Bell of the Desert
Page 46
Individual group leaders presented what their people had analyzed the previous day, and the entire group was allowed fifteen minutes of general discussion before moving on to the next group. And she could swear Winston was shuffling about in restrained anxiety as he waited impatiently for Captain Wilson to present what his group had concluded.
The moustachioed Wilson, wearing a heavy three-piece suit, stood and began to speak. “Looking at the situation in Mesopotamia today, I believe—”
“I feel, Captain Wilson,” Churchill interrupted, his voice booming over the conference hall, “That we would all be better served if we were to refer to the country as The Iraq.”
Wilson looked at him stonily. “You may feel that, sir, but there are those of us who believe that calling it Iraq makes it, de facto, into an Arabic nation, and Great Britain has a moral and blood-right to maintaining our position. We are an imperial power, Mr. Churchill, whose men fought and died for that country, and provided we rule with dignity and consideration—”
“Do not presume to address me, sir, on Great Britain’s imperial status or the losses we sustained, especially in Iraq and most particularly in the time of your administration” boomed Churchill. The room immediately became still. Gertrude had not anticipated something would happen so suddenly. Nobody else had perceived anything would happen, other than a continuation of the working parties and the tasks which they’d been given.
Wilson looked at Churchill in shock. Nobody had shouted at him or addressed in that manner for decades. He immediately understood that there was far more to Churchill’s sudden show of aggression than the politician’s normal irascibility. Wilson looked around the table to see what might be behind the sudden onslaught. All eyes were on him, except those of Gertrude Bell, who was staring into her lap. It was then that he realized what was happening.
“Perhaps, Mr. Churchill, the discussion of such issues could be left for a private meeting between ourselves,” he said sharply.
“On the contrary, sir,” said Churchill, rising to greater heights of restrained fury. “These are things which must be aired and exposed to the harsh light of scrutiny, especially by those of your colleagues who were forced to serve under you and suffer the many egregious errors you made.”
“I assume that you’re speaking of Miss Bell. May I say, then . . .”
“No sir, you may not say; for I assume that you are going to slander Miss Bell at this table in the same way as you undermined her during your rule. But might I point out that were it not for Miss Bell, the situation in Iraq would have been infinitely worse than you left it. It was Miss Bell, Miss Gertrude Bell, who has managed to rescue both Great Britain’s reputation and her standing in the eyes of Iraq.”
This was too much for Wilson, who shouted, “Are you mad? Are you completely unaware of how that woman tried to undermine British interests in Iraq? Do you have no understanding of. . . .”
Sir Percy and Thomas Lawrence both were about to shout at Wilson, but Churchill put up his hand for silence, and boomed across the room, “That woman,” he said, pointing to Gertrude, “as you so rudely call her, is as patriotic and noble a lady as Great Britain has ever produced. She is the woman who invented Iraq. Out of the dust of aeons, she has almost single handed carved a new nation, a future ally of Great Britain, and through her genius and diplomatic skills, she will bring this new nation together under a government which will partner our own into the future. And you’re a fool and a ninny for failing to see what was there before you.”
~
“I beg your pardon!” said Wilson, about to storm out of the room.
“And well may you beg the pardon of all England, Captain Wilson. I have been here for the past week, listening to all the combined talents of all the experts in England whose minds have been brought to bear on the question of the future of the Middle East. And it has become patently obvious to me that much of our problem must be deposited upon the doorstep of the High Commissioner’s Office during your tenure. Your imperiousness, your high-handed manner of dealing with the indigenes, your arrogance towards the real experts in your staff . . .” he looked again at Gertrude who stared at the green baize tablecloth, terrified of meeting anybody’s eye, “. . . especially Miss Gertrude Bell, have cost Great Britain millions and millions of pounds and many dead, all of which could have been avoided had you listened to the advice of those on your staff who knew better, instead of driving your own agenda so ruthlessly.”
Now there was no longer silence, but audible gasps in the room. Captain Wilson’s face drained of blood. He stood facing Churchill like they were two pugilists in a ring.
“Mr. Churchill,” he said slowly, his voice deep with resentment and bitterness, “May I remind you it was you who wanted to drop bombs on the revolting Arabs? May I remind you that it was you who was considering the use of poison gas?”
Churchill paced down the room as though he was going to attack, “Only after the revolt had begun. Only when hundreds of thousands of Arabs were taking up arms to kill British lads. Had you not instigated your reign of terror, Captain Wilson, none of this would have been necessary.”
He stood his ground half-way down the table. “Look at what’s happened since Sir Percy has taken control. We are witnessing the outbreak of peace. Guns are being silenced. Men are talking. None of the past six months of hell on Earth need have happened if you’d only listened to wiser voices than your own, and be under no illusions that I refer, of course, to Miss Gertrude Bell.”
Unbowed, Wilson shouted back, “But you’re giving away one of the most valuable countries in the possession of the British crown. Don’t you understand what you’re doing? Are you so reckless, so antipathetic to the needs of our nation?” he asked. “If we continue to follow your course of action, you’ll be giving Mesopotamia to the Arabs. We’ll be out in a year. Then we’ll lose Persia, then India, then Africa, and then all our other possessions. You will go down in history, Mr. Churchill, as the man who ruined England.”
