Gertrude Bell

by Georgina Howell

  There they stopped for a while, for Faisal to hold court and eat, while the motorcade was taken across the Euphrates by flying bridge. Faisal and a small party, Gertrude included, then stepped into a decorated boat and crossed the river. The far bank rose steeply, and there where the Syrian desert began were ranged the fighting men of the Anazeh, Fahad Beg’s tribe, on horse and camel. Faisal stopped his car to salute the huge standard of their tribe. As they drove on north-west, the tribes rode with them, and the Chief Ali Sulaiman came to the outskirts of Ramadi to greet him. On the banks, an extraordinary sight awaited them: before the massed ranks of horse and camel stood a gigantic snow-white camel ridden by a black standard-bearer holding aloft the standard of the Dulaim.

  Faisal entered the shadow of the black tent pitched by the Euphrates, two hundred feet square with its sides made of freshly cut branches. Inside, from the entrance to the dais at the far end, the tribesmen stood shoulder to shoulder. Faisal sat on the high divan with Fahad Beg on his right, “a great tribesman amongst famous tribes and a great Sunni among Sunnis . . . I never saw [Faisal] look so splendid. He wore his usual white robes with a fine black abba [tunic] over them, flowing white headdress and silver bound Aqal [rope band].”

  Then he began to speak, leaning forward to beckon the men at the back to come nearer. There was a surge as some five hundred men drew near and sank to the ground before him. He spoke to them as a tribal chief in his strong musical voice.

  He spoke in the great tongue of the desert, sonorous, magnificent—no language like it.

  “For four years” he said, “I have not found myself in a place like this or in such company.” He told them how Iraq was to rise to their endeavours with himself at their head. He asked them “Arabs, are you at peace with one another?” They shouted back “Yes, we are at peace.”

  “From this day—what is the date? And what is the hour?” They answered him. “From this day”—giving the Muhammadan date—“and from this hour any tribesman who lifts his hand against a tribesman is responsible to me. I will judge between you calling your Sheikhs in council. I have my rights over you as your Lord . . . and you have your rights as subjects which it is my business to guard.” His speech rolled on, punctuated with tribal cries of “Yes, by God” and “The truth, by God, the truth!”

  Now came the supreme moment of Gertrude’s career, the culmination of all her work. Fahad Beg and Ali Sulaiman stood up on either side of Faisal to swear allegiance. But the words they spoke were “We swear allegiance to you because you are acceptable to the British government.” Gertrude wrote:

  Faisal was a little surprised. He looked quickly round to me smiling and then he said “No-one can doubt what my relations are to the British, but we must settle our affairs ourselves.” He looked at me again, and I held out my two hands clasped together as a symbol of the union of the Arab and British governments. It was a tremendous moment.

  Now Ali Sulaiman brought up his forty or fifty sheikhs, one by one, to lay their hands in Faisal’s and swear allegiance. Faisal, followed by Sulaiman and Fahad Beg, emerged into the sunlight. The tribesmen in their thousands circled them, galloping around with wild cries, as they processed to the palace garden where a feast was held. Afterwards, Faisal climbed onto a high dais against a wall hung with carpets. The chiefs and Gertrude sat behind him, and one by one the mayors, qazis, and other notables of all the cities of Iraq, from Fallujah to Qaim, rose one after another from their chairs beneath the trees to place their hands in his. Gertrude took in the beauty of the setting, the variety of dress and colour, the grave faces of the village elders, white-turbaned or draped in the red keffiyeh, and the dignity with which Faisal accepted the homage.

  It was only six weeks since his arrival, and the referendum had proved almost unanimous in his favour. He was to be crowned in Baghdad in a fortnight, and he called on the Naqib to help him form his first Cabinet. Gertrude wanted to show Faisal the great archway of Ctesiphon, which he had never seen. She drove out with her servants soon after dawn to prepare the breakfast they would eat in the cool of the day. There they sat on fine carpets, drank coffee, and ate eggs, tongue, sardines, and melons. She wrote home on 6 August:

  It was wonderfully interesting showing that splendid place to Faisal. He is an inspiring tourist. After we had re-constructed the palace and seen Khosroes sitting in it, I took him into the high windows to the South, whence we could see the Tigris, and told him the story of the Arab conquest as Tabari records it . . . You can imagine what it was like reciting it to him. I don’t know which of us was the more thrilled . . .

