Desert Queen (46 page)

A stream of women, mostly Muslims, many of them Jews, their children in tow, arrived at her walled retreat. They slipped off their face veils and long black
abbayas
and, dressed in Turkish silks or outfits made from the patterns of
Vogue
, entered a world they hardly knew. At the rear of her garden stood Gertrude, receiving her guests, her figure erect in a long silk dress, her head held high under a hat blooming with fruits. Without a doubt, Miss Bell was considered by all a formidable figure of British authority.

Chairs were placed around the garden, and her servants went from one guest to the next, pouring tea from the silver service, passing around biscuits, cakes and the cook’s specialty, caramelized walnuts filled with thick buffalo cream. When the weather turned cold or rainy, the guests were entertained indoors, and a circle of thirty chairs—all that the room could hold—was arranged for tea parties in her sitting room. For two hours, over the clatter of china cups, female gossip and feelings about the future fluttered through the air. Gertrude listened, her ear trained to pick up any nuance of political change.

The meetings made an impact, as much on Gertrude as on the local ladies. The disdain she had once expressed to Mrs. Van Ess about Arab women disappeared. The conscious lack of interest in the harem had been discarded, replaced by knowledge and understanding. When a British education expert, Humphrey Bowman, arrived in Baghdad to set up a school system, he found her highly concerned about the future of the Arab girls.

She was sitting on the floor, a cigarette burning in the ashtray, her dress tucked under her knees, her head buried in the piles of maps and papers scattered about, when Bowman knocked on her door. She answered sharply, “Come in.” With his arrival long overdue, he explained who he was and handed her a letter of introduction. Gertrude glanced at it quickly, threw it down with the rest and stared at the newcomer, piercing him like an X-ray machine. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she said abruptly. “I can see we shall be friends.” With that, she pointed him to a chair, stayed herself on the floor and proceeded to fill him in on the history and social conditions of Iraq.

Of all her concerns about the Arabs, Gertrude told him, her greatest worry was the Muslim girls. Unlike the young Jewish women, taught English, Arabic, Hebrew and French at the Alliance, the Muslims had had no education under the Turks. With few exceptions, they were illiterate. She had seen how helpless these women were, how vulnerable to the whims of the men.

“We must give the girls an opportunity for self-expression,” she said with determination. “If you only knew the harems as I do, you would have pity upon the women. Nothing has been done for them—nothing.” Here at last was an opportunity. She wanted schools for them and classes in domestic science, housecraft and hygiene. They would be willing and eager to learn, she assured him, and, of course, the teachers could only be women. With that, she dismissed him. Her interests were not forgotten; the educational system established by Bowman, still the best in the Arab world, served as a unifying force for the country and included the radical concept of education for the females.

The notion that women were undervalued was never far from her mind. When, a few days later, a letter arrived from Florence asking whether Gertrude was the author of a recently published major report on Mesopotamia, she took up her pen at once and answered sharply: “Why, yes, of course I wrote all
The Arab of Mesopotamia
. I’ve loved the reviews which speak of the practical men who were the anonymous authors, etc. It’s fun being practical men, isn’t it.”

Her reports were highly thought of by those in power; coming out of her extensive travels and extraordinary friendships with the Arabs, they combined literary achievement with finely tuned political insights, historical perspective, a plethora of detail and a profound depth of cultural understanding. Her rare relationships had been underscored at a durbar, a convention of sheikhs and sayids, held in Baghdad in September 1918. Eighty tribal leaders, many from distant provinces and known neither to one another nor to the British authorities, were brought together in the public gardens by the British Commander-in-Chief. At the opening ceremonies the general shook the hand of each. Gertrude was sitting far down the platform, but as soon as the sheikhs caught sight of her they turned away from the dignified procession and walked across the stage to shake her hand.

Many of the notables came to her office and spoke of the positive change in relations, the amicability that had developed since the year before. “I thought that testimony to our friendly intimacy was worth everything,” she noted.

It was about this time that she had a different encounter with one nomadic sheikh. He had come demanding compensation for a hundred head of cattle, which, he claimed, had disappeared since the British occupation. Gertrude promised that the government would pay him two pounds for each head. The deal was acceptable, the Arab replied gleefully. But the Khatun, who heard all the gossip, knew that the man had either transferred the cattle to a neighbor or traded them for wives. As he stood up and salaamed to leave, Gertrude inquired in Arabic, “And how many head of cattle hast thou now, o sheikh?”

“Five hundred,” he answered.

“And how many before we came here?” she asked.

“Fifty.”

“Ali of the River,” she said solemnly, “thy flocks and herds have been well guarded by us except the matter of the one hundred. Take the bill of two hundred pounds; thou shalt be paid. But thou must pay the King of England for guarding four hundred and fifty head at the rate of ten pounds for each fifty head for three years.”

The old sheikh paused for a minute, and replied: “O Just One, I pray thee not to press the bill. Mine I have forgotten.”

As he walked out the door, Gertrude could hear him murmur, “She is Shaitan.” She is Satan.

