Bell of the Desert

by Alan Gold

  Faisal looked from one to the other, from mother to son. “Is there an undercurrent here which needs mediating?” he asked. “I’ve spent the last several weeks in dialogue and mediation, and I’m getting rather good at it.”

  Lawrence burst out laughing. “We’re more in need of ministration than mediation. Gertie and I are a bit like an aging mongoose and a fangless cobra, dancing around each other with a lot of menace and a great deal of hissing, but incapable of hurting each other. Still, what she said about my role in the war is quite right, but she wanted me to become a leader, and I’m just not made of that stuff. That bloody journalist Lowell Thomas is making much of the concept of Lawrence of Arabia in his reports, and Gertie’s absolutely right. Today, I’m in danger of becoming the image rather than the substance.

  “It’s been worrying me ever since we were in Damascus together. I’m rather hoping The Seven Pillars will tell the other side of the story.” He took a deep breath, and continued, “But therein lays a major problem for me. You see, if I tell the public what really happened, then it’s an adventure story and exciting, but not vastly different from any one of a dozen other exploits of the war which right now a dozen generals are busy scribbling down as their memoirs in the hope that history will remember them kindly. As a mere colonel, I don’t really rank all that highly in publishing circles. But as Lawrence of Arabia, I’m top draw stuff. So you see, if I extrapolate the Lawrence of Arabia theme, then it’ll give the public something mighty to read, and will do the Arab cause a lot of good.”

  As though by some sort of thought process, the moment they finished their deserts a waiter from the hotel knocked politely on the door and effortlessly wheeled away the table of spent crockery and cutlery, leaving them with their bottles of wine and glasses. As he left the room, another table was wheeled in by more waiters, this one with pots of coffee and petit fours, decanters of brandy and dessert wines, and a tray of four perfumed flavors of Turkish delight covered in a dusting of caster sugar.

  Faisal looked at the tray of sweets, and frowned. “Years of fighting the Turks, and I can’t seem to get rid of them.”

  His remark relieved the tension in the air. Gertrude waited until the waiters had disappeared with deferential bows, and as the doors closed, she said, “Thomas, my dear. You must tell the truth. Nothing more and nothing less. You fought a magnificent campaign, one that will go down in the annals of history. If you exaggerate your achievements, you’ll undermine what you’ve really done. Rely on the truth, and the public will appreciate you even more. Tell them what happened.”

  He nodded. “Everything?”

  “Everything!”

  He paused, and sipped his coffee. The pregnant pause made Gertrude and Faisal look closely at him. A change had transmuted his face. The mischievous and boyish youth had become the hardened man of experience.

  “Everything,” he whispered.

  Gertrude looked at the king. He gave an imperceptible nod.

  Softly, slowly, she said, “Some things are better said to close and trusted friends than kept in your bosom.”

  “Even things which I haven’t confided to you or to Faisal? Even things which I’ve not even confided to myself?”

  She looked at him with kinder eyes. “You’re talking about Deraa?”

  Lawrence dropped his gaze to the table, and nodded slowly. He poured himself and the others a brandy. Softly, he said, “Perhaps there are things which might be better to leave unsaid.”

  “But if you don’t say them, then they’ll grow and grow until they hurt you terribly,” said Faisal. “We have a tradition in our lands that allows poets and singers to express the emotions which we sometimes find too difficult to espouse. You, my friend, are that poet.”

  “What did happen, Thomas?” Gertrude asked. “I mean, we’ve all imagined. Our minds have encompassed the possibilities. Was it as bad as we thought?”

  He sipped the brandy, and stared upwards to the ceiling. Then he took a large swig, and with a sudden finality drank what remained in his glass. “Yes, it was as bad, and worse than you could imagine. When I was captured, I was attractive to the Turkish commander, the Bey. I was blue-eyed and blond-haired. I was girlish in my looks, and slight in my build. Just like a boy. I spoke to him in gutter Arabic so he wouldn’t realize I was in disguise. He raped me repeatedly, tore my anus until I bled, and then raped me again. And when I was a horrible mess, he had me beaten and whipped and tortured and cast down into a filthy dungeon full of water and rats and excrement. But I was freed along with all the others, and I determined never to speak of what had happened to me.”