  Faisal has promised me a regiment of the Arab Army—“the Khatun’s Own.” I shall presently ask you to have their colours embroidered . . . Oh Father, isn’t it wonderful. I sometimes think I must be in a dream.

  The regiment did not come to pass. A charming compliment that gave her much pleasure, it would have been a difficult concept to run past Cox.

  Returning straight to the office after the Ctesiphon outing, she worked for four hours, took an hour for lunch, then visited the Naqib. Then, in her role as President of the Baghdad Public Library, she attended a committee meeting. She had determined that the library would contain books in three European languages, as well as in Arabic and five other Oriental languages; and that it would issue a magazine for book reviews and a catalogue of all the manuscripts available there. She paid a courtesy call on the sister-in-law of Sasun Effendi Eskail, and went home to host a dinner for Hamid Khan, a cousin of the Aga Khan. Even for her, it was quite a day. It was unbearably hot, but despite the strong currents and the occasional shark—one had bitten a boy only that week—she took a swim in the Tigris, and was amused to write home about Cox’s latest addition to his menagerie, the largest eagle she had ever seen: “It lives on a perch on the shady side of the house and it eats bats. These bats are netted in the dusk . . . the eagle likes to eat them in the morning, so the long-suffering Lady Cox keeps them in a tin in her ice chest.”

  She had never been so busy or so happy. It was a bonus that on the rounds of courtesy calls that she regularly made she would often be accompanied by the King’s personal adviser. Tall and clean-shaven, “Ken” Cornwallis was tanned and good-looking, with a beaky nose and piercing blue eyes. A man of aggressive integrity, humorous, he had been Faisal’s adviser for five years now, and the Amir had asked him to come with him to Baghdad.

  And then there was Faisal, with his charm and his humour, his gratitude, and his interest in her. There was an affection between them: he called her his sister.

  One hot evening she was riding by the Euphrates enjoying the cool river air, and passed Faisal’s new house, still in the process of being restored and redecorated. She saw his car at the door, and leaving her pony with one of his slaves, climbed up to the roof in her breeches and shirt. There she found him sitting with his ADCs, watching the setting sun reflected in the water, the desert beyond merging with the fading red of the sky. He smiled to see her, invited her with a wave of his hand to join them in their picnic, and, rising, took her hand. Moving to one side, he spoke to her in Arabic, using the familiar “thou”: “ ‘Enti Iraqiyah, enti badasiyak’ he said to me, ‘You’re a Mesopotamian, a Bedouin.’ ”

  At the last minute before the coronation was due to take place, there was a “flap”; the Colonial Office sent a cable demanding Faisal announce in his speech that the ultimate authority in the land was the High Commissioner. Faisal said that from the first he had made it clear that he was an independent sovereign in treaty with Britain. To declare Cox the ultimate authority would rekindle the opposition of the extremists. Gertrude agreed with him. That he should increase his independence was what he had been asked to do.

  On 23 August 1921, Faisal was crowned in the carpeted courtyard of the Serai in Baghdad, where he was currently occupying the reception rooms. Fifteen hundred guests were seated in blocks: the British, the Arab officials, townsmen, ministers, and local deputations. The ceremony began in the cool of the early mor
ning, at 6 a.m. Faisal, in uniform, with Sir Percy, in ceremonial white with all his ribbons and stars, and General Sir Aylmer Haldane, the army chief, followed by several ADCs, made their way past the guard of honour, the Dorsets, to the dais. “Faisal looked very dignified but much strung up,” Gertrude noted. “He looked along the front row and caught my eye and I gave him a tiny salute.”