O
n most afternoons she had work to do for the Foreign Office: a new state had been anounced, but the borders of the new country still had to be determined. At the request of Whitehall, she studied the maps of Persia, Turkey, Syria, Kuwait and Mesopotamia, examining every inch of the land she knew so well. Shaking her head at the blurred frontiers, she carefully drew in boundary lines, making sure to place the provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basrah within the territory of Iraq. As she told her parents: “It’s an amusing game when you know the country intimately, as I do, thank goodness, almost all of it. Was ever anything more fortunate than that I should have crisscrossed it in very nearly every direction.”

Exhilarated as she was over defining the borders, she was even more excited about constructing a brand-new state. There had never been an independent Iraq; no political entity, no administrative unit had ever existed. No borders like these had been drawn since ancient times (and even they had included only the region from Baghdad to Basrah); no Western banner had ever flown over it. Now she was not only deciding a country; she was devising its shape and determining its composition: who would lead it, how it would be governed, who would be included in its citizenry, what would be its laws and institutions. Imperialist and Orientalist both, she was creating an asset for England, constructing an entity for the Arabs. The power was intoxicating, and at the beginning of December 1918 she wrote home: “I feel at times like the Creator about the middle of the week. He must have wondered what it was going to be like, as I do.”

An Arab king was being considered to head the new country, but Gertrude strongly opposed the idea of giving up British authority. With the excuse that it was too much trouble to establish a monarchy, she wished they would drop the idea of an Arab emir. “It tires me to think of setting up a brand-new court here,” she wrote, “but at present they are that way inclined.” Perhaps they would not be able to agree on an individual and Cox would be recalled. “Then we should have Sir Percy alone which would be splendid.” Even more flattering, she noted, “I’m second choice for High Commissioner here, so I’m told!” But once again she felt the bothersome issue of gender: “What would all Permanent Officials say if we suggested it? It’s really just as much a female job, however, as a male, because it’s mainly concerned with the handling of people individually.” She signed her letter to her family: “Your very affectionate High Comissioner. Gertrude.”

All winter long, at lunches, at teas and at dinners in the Baghdad Political Mess, the British officers in the service of the India Government chewed over the question of authority, swallowing hard the Arab demands for independence and doubting whether stability could come from local rule. At the bequest of London, Wilson authorized a poll among the general public to find out what they favored. But the concept itself was naïve. Most people had no definite opinion and were in no position to form one. As Gertrude wryly noted later, “It was clearly impracticable to pursue the enquiry among the rank and file of the tribesmen, the shepherds, marsh dwellers, rice, barley, and date cultivators of the Euphrates and Tigris, whose experience of statecraft was confined to speculations as to the performances of their next-door neighbors.” Accordingly, in the country districts and provincial towns it was the sheikhs and notables who were asked for their views.

The findings only added to the confusion. Although all believed that Mosul should be united with Baghdad and Basrah, the rest was as muddy as the ground in the rainy season: the Sunni nationalists wanted an Arab kingdom; the Shiites wanted an Islamic religious state; the Kurds in the north sought an independent Kurdish entity; the business community that had prospered under the Sultan wanted a return to the Turks. To the great disappointment of the Acting Civil Commissioner, the one thing made instantly clear was that no one wanted to be under the tutelage of India. But it was beyond consideration, in A. T. Wilson’s view, and Gertrude’s as well, to turn over control of the country to the local population. To give them total power would have been like handing over the reins to a riderless horse. Instead, Wilson proposed and Gertrude agreed that the new country be run with a British High Commissioner in charge, and with British officials serving as advisers to an array of Arab Ministers.

For Gertrude, this was the only sensible solution. Years before, in 1907, she had written, “The Oriental is like a very old child.” Her profound respect for family and strong sense of responsibility would never allow her to abandon her offspring; indeed, her child had to be not just created, but nurtured, educated and trained to look after itself. She may have lost the opportunity of marrying and bearing a baby, but she had conceived Iraq and borne it as her own. She would raise it in the best of British ways: controlled by a paternal British High Commissioner; nannied by British advisers; mothered by herself. And she expected Mesopotamia, like any good child, to return the favor in kind, with gratitude and loyalty, making safe the land route to India and giving back to its parent, Britain, its wealth of agriculture, archaeology and oil.

B
ut a clique of Arabs, driven by nationalism, demanded more. In January 1919, Gertrude remarked that “a small vociferous group … thinks they could get on quite well alone and certainly have much more fun individually without us. They would have immense fun for a bit, but it would be a very short bit.” It would end, she said, in “anarchy and bloodshed.” She was to be proved right.

In London, officials with little understanding of the Arabs were debating policy, deciding the fate of the Middle East. Government voices were rising in anger over the cost of staying in Mesopotamia. Yet the idea of pulling out and leaving the place to the Arabs sent shivers of fear through those on the ground. A knowledgeable person was urgently needed to advise Whitehall, and in late January, Wilson asked Gertrude to return to London for a few months’ leave, to “give a guiding hand.” He wanted her to report the experiences and information they had gained in Iraq while keeping him closely informed of activities in England. By now she looked forward to going back, to rest, to see friends, even to taste real mutton. “That’s not poetic is it, but you should see—and try to eat—the meat we live on. I can’t think what part of the animal it grows on.” And the thought of buying new clothes and seeing her father delighted her as she prepared for the journey home.