A Woman in Arabia (14 page)

In 1911, Gertrude traveled back east from Damascus to complete her measurements of the ruined palace of Ukhaidir, first seen by her two years previously. From Baghdad she took a long route northwest, exploring the Tur Abdin in southeast Turkey before returning via Aleppo. She would write about this journey in her next book,
The Churches and Monasteries of the Tur Abdin.

Two Days out from Damascus, February 11 and 12, 1911

When I went to bed a hurricane was blowing. . . . About an hour before dawn Fattuh called to me and asked whether I was cold. I woke in surprise and putting my hand out felt the waterproof valise that covered me wet with snow. “It is like the sea,” cried Fattuh. Therefore I lighted a candle and saw that it had drifted into my tent a foot deep. I dug down, found my boots and hat . . . and put all my extra clothing under the valise for warmth. . . . At dawn Fattuh dragged out the waterproof sheet that covers the ground and with it most of the snow. The snow was lying in great drifts. . . .

Everything in my tent was frozen stiff—yesterday's damp skirt was like a board, my gloves like iron, my sponges—well, I'll draw a veil over my sponges—I did not use them much. Nor was my toilette very complicated as I had gone to bed in my clothes. The temperature after sunrise was 30° [–1°C] and there was a biting wind blowing sharply from the west. . . . The frozen tents took a world of time to pack—with frozen fingers too. . . . The wet desert was like a sheet of glass and the camels slipped about and fell down with much groaning and moaning. They are singularly unfitted to cope with emergencies. . . .

Suddenly we got out of the snow zone and all was well. I got on to my camel and rode her for the rest of the day. She is the most charming of animals. You ride a camel with only a halter which you mostly tie loosely round the peak of your saddle. A
tap with your camel switch on one side of her neck or the other tells her the direction you want her to go, a touch with your heels sends her on, but when you wish her to sit down you have to hit her lightly and often on the neck saying at the same time: “Kh kh kh kh.” . . . The big soft saddle, the “shedad,” is so easy and comfortable that you never tire. You loll about and eat your lunch and observe the landscape through your glasses. . . .

No sooner had the snow ceased to be a problem than they began to suffer for lack of water.

February 20, 1911

We marched yesterday thirteen and a half hours without getting anywhere. . . . And the whole supply of water which we had was about a cupful in my flask. . . . My poor little mare had not drunk for two days, and she whinnied to everyone she saw. . . . We rode to-day for six and a half hours before we got to rain pools in the Wady Hauran. . . .

Ramadi, February 25, 1911

I was sitting reading in my tent when suddenly I heard unusual sounds and stepping out saw my muleteers in the grip of about fifteen rascally young men who had picked a quarrel with them . . . I rushed into the fray . . . and soon put an end to the business, for the roughs were alarmed when they saw a European. But after they had gone Mahmud discovered that his watch was missing and Fattuh, presently returning with Government in the shape of a couple of officials, found that a revolver had been taken from one of the saddle bags.

Gertrude's final and most extraordinary desert journey took place during winter 1913–14. She set out in late December to
escape an emotional bond with Dick Doughty-Wylie, which was causing her great misery. On this single journey she would cover sixteen hundred miles.

Leaving Damascus, December 19–21, 1913

Already I have dropped back into the desert as if it were my own place; silence and solitude fall around you like an impenetrable veil; there is no reality but the long hours of riding, shivering in the morning and drowsy in the afternoon, the bustle of getting into camp, the talk round Muhammad's coffee fire after dinner, profounder sleep than civilization ever knows—and then the road again. And as usual one feels as secure and confident in this lawless country as one does in one's own village.

The lawless element of the country soon made itself felt.

December 22, 1913

A preposterous and provoking episode has delayed us to-day. We had marched about 2 hours when we sighted camels and the smoke of tents. We took them to be (as indeed they were) Arabs of the Mountain, the Jebel Druze. . . . We tried in Dumeir to get one of the Jebel Druze Arabs as a companion and failed—and we suffered for it. Presently a horseman came galloping over the plain, shooting as he came. . . . He wheeled round us, shouting that we were foes, that we should not approach with weapons and then while he aimed his rifle at me or other of us Muhammad and Ali tried to pacify him, but in vain. He demanded of Ali his rifle and fur cloak, which were thrown to him, and by this time a dozen or more men had come galloping or running up, some shooting, all shouting, half dressed—one of them had neglected to put on any clothes at all—with matted black locks falling about their faces. They shrieked and leapt at us like men insane. One of them seized Muhammad's camel and drew the sword which hangs behind his
saddle with which he danced round us, slashing the air and hitting my camel on the neck to make her kneel. Next they proceeded to strip my men of their revolvers, cartridge belts and cloaks. My camel got up again and as there was nothing to be done but to sit quiet and watch events that's what I did. Things looked rather black, but they took a turn for the better when my camel herd, a negro, was recognised by our assailants, and in a minute or two some sheikhs came up, knew Ali and Muhammad, and greeted us with friendship. Our possessions were returned. . . .

The account she sent her parents of being detained at Ziza, and then obliged to absolve the Turkish authorities of responsibility for her, differs from that which she sent to Dick Doughty-Wylie (see “The Lover”). The British ambassador to Constantinople, Sir Louis Mallet, had already warned her not to go to Hayyil, telling her that if she went ahead, His Majesty's Government (HMG) would disclaim all responsibility for her. She was more anxious than she appears here, and the Turks were more reluctant to let her go.

January 9, 1914

As I said before, paf! I'm caught. I was an idiot to come in so close to the railway, but I was like an ostrich with its head in the sand. . . . Besides I wanted my letters and Fattuh [arriving by train]. . . .