  One Sayyid Hussain, representing the elderly Naqib, read out Cox’s proclamation, which included the fact that Faisal had been elected King by 96 per cent of the people of Mesopotamia. The cry of “Long Live the King!” rang out, the audience stood, a flag was broken, and the band—for lack as yet of a national anthem—played “God Save the King.” A salute of twenty-one guns followed. Then came hundreds of deputations to greet Faisal:

  Basrah and Amarah came on Friday, Hillah and Mosul on Saturday . . . first the Mosul town magnates, my guests and their colleagues, next the Christian Archbishops and Bishops and the Jewish Grand Rabbi . . . The third group was more exciting than all the others; it was the Kurdish chiefs of the frontier who have elected to come into the Iraq state until they see whether an independent Kurdistan develops which will be still better to their liking . . .

  The week culminated in an invitation to Gertrude from Faisal to tea, in order to discuss the design of the new national flag and his personal standard, which was to include a gold crown on the red triangle of the Hejaz. His first Cabinet was formed: she had secret reservations about three of the nine members, and rejoiced that it was no longer her decision.

  Faisal invited her to the first dinner party in his house on the river. Dressed exquisitely for evening, she floated up the Tigris on his launch. The people of the suburb of Karradah recognized her as she passed, and saluted her, smiling. Her companion Nuri Pasha Said told her that just as Faisal would be remembered in London for his Arab dress, so she would always be remembered: “There’s only one Khatun . . . So for a hundred years they’ll talk of the Khatun riding by.”

  Have I ever told you what the river is like on a hot summer night? At dusk the mist hangs in long white bands over the water; the twilight fades and the lights of the town shine out on either bank, with the river, dark and smooth and full of mysterious reflections, like a road of triumph through the mist. Silently a boat with a winking headlight slips down the stream, then a company of quffahs, each with his tiny lamp, loaded to the brim with water melons from Samarra . . . And we slow down the launch so that the wash may not disturb them. The waves of our passage don’t even extinguish the floating votive candles each burning on its minute boat made out of the swathe of a date cluster, which anxious hands launched above the town—if they reach the last town yet burning, the sick man will recover, the baby will be born safely into this world of hot darkness and glittering lights . . . Now I’ve brought you out to where the palm trees stand marshalled along the banks. The water is so still that you can see the Scorpion in it, star by star.

  . . . and here are Faisal’s steps.

  *According to Ronald Bodley, a descendant of Gertrude’s who wrote a biography of her in 1940.

  Sixteen

  STAYING AND LEAVING

  Gertrude, at fifty-three, found herself drawn more and more to the King’s company. Faisal, thirty-six, was a most charming companion, affectionate with those he trusted, and exercising a persuasive influence on everyone around him. The Oriental Secretary and the King shared a sense of the ridiculous which they could enjoy in private, so that aides busy elsewhere in the house would sometimes be curious to know what was causing the laughter they could hear through closed doors.

  For his part, the King saw in Gertrude an extraordinary person, a formidable ally, impeccably well informed, and with a personal history of adventure that he—as an Arab man—could hardly believe. A woman of quick movements and quick understanding, her conversation would catch fire as she entered into political debate. Her gaze, as it fixed on her interlocutor, was as penetrating as it had ever been, the occasional snap of irritation more than balanced by the frequent twinkle. In spite of the climate and its effects on her health, she still loved a gallop along the banks of the Tigris in the early morning mists, and to join him in the occasional all-day partridge shoot—dressed in breeches with brown leather knee boots and a tweed tunic—and swim in the river in the evenings.

  The American journalist Marguerite Harrison, interviewing her in Baghdad for the New York Times in 1923, had a rare opportunity to see Gertrude at her office:

  I was ushered into a small room with a high ceiling and long French windows facing the river. It was the untidiest room I had ever seen, chairs, tables and sofas being littered with documents, maps, pamphlets and papers in English, French and Arabic. At a desk piled high with documents that had overflowed on to the carpet sat a slender woman in a smart sports frock of knitted silk, pale tan in colour. As she rose, I noticed that her figure was still willowy and graceful. Her delicate oval face with its firm mouth and chin and steel-blue eyes, and with its aureole of soft grey hair, was the face of a “grande dame.” There was nothing of the weather-beaten explorer in her looks or bearing. “Paris frock, Mayfair manners.” And this was the woman who had made sheikhs tremble!