  Gertrude realized she was gripping her brandy balloon so tightly it was in danger of being crushed. “Oh my dearest boy,” she whispered, and reached across to hold his hand. Faisal reached over and held his other hand.

  Lawrence shrugged. “How could I have told you of my shame?”

  “But there’s no shame, my lovely boy. No need to feel anything but anger and fury towards those who did this evil thing to you. Thomas, with my help, you will recover.”

  Faisal nodded, and said, “I had assumed something of the sort had occurred. From the time you were captured to the time you went to see Allenby in Cairo to request you be relieved of your command, I assumed something momentous had happened to you. Fortunately for us, he refused your request. But I say this to you, my dear friend, and what I say must be accepted by you, no matter how callous it might sound.

  “Many women and girls are raped in times of war. But it’s not often realized that many men are raped, too. Not just by homosexuals, but by ordinary soldiers on instructions from their commanders. It is a part of the process of humiliation which one army exacts upon another. This has been the case since ancient times. Raping a soldier means stealing his honor and his strength. A victor will rape and emasculate a vanquished enemy in the belief that by penetrating him forcefully, he will rob him of his virility, and make him impotent as a fighting man.

  “It always has been, and it always will be so. Be thankful you were not in uniform, or known to be of the officer class, for then the Turks would have been even more vicious with you. I have known of many men from different tribes who committed suicide after being captured and raped, rather than return to their families and suffer the shame. This was a punishment which was well known from the time of the Romans, and has been practised by the Persians, the Ottomans, and our own Arabic tribes.

  “I know you have suffered grievously, my friend Lawrence, but you must see your suffering in the context of the suffering of all soldiers in times of war, and not as some special punishment reserved for you and you alone.”

  Lawrence poured himself another brandy. “Faisal, that’s as may be, but you have no idea of the after-effects I’ve suffered. Those nightclubs you took me into in London. I couldn’t bear to be so close to people. Do you know, since my capture, I’m scared to touch people? I’m terrified of being touched, as well. When someone I barely know does more than shake my hand, I erupt into a cold sweat. I can’t stand intimacy . . .”

  Gertrude shifted over, and sat close to him. “Can’t you stand intimacy from your closest friend?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  She put her arm around his shoulder, and pulled him towards her. “Can’t you stand the woman who loves you so dearly, being close to you?”

  He sank into her body, and the tension which had built up seemed to unravel. She stroked his fair hair, and kissed him on the brow. Faisal looked on and smiled. Gertrude looked at the king, and motioned him towards her.

  And they sat there for an eternity, the three of them. Locked in an embrace, each holding the other tightly. Three people who loved each other. Three people who found solace in each other while the outside world tried to undermine them. Three who were so utterly different in almost every respect, yet who were as close as any family possibly could be.

  Gertrude kept kissing Thomas, Faisal embraced his dearest friend, and in a moment of closeness and inti
macy, Faisal kissed Gertrude, a mark of love and reverence and friendship and respect.

  And when the eternity had ended, they separated, smiling at each other, the warmth and strength had been shared one with the other. They sat quietly for a moment, the two men contemplating their brandy balloons, Gertrude sipping her liqueur.

  “Before we leave this difficult subject, my friend Thomas, tell me why you blame your imprisonment and the brutality you suffered upon what has always been a part of your character. As long as I’ve known you, you never were comfortable with intimacy. Remember when we first met, and I offered you a choice of beautiful boys or girls, and you rejected my offers. I couldn’t understand why you had such difficulty doing what we Arabs take so much for granted.”

  “Because as an Englishman, I had a certain standard of behaviour.”

  Faisal laughed. “Oh come, surely being in Arabia, not England, you could have lived like the Arabians lived? If you didn’t want to do it in England, nobody would have known what you were doing in my country.”

