Bell of the Desert

by Alan Gold

  “Unfortunately, General,” he said, turning to Haldane. “We’re anticipating severe trouble in the lower Euphrates area within a matter of weeks. We’re also assuming there will be serious trouble in Karbala, in Basrah, in Mosul, and in other places. I think we all know what the cause of this upsurge in Iraqi nationalism is.”

  He looked at Gertrude, who merely turned to stare out of the window. “General, perhaps you’d like to say a few words . . .” Wilson said, turning to Haldane.

  Looking uncomfortable, General Haldane said, “There’s only one way to treat the enemy, be he Indian or Arab or Blackamore, and that’s to firmly let him know who’s the boss. Any leniency, any show of sympathy for him or his cause, will send the wrong message and cause the problem to get much worse.

  “Now, I’m fully equipped with armoured vehicles and munitions and airplanes. The Arab is equipped with a few rifles, camels, and nothing much more. I don’t want to criticise General MacMunn, because he’s a good man, but I’m amazed he’s allowed us to get into this situation. Certainly the Arabs outnumber us, but we have the best army in the world, and the equipment and the skills to put down any tribal unrest. We’ve done it in India, we’ve done it in Africa, and I assure you we’ll do it in Arabia.”

  The political officers stood and cheered. Gertrude shook her head in horror.

  ~

  Tel Mahmood, Northern Iraq, Early June 1920

  The village was just beginning to awake from its night sleep, as it had awoken every morning for the past eight thousand years. Except for the occasional motorcar which passed by on the distant road, virtually nothing had changed in all that time. As had happened since time began, it was the goats which were the first to break the silence of the night. They began their bleating as the women of the households rose to prepare the day for their menfolk.

  And the goats continued their bleating as the tired shepherds emerged from their huts, walked across the rock-strewn ground, and began to herd them together out of the fields for milking. Mothers and daughters, who had roused themselves from their warm straw beds, had spent the past hour mixing the flour and the water for the flat bread which their husbands and sons would eat for breakfast and take to the fields for lunch, and were beginning the preparation for the evening meal, or were washing the clothes or cleaning the house.

  The making of the bread, which they undertook twice a day, was a practised routine. First they would light the straw, which would light the twigs, which would light the sticks, which would light the logs, which would heat the oven and cook the bread. And the bread always had to be hot and fresh, so it had to be done in the early morning and again in the late afternoon to be ready for the meal when the menfolk returned after their work. The women also had to go out and churn the goat’s milk which had been fermenting to make the thickened yogurt, which when mixed with honey was their men’s favorite way of ending the day, and of beginning the next day by vanquishing the hunger of the night.

  But although this day began as every other day, it would be a day which the villagers would remember for the rest of their lives. Because the routine which the village had followed for millennia was suddenly and unexpectedly broken by the sound of gunfire. Not at first realizing what was happening, women came out of their mud-houses and looked up at the sky, wondering whether it was an unusual electrical summer storm. But surrounding the village and dispersed throughout the hills, the women saw nearly one hundred black-robed and fiercely armed men of the Shammar people, the most powerful of the Sunni tribes which owned the desert between the Tigris and the Euphrates in the northern part of Iraq. The people of the village looked at them in horror, for they had a reputation for unspeakable violence and heartlessness to their enemies. But why were they here? The people of Tel Mahmood had no quarrel with the Shammar.

  As the horsemen descended from the surrounding hills towards the village, they fired their rifles into the air. The women screamed in fear, and rushed into their houses to protect their children and babies. Men who were in the fields came running back in the hope of saving the lives of their loved ones.

  But there was no assault on the village, no further rifle fire, no screaming and war-like blood-curdling din which preceded an attack. When the women realized they were not the target of the Shammar, they stood where they were, and shouted ululations into the air.

  Within half an hour, the men and women of the village had gathered, and were standing in the central area. Had there been an assault, the men of Tel Mahmood knew they couldn’t match the brutality and strength of the Shammar, and hadn’t collected their weapons from their huts, hoping this act of obeisance would save them.

  One of the Shammar, the leader, rode his horse into the center of the village, and ordered all the houses to be emptied and for everyone to gather to hear his words. Still nervous, the women and children huddled together. The women and older girls had thought they were about to be raped, despite the seemingly peaceful demeanor of the warriors. The women prayed that if they were raped, their husbands and fathers wouldn’t reject them and force them to wander into the desert because of the shame they had brought to the family’s honour.

  The leader of the Shammar, Jamil al-Midfai again raised his rifle, and fired a single shot into the air. Some of the younger children screamed in shock.

  “Listen to my words, people of Tel Mahmood. Your land is about to be taken away from you, your women and children sold into slavery, and you are about to become owned by some foreign power.”

  The men listened in shock. The women gripped their husbands’ clothes for protection.