  Even now, she was without fear. One morning, as she was breakfasting with Haji Naji in his summer-house, a dervish strode in with an iron staff and rudely demanded to be treated as a guest. Haji Naji told him to go. Looking threateningly at Gertrude, he said that he had as much right as she to be there. He then sat down in the entrance, declared, “I rely on God,” and began to read in a loud voice from the Koran. Neither Haji Naji, his son, nor the servants could move him, so Gertrude told the dervish, “God’s a long way off and the police are very near,” snatched up his iron staff, and struck him with it. He left.

  Faisal and Gertrude together bent their hearts and minds to the well-being of the new country they had established, and to an ultimate ideal of a wider Arab independence. Sir Percy Cox would soon be retiring, to be replaced by the one-time chief of the Revenue Department, Sir Henry Dobbs; Gertrude would remain in Baghdad, available to give official or unofficial help and advice. This period of Faisal’s and Gertrude’s lives was one of great satisfaction and excitement to both, and brought them together in the close confidence of true friends. She was happy and fulfilled in her work:

  I’m acutely conscious of how much life has, after all, given me. I’ve gone back now, after many years to the old feeling of joy in existence, and I’m happy in feeling that I’ve got the love and confidence of a whole nation. It mayn’t be the intimate happiness which I’ve missed, but it’s a very wonderful and absorbing thing—almost too absorbing perhaps.

  How close, how confident, was not revealed until after Gertrude’s death, and then only in a modest British journal, Everybody’s Weekly, which had the bright idea of obtaining an interview about her with the King. The editor chose to entitle the feature “Secrets of Great White Woman of the Desert Which Were Not Revealed in Her Book.” How Gertrude would have hated that! However sensational or over-romantic the language—no doubt a paraphrase of Faisal’s answers, edited as befitted a magazine for housewives, and published complete with misspellings—the content to which the King gave his name contains some extraordinary assertions.

  Faisal began:

  Gertrude Bell is a name that is written indelibly on Arab history—a name which is spoken with awe—like that of Napoleon, Nelson or Mussolini . . . One might say that she was the greatest woman of her time. Without question her claim to greatness is on a footing with women like Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell, Madame Curie and others.

  Speaking of her passion for adventure and her unerring loyalty to all that was just and good, he went on to say that it was not only Colonel Lawrence who should be credited with bringing about the uprising of the Arab tribes against the Turks. Like Lawrence,

  [Gertrude] could play a man’s part in the action . . . She ventured alone and disguised into the remotest districts to carry the message o
f revolt, and when the chiefs seemed to lack the courage to obey the call she inspired them with her own amazing courage . . . I do not think she knew what fear was. Death held no fears for her. No danger or exploit was too great for her to face. Her personal safety was her last consideration.

  He describes her facility for disguise, her ability to make herself up as an Arab of any tribe she chose, and so skilfully that it was undetectable.

  Once, my men brought me a picturesque looking Arab camel driver, who answered all my questions in the vernacular as though his whole life had been spent in following this humble occupation. After I had questioned the captive and had obtained from him all the information I sought . . . the camel driver owned to being Miss Bell.

  He went on:

  I think I may reveal now the fact that in one of the critical phases of our history, when some of our men were wavering, the great white woman herself led them in an attack on the Turks. At least once in her strange career she was at the mercy of her enemies and had before her the certainty of a terrible death.

  She had been betrayed to the Turks by a treacherous Arab while on the way back from one of her perilous missions into the desert, and she was seized, disguised as an Arab tribesman, by a Turkish patrol . . . She was told she would be put to fiendish torture if she did not reveal the secrets of the men who were at that moment planning to throw off the Turkish yoke. To all threats she remained deaf, and not one word of her secret did her captors learn. Had she faltered, the lives of some of our best chiefs would have been forfeit, but this woman preferred to face torture . . . rather than betray anyone. Happily, she was able to make her escape before her captors had a chance of carrying out their threats . . .

  He continued with the story of her escape, which, he said, she had confided only to him. She had slipped out of the Turkish camp in the dead of night, and wandered without guide, water or food for three days and nights, managing to hide from passing bands of marauders. She finally reached safety more dead than alive. “A few days later she was about again, as active as ever, engaged in her great task of inspiring our men to revolt against their oppressors.”