  “I would have known,” he said. “And you make me sound like some eternally dry old stick. At Oxford, I was seriously attracted to a lovely young woman called Janet Laurie, but from the moment I graduated, I was removed from young European women, because I chose to go on archaeological digs. Almost straight after Oxford, I spent years in the desert in Mesopotamia, and there was no chance of meeting young English woman. Unlike people of your race, Faisal, Englishmen don’t copulate like rabbits. We wait until marriage.”

  Gertrude coughed to remind the two men she was present in the room, and that the conversation had taken an awkward turn.

  “And are you, too, a proper English gentlewoman who doesn’t discuss topics such as this in polite company,” asked Faisal. He was being facetious and playful, wanting to divert the conversation from Lawrence’s traumas onto a lighter topic.

  “Sir,” said Gertrude. “As a proper Englishwoman, I never discuss matters of the heart in public, and rarely in private. But as an Oxford educated woman, as a diplomat, as a senior servant of the crown, as a delegate to the Peace Conference, I feel entitled to discuss any suitable subject with any gentleman, under any circumstances.”

  “Bravo,” said Lawrence, clapping. Gertrude and Faisal burst out laughing. Now that his revelation was on the table, Lawrence was feeling more light-hearted, even happy.

  “And thank you, my friend, for raising the mood,” Lawrence said to the king. “We mustn’t let what happened in the war color our peace.”

  They drank a toast to peace, using brandy instead of champagne. It was a very fine brandy, but it burnt Gertrude’s throat. Her father liked brandy, but she always preferred sweeter wines and liquors. She poured herself another Amontillado to take away the bitter taste of the brandy.

  “You must be very proud to be the King of Syria,” said Gertrude. “It’s what you were born for, what you’ve prepared all your life to achieve.”

  Faisal shook his head, and smiled wryly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you, the way I’ve been walking around here so imperiously? I’ve played the king while dear Lawrence has played the knave. But you could hardly say I was born to it. Indeed, I very nearly wasn’t born at all.”

  Gertrude frowned.

  “I was a very sickly youth. My father was the guardian of Mecca and a descendant of the Prophet, but my mother was a peasant from my father’s village. Their wedding was vehemently opposed by my father’s family, but he insisted. They were cousins, you see, and people were afraid for the continuity of the line. But they fell in love, and married, and I am one of four healthy brothers, though from the very beginning, you’d have sworn that there would only be three survivors. I was born in a tent and the midwives didn’t give me any chance for life. Apparently, I was a limp child who just lay there and barely had the energy to cry. But survive I did, and I was taken to Constantinople for my schooling. Compared to the other boys in the Ottoman Palace where I grew up, I was a weakling. I barely ate, and was more attracted to poetry than being a warrior. But my father insisted that I learn the manly arts, and while I was there, I learned to ride horses and camels and soon developed the skills of the desert dwellers. From the Ottomans I learned the art of negotiation, from the desert I learned the arts of war, and from the scholars I learned the genius of our Arabic culture. And now, God and the French willing, I’m the King of Syria with my seat in Damascus, the greatest Arabic capital of them all.”

  “I’m sure the French will support your position,” said Gertrude.

  “You think so? What about the agreements between them and the British?” he asked.

  “Lloyd George has made it pretty clear he will have his way. Now that Sir Mark has so unfortunately passed on,” said Gertrude, “The Sykes-Picot Pact doesn’t seem to be carrying so much weight.”

  “But the other agreements?”

  “Your Majesty,” she said, “there have been so many agreements and undertakings, the water is so muddy, they’ll probably all be thrown out of the window and we’ll just have to start again. Look at the conflicts between the Sykes-Picot Agreement which gave Syria to the French, the discussions between McMahon and your father, Sheik Hussein which gave an undertaking for an Arab Kingdom and the restoration of the Caliphate incorporating Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, the Balfour Declaration which gives a homeland in Palestine to the Jews, the promises made through Lawrence by Allenby and the natural right of the Arabic people to self-determination. It’s a terrible mess which will have to be cleared up by other arrangements.”

