Desert Queen (12 page)

W
ith Friedrich Rosen, who was born and raised in Jerusalem, she planned a series of solitary trips. His tales of adventure whetted her appetite: only the year before, he had crossed the desert and sipped coffee in the tent of the distinguished Anazeh chief and friend of the Turks, Fahad Bey; he had visited Babylon and met the eminent German archaeologist Dr. Koldewey; he had lived in Baghdad and knew the leading sheikhs and notables.

Desert travel itself was not so different in its way from her mountain climbing or even from academia: a test of endurance, it challenged her physical strength, her emotional equilibrium, her linguistic ability, her curiosity and cleverness and, not least of all, her courage. This would be her first real exploration on her own, and from the moment she mounted her horse and galloped across the bare, sweeping hills she felt free. Like a bird in an opened cage, she spread her wings and soared.

Sending ahead her hired cook and two muleteers, she rode alone on the dusty path from Jerusalem, past parades of donkeys laden with tents and supplies, past caravans of British tourists led by Thomas Cook’s. Halfway to Jericho, along the route that General Allenby and his forces would follow almost two decades later, her own guide, Tarif, joined her, and together they continued east through the bare valley, their figures like two tiny dots against the sweep of brown barren mountains. Exhausted, they made their camp. A hot soak in her canvas bath, followed by dinner prepared by her cook, and she crawled into bed, pleased with her independence and protected by a wisp of mosquito netting.

The following morning after breakfast, she mounted her horse and, crossing the wooden bridge that spanned the narrow Jordan River, rode into the Jordan Valley. The landscape had changed: where brown mountains had been before, the hillsides now sprouted grass, and the arid wilderness came alive with colorful fields. She gasped at the sight of the brilliant flowers, and later, in her letter home, she noted “the sheets and sheets of varied and exquisite color”: yellow daisies, sweet-scented mauve wild stock, splendid dark purple onions, white garlic, purple mallow, tiny blue iris, red anemone and scarlet ranunculus burst upon the scene.

On a grassy plateau her servants pitched camp, and her tent was quickly surrounded by a group of Arab women, their faces tattooed with indigo, their heads and bodies covered in blue cotton gowns. Unveiled and curious, they sold her a hen and some sour milk—yogurt—called
laban.
Hanna, the cook, served her afternoon tea, and that evening, after dining on soup made of rice and olive oil (“very good!”), an Irish stew and raisins, she jotted down the day’s events, adding gaily, “Isn’t it a joke being able to talk Arabic!” She not only enjoyed the language; she loved the way of life.

In order to continue her journey, she needed permission from the local Turkish authority, and after some haggling, a tall middle-aged Turk appeared. She invited him into her tent and with a great show of politeness offered him cigarettes (“You see a bad habit may have its merits!”) while her cook scurried to bring him a cup of thick, sweetened coffee. But the bribe did not work.

Determined to wait until the cigarettes and the coffee had relaxed him, she turned the conversation to other matters, speaking as best she could in her most diplomatic way. Seeing her camera, he confessed that his greatest wish was to be photographed with his soldiers. She jumped at the news, offered to take his picture and promised to send him copies the absolute minute she had developed them. Before he departed, he too had a gift for her. “
For you
,” he said, he would send a soldier the next day. “I think it’s rather a triumph to have conducted so successful a piece of diplomacy in Arabic, don’t you?” she beamed in her letter home.

The soldier escort arrived the next morning, a handsome, cheerful Circassian, red-haired and freckled, riding a strong white horse. She set off with him across the steppe on the way to visit the ruins of Mashetta. They passed flocks of storks munching on locusts and came upon scores of black tents of the Beni Sakhr, one of the most formidable Arab tribes and the last to submit to Ottoman rule. When they reached Mashetta, an uncompleted Persian palace, she found its beauty “quite past words … a thing one will never forget as long as one lives.”

But the image was jarred when, as Gertrude and her Turkish escort turned to go home, three of the Beni Sakhr came riding toward them, “armed to the teeth, black browed and most menacing.” Terrified, she could only wait and watch. She was in luck. Seeing the Turkish soldier, the Arabs quickly changed their attitude, salaamed the group and went on their way. Had she not had the soldier escort, she was sure, the meeting would have come to a different end. Her Turkish soldier threw back his head and laughed at the Bedouin. “That was Sheikh Faiz,” he sniggered, “the son of Talal,” head of the Beni Sakhr. “Like sheep,
wallah
!! Like sheep they are when they meet one of us.”

At her flowering campsite the next evening she bathed in a stream and watched her men catch fish by filling a basin with bread, weighing it down with heavy stones and covering it with a cloth. The hungry fish swam through the holes in the cloth to eat the bread, but caught in the trap, they couldn’t swim out.