Gertrude could barely restrain herself from joining in the scrap. She glanced over to Sir Percy, who looked at her urgently, and shook his head, ordering her to remain silent. Many others were also deeply shocked someone as senior as Wilson could be treated like some miscreant schoolboy. But Gertrude was well aware of the subtext behind the assault. She glanced at Lawrence. He was the only one whose hawk-like eyes were watching everything that was going on. She knew he felt profound satisfaction. She caught his eye. His face gave nothing away, but his eyes told her he was enjoying every moment of Wilson’s crucifixion.
Everybody in the room heard Churchill take a deep breath. “Captain Wilson, British government policy will be formulated by the British government. Functionaries, even highly-placed functionaries such as yourself, will conduct that policy in accord with the orders which we utter. We have been given mandates by the League of Nations to guide our Middle East possessions to a point where native governments can be formed which can take over the reins of government and rule themselves. Whether or not you agree is of no interest to me or my government. And may I remind you Great Britain is quite capable of purchasing the oil which will soon be bubbling out of the Arabian desert. We don’t need to spend a fortune on a military force to protect it.”
“And Russia? France? What of those nations, Mr. Churchill. If we don’t have a military presence, what’s to stop these or other nations from sweeping down and conquering Mesopotamia? What’s to stop ibn Sa’ud from marauding north from Arabia and taking over the whole of Mesopotamia? What’s to stop him from conquering Kuwait or the Hejaz? If we withdraw our troops, there’s nobody who’ll defend these countries, and then we very well could find our source of oil suddenly cut off.”
“You may have been too preoccupied recently to have noticed, but that’s precisely the reason the League of Nations has been created, Captain Wilson. To prevent such occurrences,” said Churchill.
Despite herself, Gertrude let out a chortle.
~
“It was perfect,” said Lawrence. “Churchill’s delighted. He’s sent a telegram to Whitehall saying mission accomplished, so there must have been more to it than met the eye. I think he was probably under instruction from the prime minister to deflect criticism from the government and to find a scapegoat. With The Times snooping about here, doubtless it’ll find its way into tomorrow’s paper. Churchill, of course, will deny everything, but you can bet the bowler hat brigade will read between the lines. From now onwards, the mandarins of Whitehall will be silent, the newspapers will carry the right approach to the situation, and the government won’t face nearly as much of a backlash from the loyal opposition. Captain Wilson and his cronies will privately carry much of the blame and the government will urgently whisper in the corridors of power it was misled and ill-advised. The whole thing will blow over in a couple of months. Mission accomplished.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand why the necessity for all the subterfuge. Why couldn’t Churchill just have made a statement to Parliament?”
“He couldn’t be seen publicly to be criticising a man who used to be as senior as Wilson. It’d put the wind up too many people. After all, he was our man in Baghdad, ostensibly carrying out our orders. If we’d hung, drawn, and quartered him in Parliament, every other high commissioner would have been too afraid to act on his own initiative. And any public execution of Wilson would have brought the opposition out on the rampage. So destroying him in private and defending him in pubic is the way to do it.”
She shook her head in wonder at all the artifice which was going on. She was a strategist of considerable note, but these political shenanigans were something far beyond her league.
“How are you feeling now we’re half-way through?” asked Lawrence.
They walked outside of the hotel and were immediately assailed by the smells of Cairo—the stench of poverty intermingling with the perfumes of the orient—spices and herbs and the heady scents of the many extravagant flowers in the gardens.
“I’m feeling hopelessly optimistic. I’ve come through a war unscathed, I’ve battled with a hideous man whom I’ve just seen cut down to size, and all my plans for the best solution to Iraq are coming to fruition. Faisal is to be offered the kingship, there’s to be a representative democracy replacing the provisional government, I’ve had all my plans approved to create a country called Iraq, which brings together the Kurds in Mosul with the Sunni around Baghdad with the Shi’ite in the south. Churchill will push for the creation of a kingdom for Abdullah across the Jordan. I feel exultant.”
“And so you should, Gertie dear. Even the great Churchill called you . . . what was it . . . the woman who invented Iraq. Quite an accolade. Almost as potent as Lawrence of Arabia. Yes, dear, you should be feeling exultant. But why stop at Iraq? Now you’ve created one nation, what about your dream of a vast, united pan-Arab nation . . . no tribes or borders or sects . . . just one big Arabia? It’s what we talked about all those years ago. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
She smiled. Perhaps it was little more than a girlish dream. “Oh, it’ll happen. Not today and not tomorrow. But when Arabia is more mature, when there’s democracy in many of the new countries. When the warlords and the mullahs begin to realize the futility of war and death and mayhem, and start to understand the beauty of peace. And when the women of Arabia find their voice and come out from behind the veils that hide their identity, that’s when they’ll be a united Arabia, Thomas. Maybe not in my lifetime, but I have no doubt it’ll happen.”
She walked with Lawrence of Arabia to the banks of the River Nile. Because of the dangers of the area, he told her he should go first, and she should follow. She accepted his advice. There were many unsavoury characters looking at them in ways which were discomforting.