  “A false king whose name is Abdullah, the son of a man who abuses the very name of God Himself, is on his way to Iraq right now, and will call himself your ruler. He is not your ruler, people of Tel Mahmood. He is a false ruler, and is no better than the British and the Turks who once ruled over you. This man, this would-be king, this Abdullah, is nothing more than a scoundrel, a wastrel, a rapist, a murderer, and a thief. He is a child-molester and is cursed by God Himself. He has spat on the Koran and vowed to kill any person who prays in a mosque. He is vile and evil and will rape your daughters if given the chance. This man Abdullah is a puppet of the British, and they will use him to rob and cheat you.

  “I order you to rise up against Abdullah, to rise up against the British, to kill their soldiers and their servants. I order you, on pain of death, to pick up your rifles, and to fight for your freedom. Any Englishman or woman you see, any British soldier or tax collector, any official from England, any political person, must be killed on sight. Hide behind a sand dune, behind a rock, and put a bullet into his heart or his head. The more Englishmen you kill, the greater your chance of freedom. If you don’t kill Englishmen, I will send my men back to Tel Mahmood and order them to kill you.”

  And with a shout of “God is Great,” he wheeled his horse around, and the horsemen rode to the next village.

  Not a man or woman moved until the last of the riders had disappeared over the hills, and until the dust had cleared from the air. Eventually, the headman of the village, Abdul ibn Nasi, spat in the direction they’d taken. A woman spat immediately after him, and then many people spat.

  They looked at each other, and talked in hushed words about the threat that had just been made. Abdul advised it was better to kill a few English people and risk the vengeance of the British, than not to kill anybody and suffer the certainty of murder by the Shammar.

  ~

  British Residency, Baghdad, Iraq, a Week Later

  It was the first time she’d eaten in the residency’s mess in a month. She preferred to dine in her home or in her office, and avoid the stares and the sneers and the deliberately snide remarks she received when she went in there. The caustic remarks and isolation which had been bad a month ago was now incomparably worse. She was on the point of packing it all in, and returning to England, but kept deferring the decision because she couldn’t leave Iraq in its parlous state, for then she would be blamed for eve
rything which was going wrong. At least while she was on the spot, she could do something to mollify the tense situation. She had stopped herself from leaving when she was told of the appointment of Abdullah as a future ruler of The Iraq. Abdullah, of all people, Faisal’s elder brother as the emir of Iraq. It was absurd. He too had fought for a time alongside Lawrence and done much to defeat the Turks, but he was no ruler and couldn’t possibly unite the disparate forces which her carefully drawn borders hoped to hold together in Iraq. His appointment was an absurdity, but nobody was listening to her. Still, she continued to write her objective reports, in the hope that one day, scholars would look back and realize that hers was the only sane voice in the arena.

  For Gertrude, life was doubly bad. Nobody would eat with her at her table, or even talk to her any longer. Her fellow political officers were merely following the lead of A.T. Wilson, who, as the tension in Iraq increased, had for the past month been abusing her in public, accusing her in staff meetings of disloyalty, of stupidity, and incompetence.

  Only occasionally had she responded, uttering a scathing rebuttal here and contemptuous aside there. But she knew the reason for Wilson’s detestation of her was he couldn’t control the situation in the country, and he believed she was responsible for his political demise. He was using more and more force against the Arabs, and as was their wont, the Arabs of Iraq were responding in the only way they knew how. Violence bred retribution which bred more violence. The prospects of negotiation were diminishing with every bullet ridden body, Arab or British.

  She, for her part, was frantically talking to her Arabic friends, the chieftains and leaders and men of influence, trying to calm the situation and bring order to bear in the chaos, but she was afraid the genie was out of the bottle, and she had no idea how to put it back.

  So when General Haldane had invited her for lunch in the residency mess, she had earnestly hoped he was going to declare his hand and seek her assistance. He had been in his position for only a matter of weeks, long enough to assess his men’s disposition throughout the country, and certainly long enough to determine a course of military action. If George MacMunn had still been here, he would have refused to follow the requests of Wilson, and instead would have directed military activity towards some form of containment of the situation. He would have worked with her to identify the leaders of the revolts in the different parts, to contain them and therefore cut off the heads so the body of the Arab cohorts would have nobody to follow. George certainly wouldn’t have used massive military might against the civilian population, because, as it was doing, it would just lead to more and more assaults against the British. Gertrude prayed Haldane was going to ask her how best to deal with the Arabs and with Captain Wilson.

  At the beginning of the lunch he had been pleasant enough, inquiring about her place of birth, her interests, her activities in the English social set, her contacts in Whitehall and Westminster, and much more. But eventually, when the stewards were clearing away the main course, Haldane came to the point.

  “I’m a military man, Miss Bell, and I don’t like to shilly-shally around the point. I like to identify the problem, and then solve it. Now I know you’re on the outer here, and not many people like you, but I judge people not by what’s said about them, but by how they follow orders. Well, I’ve got a plan which I think could do us both a lot of good. You see, the fact is, m’dear, there’s something I want you to do for me and the good of the country.”

