Desert Queen (54 page)

On her return to Baghdad, she learned that the Arab Congress convening in Damascus had indeed proclaimed Faisal King of Syria. Following that, with the approval of Faisal, the Mesopotamian representatives to the meeting had pronounced his brother Abdullah King of Iraq. The reports on Abdullah’s character were unclear, however. David Hogarth, who had never met him firsthand, had described his contradictory personality in a telegram the year before:

Abdullah was “indolent, pleasure loving,” the “least scrupulous of the brothers,” and “more vicious than the others,” Hogarth wrote. He did not have “a dominant personality” nor “much will to power,” and was “not born to rule.” Nevertheless, said Hogarth, “he seems the ablest,” and was “regarded by Arab Intellectuals as the one cultivated member of the Family.” Hogarth believed that Abdullah was “intelligent enough to grasp real facts and conform to them” and “would make a presentable titular ruler.… Failing him,” the British official warned, “I see no possible outstanding Arab for Mesopotamia.”

The announcement about Faisal and Abdullah put Gertrude on the alert. “Well, we are in for it,” she wrote Florence in March 1920, “and I think we shall need every scrap of personal influence and every hour of friendly intercourse we’ve ever had here in order to keep this country from falling into chaos.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
FIVE

A Taste of England

T
he news of Abdullah’s appointment as Emir of Iraq had turned the usual havoc into frenzy. Gertrude spent a frantic week feverishly writing reports, meeting with jittery locals, hosting dinners for excited guests. Now, at home, she glanced at her watch and felt an anxious pang. With an impatient call to her servants to quickly gather her things, she left in haste, late for the train to Basrah. Her driver steered the motor car as swiftly as he could through the twisting streets, muddy from weeks of rain, but as they approached the station platform, her heart sank: the train was about to leave. There was nothing to do but make a dash for it; leaping onto the train, she found her compartment and settled herself in place. She heaved a sigh. After months of letters and preparation, her father was coming to Mesopotamia and she was on her way to meet him.

The journey on the newly opened railway line took thirty hours from Baghdad to Basrah, a winding adventure along a rugged roadbed. Nevertheless, she ignored the shaking train, brushed aside the annoying sand seeping into the carriage and arrived in Basrah in her smartest frock, with little time to spare. But the only thing she saw was a telegram: Hugh Bell had been delayed in Karachi and would not arrive for several days. “Paf!” she cried. At least she had brought along some work to finish, and perhaps she could recuperate from her recent cold; “so there’s a soul of goodness in things evil,” she wrote to Florence. The wait would also give her some time for serious talks with local sheikhs on the shape of the future government.

Her American friends, the missionaries Dorothy and John Van Ess, welcomed her to their house, and she spent most of the day in their study, curled up on the settee, her feet tucked under her, Arab style, smoking one cigarette after another, arguing with John Van Ess about the kind of government Iraq should have. He agreed with A. T. Wilson that the Arabs could not govern themselves. The American churchman, who had spent years on intimate terms with the tribes, did not believe that Iraq was ready for independence. Like Wilson, he wanted a British High Commissioner to rule, and a Cabinet of Arab Ministers to be trained by British advisers. Gertrude agreed that the British advisers were necessary, but she was convinced that there should be an Arab head of state with Arab Ministers to help him rule. For her it was the only answer.

“But, Gertrude!” Van Ess implored, appealing to her respect for the past. “You are flying in the face of four millenniums of history if you try to draw a line around Iraq and call it a political entity! Assyria always looked to the west and east and north, and Babylonia to the south. They have never been an independent unit. You’ve got to take time to get them integrated; it must be done gradually. They have no conception of nationhood yet.”

They discussed the tribes, their loyalties, and whether there was any Arab leader their chiefs might accept. Van Ess supported Sayid Talib. Far more popular than anyone else and with religious credentials as a descendant of Muhammad, Talib was also hardworking and a natural leader, Van Ess reminded her. But Gertrude bristled at the notion. She favored either Faisal, who was still in Syria, or Abdullah, his older brother. “Abdullah is a gentleman who likes a copy of the
Figaro
every morning at breakfast time,” she wrote home later. “I haven’t any doubt we should get on with him famously.” The American insisted that the tribes would never accept a Sharifian ruler, because, he argued, they were outsiders, foreign to the land of Iraq and to its people.

“Oh, they will come around,” Gertrude answered confidently.

W
hile Gertrude and John Van Ess discussed the fate of Iraq, the country was also the topic at Whitehall. A strong contingent felt that Mesopotamia had already cost Britain too much money and too many lives (there were 17,000 British and 44,000 Indian troops in Iraq, and combined with the 23,000 troops in Palestine it was costing England 35.5 million pounds a year to keep the garrisons in place), but few could deny Mesopotamia’s importance as a future source of oil. In addition to powering the navy and the newly developed air force, petroleum had become the fuel of choice for industrial nations; it was now driving the engines of factories and farm machinery, ensuring smooth runs for ships, railroads, airplanes, automobiles, tanks and trucks. The dependence on oil made England dependent on a friendly Mesopotamia.