Cairo was a bustling, cacophonous place. It was full of black Sudanese, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Jews, Christians, Copts, and a hundred other nationalities and religions. It was a melting pot of all humanity, from the monotheists to the polytheists, from the very wealthy to the indescribably poor, from ultra-nationalists who would kill to achieve self-rule to those who saw the League of Nations as a body which would dissolve divisions between people and create one peaceful world without war. It was a place in which women like her paraded their European fineries in dresses which would cost ten year’s income to an Egyptian worker, yet they walked side-by-side with women who were veiled from head to toe to prevent any part of them being seen by men.
The Middle East was a land of such extraordinary contrasts. Just as she was such a contrast in the British political service. She had reached the highest position any woman had ever reached in the civil service, she had published numerous books about her travels and archaeological discoveries which made her into one of the most lionised women in London, she had climbed unclimbable mountains in Switzerland, and a formerly-unconquered peak had been named after her, she had directed British policy in the Great War, she was fluent in six languages, had befriended and advised the most important men in England and the Middle East, she had been imprisoned by a tribal war-lord, and she would now be known as the woman who invented Iraq, and was well on the way to creating another called Transjordan.
And because she was a woman, she was still walking in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia.
NINETEEN
Baghdad, Iraq, July, 1921
The day, finally, had arrived. To reach this day had taken months of preparation and traveling all over Iraq, months of fear and anxiety that her carefully wrought plans would be nullified in an instant in the volatile world of Arabia by some act of jealousy, revenge, or resentment’ and months of negotiations between London and Baghdad to ensure the subtle balance between the need for Faisal’s independence as a new monarch of an autonomous country, and Britain’s desire for a strong trading relationship, all under the suzerainty of the League of Nations and its mandate. But eventually, the day of his coronation arrived.
Faisal, soon to be His Serene Majesty Faisal I of Iraq, was preparing to be crowned by approbation of the majority of his new countrymen. Few who would be at the ceremony, important representatives from London and neighbouring countries, were aware of the road Gertrude and Faisal had had to travel to reach this point.
There were times on the roads which criss-crossed Iraq when the thermometer reached 120 degrees in the shade, not that there was any shade in the Iraqi countryside. Nor was there the prospect of comfort and convenience, because they had a huge amount of territory to cover in a short period of time. Faisal had never seen Iraq before, and so Gertrude decided to take him by the hand, and lead him from place to place, both as a guide and a teacher.
She knew it would be a strain, but she had been on terrible desert journeys before, and believed she could cope with the discomfort. But she found it unbelievably arduous, and after seven days Gertrude was forced to admit she wasn’t the same person as the young, adventurous woman who had ridden on camel back, dressed in the finest Parisian fashions, into sandy hills where no white woman had ever set foot.
She felt the strain, but was determined not to allow Faisal to know how tiring she found the journey.
She was expecting to enjoy the caravan, the old-fashioned progress so similar to those which the English Queen Elizabeth I had popularised four hundred years earlier, so she could be seen by her subjects. Gertrude and Faisal were a traveling circus. Their show came to town and village, the excitement spread, and she almost expected to see posters on village walls announcing their arrival
The British Empire presents
That daredevil duo
Faisal and Gertrude
Who will perform the breathtaking magical music hall trick
of turning sceptics and enemies into friends.
And it had
worked. Faisal had gained support from nearly one hundred percent of all the leaders of Iraq.
Once they’d traveled beyond the irrigated verdant lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates, all vegetation seemed to wither, then die, then disappear. No trees or shrubs provided shade from the merciless sun, just mile after mile after mile of unrelenting rocks and stone and sand and dust. Just desert.
Never had Gertrude felt more torpid, less feminine, than when she and Faisal were driving from town to town, city to city, paying respectful visits on important people, answering their questions, and wishing them well. And before they departed on yet another visit to another important tribal leader in another town, neither Gertrude nor Faisal had any opportunity to attend to their toilet. They both left and arrived in a state of dishevelment, despite hasty repair work as the cars drove along the bumpy and dusty roads and tracks.
As they left the Anazeh tribe and drove towards the east in search of a Bedouin tribe which was last reported near the oasis of Quoom, she wondered just how many more people they would have to meet and greet.
Dear God, she thought, but it was unbearably hot. Even when she had been riding through the Arabian or the Syrian Desert years earlier, even when she had been knee-deep in archaeological explorations, or imprisoned in Hayil, even in those times, Gertrude had always managed to retain something of her English upbringing, her feminine nature. But the heat of the Iraqi Desert and the unremitting sun drained her of her heritage, her gender, and simply overwhelmed her with the need to survive from one visit to the next.
Were it not for the requirement to win over so many tribal leaders, emirs, sheiks, and other notables of the Iraqi community to the reality of Faisal becoming king in the forthcoming election, she would have instructed her driver to return to Baghdad where there was the prospect of a swim in the Tigris, cool drinks, shady rooms, fans wafted by servants and baths . . . oh, what she would have given to be able to immerse her body in a huge bath of cold, perfumed water with rose petals floating on top.