisal began to speak. Rather than wait for questions or an invitation to address the gathering, Faisal looked at each man, fixing him with his gleaming eyes, and spoke in mellifluent Arabic, his voice deep, sonorous, and unfathomable, carrying with it the wisdom of Mohammed conjoined with the eloquence of Omar Khayyam.
The four leaders of the world were transfixed as Faisal’s voice washed over them. Those around the room stopped their discrete whispering, and listened to the eternal beauty of his voice speaking in a tongue which they couldn’t understand, yet which spoke to all of their hearts. Only when Faisal turned, and imperially nodded to the man sitting beside him did Lawrence offer a translation of his words.
Faisal spoke initially about the beauty of his land, about the eternity of its sands and its rocks which had nurtured the earliest aspirations of humankind when men rose up and became sentient beings capable of recording their own history; he spoke about the development of language, about the creation of writing, about the origin of the great myths which had given mankind its imagination. He spoke about Arabs being the inventors of numbers and alphabets and dividing the day into twenty four equal parts. He told them about the way in which Arabic cities such as Damascus and Baghdad had been the capitals of the intellect of the world, where eastern and western scientists and philosophers and writers and artists had met and nurtured each other’s ideas, sparking the renaissance which had led to the explosion of European culture.
Then Faisal continued, “With this beginning, you might wonder why it is we Arabic people today lag so far behind the Great Powers of the West, why it is we are considered a primitive people.”
The four leaders all began to argue as soon as Lawrence had translated Faisal’s words, but the king put up his hand to silence them. “The answer, I regret, is in our geography. Being at the crossroads between Africa and India, Europe and Asia, our lands were looked upon with avarice by conquerors throughout time, from the Egyptians to the Romans, from the Mongols to the Crusaders, from the French to the British to the Russians to the Italians; and soon, no doubt, to the Americans,” he said pointedly. At the mention of his country, Woodrow Wilson looked up frowning. As soon as his words had been translated, two of the four prime ministers looked down in discomfort towards the table. Clemenceau stared at him in bemusement. Only Woodrow Wilson beamed a smile of appreciation.
“In our past, we were a people who were tribal rather than national, and we were ill equipped to fight the vast forces which were arrayed against us. If only a Saladin had arisen more than once in a millennium!”
It broke the mood in the room, and the four men laughed, as Faisal continued, “As a tribal people, we roamed across the vastness of the deserts, only occasionally putting down roots sufficiently long to establish great cities. But now that we have thrown off the shackles of the Ottomans, we are determined, gentlemen, that we must become a great nation, and take our place at the table of nations. We must establish strong and eternal identities for our people as Syrians and Iraqis and Arabians and Egyptians. We must have secure borders within which our peoples can develop and benefit from modern education, within which they can learn the skills of the modern world and put behind them forever their nomadic ways. We must be a nation and no longer a collection of tribes, gentlemen. And that is what I am here to discuss.”
He cleared his throat, and sat back in the chair to await the response from the four leaders and was surprised that several people at the back of the room applauded.
It was Lloyd George who spoke first. Flushed with the oratory and with the mesmerising resonance of what he had heard, he said, “Your Majesty, be assured that Great Britain stands side by side with the aims and ambitions of the Arabic people. Europe has been decimated by the barbarity of the Germanic peoples, but Europe will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. And America is a young, but strong and willing ally in supporting its older European cousin’s hope of moving towards a bright and confident future. There is a place for the Arab people at the table, King Faisal, and your place, Majesty, is assured while ever Britain stands.”
“And what of the Sykes-Picot Agreement?” shouted Clemenceau. “What of the arrangement which our diplomats worked so hard to come to? We mourn the sudden and tragic death of Sir Mark Sykes the other day in Paris, but are you, Mr. Lloyd George, prepared to abuse his memory by abrogating a binding treaty? The Sykes-Picot Agreement spelt out in clear and unambiguous terms the disposal of the lands of Arabia after the war. There is no going back. There is no concession which can be made to Faisal and his people. Syria is French, Lebanon is French, Palestine is British . . .”