In Parliament, Mr. William Ormsby-Gore defended the British position in Iraq. He promised to take fourteen thousand cultivable acres ravaged and destroyed by the war and restore them to their former productivity as one the world’s great granaries. “The development of Mesopotamia is one of the things which must be looked to to reduce prices and increase the produce of the world,” the colonial affairs expert argued.

Mr. Asquith opposed him. He urged that Britain confine its Iraqi obligations to Basrah. With its port and its proximity to Abadan, it was the most vital of the three former
vilayets
.

But Prime Minister Lloyd George disagreed. He wanted to keep all three of the former Ottoman areas:

We might abandon the country altogether. But I cannot understand withdrawing from the more important and more promising part of Mesopotamia. Mosul is a country with great possibilities. It has rich oil deposits.… It contains some of the richest natural resources of any country in the world.… It maintains a population now of a little over two million.… What would happen if we withdrew? … After the enormous expenditure which we have incurred in freeing this country from the withering despotism of the Turk, to hand it back to anarchy and confusion, and to take no responsibility for its development would be an act of folly and quite indefensible.

In the end, a British commission was formed to seek a mandate from the League of Nations.

T
he echoes of Parliamentary debate still rang in the air as Gertrude welcomed her father to Basrah. Hugh Bell arrived on March 29, 1920, tall, lean, white-haired and white-bearded, his cheeks pink, his blue eyes as lively as his daughter’s. His daughter was overjoyed to see him, in his seventies and still fit. They spent a morning in Zubair with the sheikh and an afternoon at a tea with forty notables, hosted by Gertrude. Her father’s charm and dignity impressed them all. “It’s more amusing than words can say showing him round,” she exclaimed. “I feel as if it must be a dream.”

From Basrah they headed by train to Nasiriyah, then to Hillah, where she showed him an agrarian renewal project, and to Najaf, the holy city. She took him to Kadhimain, where they had tea with the mayor; she led him across the desert to meet the sheikhs; she brought him as far north as the oil fields in Mosul. In the course of his stay, she showed him her Iraq, and she showed Iraq her father. She was proud of her country and even prouder of her parent: Hugh was an admirable reminder of her noble roots; a strong affirmation of herself (especially in the hostile atmosphere). In Baghdad she pinned on her straw hat, replete with peaches and cherries, and took him to lunches, teas and dinners; she introduced him to everyone she knew, Arabs, Jews and British, from the landowner Haji Naji to the holy man the Naqib, from the Jewish brothers Sasun and Sha’ul Effendi Eskail to her good friends the Tods (he was the agent for Lynch’s), from her colleague Mr. Bullard to her nemesis A. T. Wilson. And if Wilson whispered to Hugh that perhaps his daughter needed a rest and a return to England, Gertrude pretended not to hear him.

For one sweet month she ignored the knives in the air and doted only on her father, a sweet taste of England in his well-tailored tweeds and polished Oxfords, seated before the fireplace in the floral covered armchair, reading
The Times
. She indulged in the pleasure of having him in her home. While her servant Zaiya poured them tea and her Persian cook brought in freshly baked cake, they talked for hours on end, discussing A.T.’s stubbornness toward the Arabs and his envy of her friendships; Parliament and its debate over Mesopotamia; the tribes, the nationalists and the possibility of a mandate. She had always relied on her father’s judgment; watching him size up the problems confirmed her trust in him.

“He happens to have arrived at a very crucial time,” she wrote to Florence. “I think we’re on the edge of a pretty considerable Arab nationalist demonstration with which I’m a good deal in sympathy.” But the demonstration, she acknowledged, could force a British decision to withdraw from Mesopotamia. And that might lead to disaster: “If we leave this country to go to the dogs it will mean we shall have to reconsider our whole position in Asia. If Mesopotamia goes, Persia goes inevitably, and then India. And the place which we leave empty will be occupied by seven devils a good deal worse than any which existed before we came.” She saw that the fall of Mesopotamia would lead to the end of India, and the end of India inevitably meant the end of the British Empire.

For the moment, at least, everything seemed saved. At the San Remo Conference on April 25, 1920, Prime Minister Lloyd George and Premier Georges Clemenceau finally came to an agreement on the division of the Arabic lands formerly under Ottoman rule. Arabia would remain as it was, an independent peninsula, though it would be guided by the British. Syria, including Lebanon, would be mandated to France; Mesopotamia (and Palestine) would be mandated to Britain; in both cases, until such time as they “could stand on their own.” In exchange for the area of Mosul in northern Iraq, which France agreed to give to Britain, the two European nations would share in the exploration and production of oil in Iraq. It was not the issue of oil, however, but the matter of mandate that was on everybody’s mind.