She was eager to explore the Roman ruins of Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabateans, and after receiving permission from the Turkish authority, she ventured on. Two days more of travel and she reached the Bab es Sik, a narrow dirt passage more than half a mile long and less than ten feet wide, the entryway to Petra. On either side of her she could almost touch the red sandstone rocks and above her she felt their looming presence as they rose one hundred feet and arched over her head. Suddenly, as she rode along the narrow entrance path, she was struck by a spectacular sight. In front of her stood a great temple cut out of the solid pink rock. Corinthian columns soared “upwards to the very top of the cliff in the most exquisite proportions, carved with groups of figures almost as fresh as when the chisel left them—all this in the rose red rock, with the sun just touching it and making it look almost transparent.” The hidden city had been at the center of desert trade and was now a necropolis of seven hundred and fifty tombs. That night she camped amid a row of ornate tombs, three stories high, and felt as though she were in a fairy tale city.

By the time she returned to Jerusalem, after days in the glorious sun, her pale skin had turned brown.

A
short while later she was off once more, this time with the Rosens, venturing north in Palestine through tiny mountain villages. The sun blazed and she wore a coat to keep out the heat, her head protected by her big, ribboned gray hat over which she had wrapped a white
kafeeyah
, a long cotton scarf; a blue veil covered her face, exposing only the slits of her eyes. After long stretches of sitting sidesaddle, her body ached, but Friedrich Rosen came to her rescue and showed her how to ride like a man. “No more feminine saddles for me on a long journey,” she announced to her parents. “Never, never again will I travel on anything else; I have never known real ease in riding till now.” Her new saddle carried an amusing bonus: “Till I speak the people always think I’m a man and address me as Effendim!” But she reassured her fashion-conscious mother, “You mustn’t think I haven’t got a most elegant and decent divided skirt, however, but as all men wear skirts of sorts too, that doesn’t serve to distinguish me.”

Looking like a Bedouin on her masculine saddle, dressed in her
kafeeyah
, coat and skirt, Gertrude parted from the Rosens about one hundred miles to the northeast of Jerusalem. Leaving behind the soft desert soil, she rode off across the bare, volcanic rocks of the Hauran plain, heading toward the mountains of the Druze. She was in uncharted territory, visited in the past by only a handful of Westerners, and never, in many parts, by a European woman. The region, running through the Galilee, Lebanon and southern Syria, was peopled by fierce warriors and was difficult to penetrate.

The Druze, a secret Muslim sect that combined the teachings of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam with the tenets of Greek philosophy, the training of Roman fortitude and the trivialities of peasant life, were known to be militant and hostile. For two hundred years they had fought the ruling Ottoman Turks, and four years before Gertrude arrived, the Turks had suffered humiliating defeat: fourteen hundred Turks were dead while only five hundred Druze had been killed, making the Turks suspicious of anyone who wished to travel in Druze territory. In fact, the Turks did everything they could to prevent it.

But Gertrude feared neither Turks nor Druze. Indeed, she relished the adventure and wrote home confidently that she thought her chances of getting up into the Druze hills were pretty good: “I shall make a determined attack and unless the government stops me, I fancy I shall do it. Everyone in Jerusalem and Jericho told me it was quite impossible but, we shall see. I shall dodge the government as much as possible.” Her cat-and-mouse game with the Turks had begun.

T
he town of Bosrah on the Hauran plateau served as the administrative capital for the Turks and the place where they kept a cautious eye on the Druze. “I am deep in intrigues!” Gertrude announced within hours of her arrival at Bosrah. Anyone visiting the Druze roused the suspicion of the local Ottoman authorities, but she had already plotted her strategy. “One has to walk very warily with Orientals,” she explained. “They never say no, straight out; you must read between the lines.” She arrived in the courtyard of the Mudir, the Arab Governor of Bosrah, and, over coffee with him, she began to negotiate her trip in Arabic.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To Damascus,” she replied.

“God has made it! There is a fine road to the west,” he suggested, “very beautiful,” with interesting places.

“Please God I shall see them!” she exclaimed. “But I wish first to look upon Salkhad.” This was to the east, in the heart of the Druze country, where the Turks did not want her to go.

“Salkhad!” he answered. “There is nothing there at all, and the road is very dangerous. It cannot happen.”

“It must happen.”

“There has come a telegram from Damascus,” he lied, “to bid me to say the Mutussarif fears for the safety of your presence.”

“English women are never afraid,” she lied in turn. “I wish to look upon the ruins.”

The conversation continued until, finally, she told him she was staying in Bosrah for the day.

“You have honored me!” he said as he left.

“God forbid!” she answered politely and rode off to see the nearby Roman ruins.

She reveled in the challenge of the game. “It’s awfully amusing, and my servants fully enter into the fun of the thing,” she reported. “If only I could put myself into communication with the Druze, all would be well.” If not, she would start early the next morning and make a dash for it. Once she was inside the territory, it would be difficult for the Turks, so afraid of the Druze, to catch her. She and her men felt like conspirators.

Pretending to be asleep, when the Mudir, the Arab Governor, returned to her tent she hid in her bed and listened while he and her servant spoke.