  She straightened her desert spoon and fork, and prepared herself for the real purpose of their meeting. “You should know, General, I’m prepared to do anything to assist you, provided your proposed course of action is reasoned and responsible.”

  “Of course, Miss Bell. Well, to be quite frank with you, I have a problem which requires a non-military solution. It’s a bit tricky to be honest, and not something I’ve encountered in any field of battle I’ve ever been on. You see, I’ve never had wives and daughters living in such close proximity to a battle zone, not even in India. And the women are nervous. What I’d like you to do for me is to organize things for the officers’ wives and daughters. You’re a woman, and I’m sure you’re good at that sort of thing. I’m increasingly concerned with their morale—a grumpy wife makes a grumpy officer—and with the current problems, we need to keep the ladies happy, and if you’re seen by the big wigs trying to make things better, well, I’m sure they’ll think better of you. Now, what about organizing outings on the river, or trips to some of these archaeological sites you’re so good at? That should perk up their spirits, and allow the men to concentrate on the troubles.”

  She looked at him in amazement, and was about to respond in no uncertain terms, when an orderly came in, and delivered a message, proffered on a silver salver.

  The general tore open the envelope, and read the contents. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “Buggers up north, tribesmen or something, have killed six Englishmen, two clerks, their drivers, and a tax officer. Sorry, m’dear, but duty calls. I have to see Wilson and find out what his orders are. Organize those things for the ladies, will you?” he said.

  He stood, nodded goodbye, and retreated from the table. She was too stunned to scream at him.

  ~

  Tel Mahmood, Northern Iraq, Mid-June, 1920

  The women had just finished putting bread into the ovens, when they heard the noise of vehicles coming over the ridge. The sound fractured the quiet of the morning. The sudden mechanized tension in the air was picked up by the goats of the village, which began bleating frantically.

  The horses began whinnying and men and women started to come out of their houses to look at the source of the noise. The road from Baghdad to Mosul, which was less than a mile away, was normally empty at this time of morning, but suddenly it was full of angry dust, rising up in clouds into the clear blue sky.

  Frowning, the women stood to watch, trying to discern what the noises and the clouds of dust could be. Nothing like it had been heard since the Turks rushed north to escape the might of the British. Nothing like it since the end of the war two years earlier. But the men who came out to look at what was happening knew.

  And then it dawned on the women. It was the war, coming to their village again. The women began to scream, turned, and run into their houses to gather up their children and escape to the caves in the hills surrounding their village. Unlike the arrival of the Shammar weeks earlier, the arrival of the cars and trucks with guns on them spelled instant death at the hands of a foreigner. They had to get away.

  Slowly, the roaring noise clarified into the sounds of two dozen motor car engines. And out of the dust, machine gun motorcycles and cars and army vehicles emerged and rumbled down the road towards the village.

  The officer commanding, a relatively young lieutenant on only his fourth mission shouted an order to his column to disperse right and left to prevent the villagers from escaping. Through his binoculars, he saw the rest of his patrol was approaching the village from the opposite hills to block any escape.

  In desperation, some of the villagers ran into the path of the oncoming vehicles and were surrounded, others rushed into their homes to grab their weapons, but many of the men found themselves struggling with their wives who wanted them to surrender without a fight, terrified that if they were armed and resisted, there’d be a massacre.

  And suddenly there was silence. The villagers of Tel Mahmood stood still, realizing the English had come in overwhelming force, and waited for the disaster which was about to happen to them. They were rounded up at rifle point by the English soldiers, and forced to stand in the center of the village.

  The young English commander stood on top of his vehicle and unrolled a document which looked horribly and frighteningly official. Beside him stood an Arab, dressed in the uniform of an army sergeant. These men, translators, informers, spies, and mercenaries for the British, were amongst the most hated of turncoats by the Iraqis.

  The Englishman began to read to the assembled villages, and a
fter a few moments, the Arab translated. “Residents of Tel Mahmood, because of your participation in the senseless and bloody murder of six English civilians, the Military Commander of Iraq, Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Haldane has decreed the men of the village will be arrested and tried in a military court for murder, and the entire village, including every house and public building, will be razed to the ground, and will never be rebuilt. Your fields are to be sown with salt and your livestock slaughtered. Further, all women and children of the village will be deported from Iraq to a location to be determined. You have half of an hour to collect your personal possessions from your homes before they are destroyed. By order of the Military Command of Iraq.”

  Several women fainted when he finished the translation.

  ~

  British Residency, Baghdad, Iraq

  Four days later, when the news was common knowledge in the mess halls of the Military High Command and the Political Residency, Gertrude, still feeling sick from hearing of what had happened in the north of Iraq, was called to a meeting with Wilson.