Lloyd George began to argue, but Clemenceau held up his hand for silence. “Let me remind you of one of the salient points of that historic agreement, Mr. Prime Minister. ‘France and Britain shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire . . .’
“Let me further remind you of promises made to the French government during the war. Promises which I shall hold you to,” said Clemenceau.
“And may I remind you, Mr. Prime Minister of France, and Mr. Prime Minister of Great Britain,” said Faisal sternly, moving the focus of attention to himself, “that the Arabic peoples, whose land you are currently dividing up, were never consulted about this agreement. You have given away property which was not yours. And don’t also forget, gentlemen, that without the Arabic people, you would not have won the war in the Middle East. Nobody, not a prime minister nor a diplomat, asked any Arab to be a party to the discussions between Sir Mark Sykes and M. Picot. I also seek to remind you that had not the Arabic people risen up in vast numbers against the Turkish overlord and fought to the death, you would not be having a discussion about the disposal of my lands. I will have a voice in any discussion which concerns the future of Arabia, M. Clemenceau. The agony, the history, and the righteous demands of the Arabic people will be heard.”
The room descended into silence, but there was no need for Lawrence to translate, because to everybody’s surprise, Faisal had just responded in fluent French. Even Clemenceau, red-faced and preparing for a shouting match, was stunned and sat back in his chair, surveying the young monarch.
“There is much about Arabia which you gentlemen have yet to understand,” said Faisal in fluent English.
THIRTEEN
Hotel de Crillon, Place de la Concord, Paris 1919
The King of Syria sat in his damask dressing gown, a column of smoke rising in coils from the burning cigarette at the end of his long filigree holder. He surveyed the other man sitting on the couch opposite, also quietly smoking and reflecting, lost in some distant dream about other lands, other times.
There was only a three-year gap in their ages, yet Faisal felt much more than three years older than Lawrence. He felt more like a father to a brilliant but unruly son, a man who needed to temper the exuberance and extremes of his younger charge, yet who was also aware and concerned about the damage which could be done by dampening the very qualities which made Lawrence so different, so special.
It was the end of a difficult week, fraught with tension and argument, and the Great Powers, their advisors, supporters, diplomats, and acolytes had decided to take a well-deserved break. They had gone to different chateaux in the countryside to fish, to hunt, to read and relax. Faisal and Lawrence had decided to remain in Paris, and use the rich and pleasurable resources of the city to relax. They felt they had done all that could be done, and now it was up to fate and the Great Powers to determine what would happen.
The two of them had enjoyed an extraordinary couple of months since meeting up in Great Britain prior to traveling to France for the Paris Peace Conference. During their time in London, which was ostentat
iously bright and colorful and frenzied after four grave years of war and was beginning to come to terms with the loss of countless men, the king and Lawrence felt they deserved to celebrate their personal victory over the Turks, and engaged in a riotous round of parties, socializing, and meetings with politicians and journalists, Arabic émigrés and diplomats, sometimes with as many as four or five appointments in a single day. London had been eagerly anticipating the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, and both Faisal and Lawrence were minor celebrities, the talk of the town, and eager hostesses worked hard to ensure their presence at parties.
During some evenings, the king and Lawrence would find a gaming house or a place of questionable morality, or a theater or vaudeville playhouse or a nightclub where they would unwind and enjoy the pleasures which were always on offer. There was a newfound sense of freedom in London, which evaporated like a sea mist as they set sail for France. The White Cliffs of Dover disappeared behind them and a sense of great responsibility loomed as their steamer crossed the English Channel. The task they had set themselves became frighteningly clear.
Paris was outwardly as gay as London, the citizens showing the whole world that they were victors in the Great War and were entitled to let their hair down. But there was no sense of frivolity in the places where the Great Powers were meeting. These places were weighed down by an altogether more serious atmosphere, and because the king and Lawrence were overtly discernible in their robes, they were always on show and had restrained themselves from anything which might rank as light-heartedness. In Paris, they quickly became objects of curiosity and strangeness and, as in London, they were the toast of Parisian hostesses who were thrilled to have two such famous and exotic men as the centrepiece of their soirees.