  “The situation is fraught in Syria, but what do you think will happen with Mesopotamia?” asked Lawrence. “Your brother Abdullah has been offered the Kingdom of Iraq. But what kingdom? Gertie, have you finished drawing up the boundaries?”

  “In a way, but it’s terribly difficult, because of balancing the needs and expectations of the Kurds in the north, the Sunni in Baghdad and in the central regions, and the Shi’ites in the south. Then, of course, there’s the oil question. Britain must have access to Basrah, but now there’s talk of oil having been found in Mosul, and that could be huge. And we’ve got to spend a fortune restoring the fertility of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates so it’s cultivatable again. It’s all very difficult,” she said, a note of despair entering her voice.

  Faisal shook his head. “Do you think it will happen? All this talk about Arabic kingdoms! Isn’t it all pie in the sky? The British were very free with their promises during the war, because they wanted the Arabs on their side to help them overthrow the Turks, but the feeling I’ve been getting at this Peace Conference is we’re a backward and underdeveloped people, and aren’t worthy of real nationhood. Oh, you’ll appoint us as kings and emirs as though we were all characters in Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan’s Mikado, but the real objective is to leave the control of the Middle East and its oil to the British and the French, and have the rest of the world run by this new League of Nations which President Woodrow Wilson is so keen on. Aren’t I right, Gertrude?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “So should I sign some pact which offers me some titular monarchy and for me to be a puppet of the French or the British, or should I refuse to sign anything, and walk out in disgust, taking my pride and my oil with me?”

  Gertrude began to answer, but shook her head sadly and shrugged her shoulders.

  ~

  It was already the secret hours of the morning, yet she didn’t feel like getting up and going to bed. She was in the company of the king, and even though he wasn’t a real king like England’s Edward or George, he was a king in name and a king of Arabia, and that made it terrible exciting . . . and naughty. For she was sitting in his presence, her clothes somewhat askew, her shoes off, in her stocking feet, and slouching in a chair with her feet on the coffee table.

  Normally, at this hour of the night, she would have excused herself from the dining table, thanked her hosts for their excellent company, retired to her room and written up
her report of the evening’s conversation for dispatch to Britain’s foreign secretary. Then, under the normal circumstances which governed her greenhouse existence in Paris, she would have fallen into bed at three or four in the morning, slept until ten or eleven, then prepared for the afternoon round of meetings.

  But tonight, or more properly this morning, she would prepare no reports, she would not think through the ramifications of the conversation, and nor would she ponder on what to do next. Tonight she was floating on air, a young woman again, as light as a feather. Tonight, she had been toasted and admired by two extraordinary men, both of whom professed their unbounded approbation for every aspect of her nature. She had been embraced by the King of Syria, kissed as though she were his lover, hugged by the famous Lawrence of Arabia and treated like a woman, and not like an honorary man. She felt in part a mother, in part a wife, and in part a lover. She hadn’t been held or kissed or even touched intimately in years, and she’d forgotten the joy of familiarity, of being held in a man’s arms, of the erotic ecstasy of closeness when a man held his body against hers. Tonight, she had felt like a woman, and not like a civil servant, a diplomat, or a political officer of the crown. And it felt marvellous.

  She knew she must return to her room, but she was held in position by the ache of desire. It was as though she was in a bubble, and any movement would make it burst and reality would once again force itself upon her. Gertrude was sitting on a settee in King Faisal’s suite in the Hotel de Crillon, legs up, drinking her—how many was it?—eighth or ninth glass of Amontillado sherry. She couldn’t feel her toes or her fingers, she knew she was giggling, she was aware she’d made very improper remarks about her awful and aggressive new boss A.T. Wilson and the verbosity of Winston Churchill and the mendacity of Tiger Clemenceau. But she knew her words, and the utterly improper and very rude remarks of both of the men in her company, were like the morning mist and would disappear into the ether with the rising of the sun.