I rode off to Mshetta, which is only an hour from my camp. As we came back Ali, the camel driver, looked up and said “Are those horsemen or camel riders going to our tents?” I looked, and they were horsemen and, what is more, they were soldiers, and when we rode in they were sitting round our camp fire. More and more came, to the number of 10, and last of all a very angry, rude (and rather drunken) little Jack-in-Office of a Chaowish [staff sergeant], who said they had been looking for me ever since I left Damascus.

I sent off at once telegrams to Beyrout and Damascus to the two Consuls, but I had to send a man with them to Madeba and
the Chaowish intercepted them and put the man, one of my camel drivers, into the Ziza castle, practically a prisoner. Thither he presently sent Fattuh also, on some imaginary insult (F. had said nothing) and then he ransacked our baggage, took possession of our arms, and posted men all round my tent. All this which he had not the slightest right to do I met with an icy calmness for which God give me the reward. . . . I am busy forging new plans for I am not beaten yet. . . . Fattuh [released that morning] observes cheerfully “I spent the first night of the journey in the railway station, and the second in prison, and now where?”

January 14, 1914

The Kaimmakam
*
not having arrived this morning, I came down to Amman and here I found him on his way to me, a charming, educated man, a Christian, willing and ready to let me go anywhere I like. . . . I have telegraphed to Damascus for permission to visit the ruins round Ziza and if I get that . . . , I shall have relieved my friend [the Kaimmakam] of all responsibility and shall be free. . . . I shall be glad when the permission comes.

Amman, January 14, 1914

I have to-day permission from the Vali to go when I like. The permission comes just in time for all my plans were laid and I was going to run away to-morrow night.

January 19, 1914

We left Amman on the 15th, I have given the authorities at Amman an assurance that the Ott. Government was not responsible for me.

At the end of February, after a daunting journey, Gertrude reached the desert city of Hayyil, where they refused to honor her promissory note. Without money or resources, she was held against her will (see “The Prisoner”). Finally reaching Baghdad at the end of March, she found that modern life had caught up with the ancient city.

Baghdad, March 29, 1914

The slow Tigris and the native boats loaded with steel rails, the steam cranes working under the palm trees, the great locomotives of the latest pattern standing in all stages of completion in the middle of a devastated palm garden, the blue clad, ragged Arabs working and singing as they worked and hauled, and among them the decisive military Germans, sharp of word, straight of carriage—it was the old East meeting the newest West and going down before it.

Gertrude still had to cross some 450 miles of the Syrian Desert by camel back to Damascus. Tired when she started, she was totally exhausted by the time they reached the city. There she was taken in by friends and stayed some time convalescing.

Fallujah, April 13, 1914, Diary

. . . we are travelling very light. . . . I have a very small and light native tent, with my bed in a Wolseley valise and one chair—that's all I have except a bagful of clothes. . . . My one luxury is my canvas bath! It's hot now, you know, and it will serve to water the camels in if necessary. . . . This is not desert; my bed lies on grass. . . . But it is out under the open sky again and at once my heart leaps to it. . . . Here comes the great procession of the stars—Sirius sparkled out long ago—here is the Great Bear with his eternal interrogations, and the sicle of Leo—all my friends. The Twins, and there is Capella's lovely face half veiled in heat haze; Aldebaran, and above me Procyon—a thousand welcomes!

April 23–26, 1914

. . . So far I have run my own show quite satisfactorily and it amuses me to be tongue and voice for myself, as I have been these days. But I am tired, and being anxious to get through and be done with travel, we are making long marches, 9 and 10 hours. Oh, but they are long hours, day after day in the open wilderness! I have come in sometimes more dead than alive, too tired to eat and with just enough energy to write my diary. . . .

On the 24th we began the day by sighting something lying in the desert with an ominous flutter of great wings over it. Assaf [her road companion] observed that it was 3 dead camels and 2 dead men, killed ten nights ago—ghazu met ghazu, said he. . . .

On the 26th . . . In the middle of the morning we met a man walking solitary in the desert. We rode up to him and addressed him in Arabic, but he made no answer. Assaf, my rafiq, said he thought he must be a Persian dervish. I spoke to him in Turkish and in what words of Persian I could muster, but he made no reply. Fattuh gave him some bread which he accepted and turned away from us into the rainy wilderness, going whither? . . . We are terribly bothered by wind, both marching and in camp, when it sheets us in dust. We march very long hours, and oh, I'm tired!

EXCERPTS FROM GERTRUDE'S TRAVEL BOOKS

Gertrude's first travel book,
Persian Pictures
, is a collection of essays detailing her initial excursion into the East in 1892. She herself called it “extraordinarily feeble” and wished it to remain unpublished, but her family was disappointed and she conceded. This extract, about a horseback excursion with an early boyfriend, stands out for the freshness and excitement of her first visit to a Zoroastrian “Tower of the Dead.”

The Tower of Silence

Hundreds of years ago, when the Persian race first issued from unknown Bactria and the grim Hyrcanian forests, passing through the Caspian Gates, they came upon a fertile land lying to the north-east of the country, which was subsequently named Media. There on the edge of the province known to-day as Khorasan they founded a city, which with the rolling centuries gathered greatness and riches and power; the Greeks (for her fame had penetrated to the limits of the civilized world) called her Rages. Key to Hyrcania and Parthia, the geographical position of the Median city lent her considerable importance. The Jews knew her well: in Rages dwelt that Gabelus to whom the pious Tobit entrusted his ten talents of silver in the days of the Captivity; there Tobias was journeying when the angel Raphael met him and instructed him in the healing properties of fishes; there, relates the author of the Book of Judith, reigned Phraortes whom Nebuchadnezzar smote through with his darts and utterly destroyed.