Desert Queen (61 page)

“I decided at once to invest myself with the duties of Oriental Secretary,” Gertrude explained to Hugh. The title had been hers under Wilson, but all of its power had been stripped. Now, using the position to full advantage, she called in her colleague Philby, and together they drafted a letter to one hundred Baghdad notables, inviting them to meet the next day with Sir Percy Cox. Then, in view of the fact that in at least half the country, the insurrection, although it had quieted down, had not ceased, they planned for the High Commissioner to take a trip to Mosul to explain his ideas. Lastly, as she explained later to Cox, it would be good for him to confer with the Euphrates sheikhs and Fahad Bey of the Anazeh. The High Commissioner Cox agreed enthusiastically to all her proposals. “I shan’t go on running the affairs of Mesopotamia,” she acknowledged to Hugh, “but for the moment there wasn’t anyone else to do it and as there wasn’t a second to lose I just upped and did it.”

The following day she and Cox talked confidentially about possible Arab Ministers. The biggest question of all was: Who should be asked to take on the job of Prime Minister and form the Arab Cabinet? To her vast relief, Cox had already learned of the animosity toward Sayid Talib. Many people were now suggesting the Naqib as Prime Minister. As the religious authority, he was held in the highest esteem, and though he was elderly and ill, he would make a fine transitional leader.

When Sir Percy asked if she would like to be his Oriental Secretary or take some other job, she answered yes to her old post without a moment’s hestitation. It was, undoubtedly, the perfect place for her; as liaison between the High Commissioner and the Arab Government she could promote the interests of both and, not incidentally, poke her nose in everyone’s affairs. She had struggled hard under Wilson just to stay in place; now, those on the staff who felt loyal to Wilson had been dismissed, and she was in the lead brigade advancing toward an Arab state. Her spirits were stronger than they had been in years, but the bronchitis was getting the better of her; her body racked from the chest cough.

As weak as she was and confined to bed, she was besieged by a stream of Baghdadis. On the pretext of inquiring after her health, the Mayor, the son of the Naqib and a string of Euphrates sheikhs, led by the eighty-year-old Fahad Bey (who had recently married two new wives), appeared at her doorstep, made their way to her dining room and, plopping down on the new Persian sofa, poured out their hopes and fears. At the end of each day she wrote up her notes, turning their rumors and gossip into valuable reports.

While she was still at home, a message arrived from Cox that he had called a “Council of State”; since Gertrude could not come to the office, he informed her, the council would come to her. Sir Percy, Philby, Bullard, Bonham Carter and two others arrived to discuss a scheme for the provisional Arab Cabinet. At the end of the meeting Sir Percy said he would now approach the Naqib to head it up as Prime Minister. Far and away the best-qualified candidate, the holy man was moved by considerations that were above suspicion; his influence among the Sunni community was unequaled; his religious and social position commanded universal respect. Gertrude was all in favor, but she was sure the Naqib would turn it down. For two days she heard no news. Then, on Saturday, after she had received the portly Jafar Pasha, the first of the Iraqis to return from Faisal’s Syrian Government, Sir Percy rushed in, breathless with excitement. Gertrude waited anxiously. “Well,” said Cox at last, “he has accepted.”

“No one but Sir Percy could have done it,” she wrote admiringly; “it’s nothing short of a miracle.”

T
he following week was fraught with delicious tension. The Naqib’s acceptance was well worth celebrating, but the provisional Arab Cabinet still had to be formed. On Monday Gertrude invited two of her colleagues to dine with her and Jafar Pasha. It was hoped that the extroverted Jafar, an able military commander, would accept the offer to become Minister of Defense. His success during the Arab Revolt and afterward as a Military Governor in Syria, she believed, would ensure a strong Arab army, able to control the insurgent tribes. Over dinner at her house, they discussed the bitter disappointment of Faisal and his coterie of Mesopotamian officers, their sense of betrayal when they found themselves without British support in Damascus. To repair his feelings, she confided her conviction that one of the sons of the Sharif Hussein should be chosen by the Mesopotamians as Emir. Unlike the experience in Syria, she vowed, in Iraq the British Government would not oppose the choice, nor would it rescind its support.

But Jafar worried about the extreme nationalists. Troublesome in Damascus, they were still unreasonable to deal with in Iraq and demanded total withdrawal by the British. Yet he was aware that Mesopotamia did not have the infrastructure nor its people the experience to assume complete independence. He explained his position vis-à-vis the nationalists: “I say to them: you want complete independence? So do I. Do we not each and all dream of a beautiful maiden, her age fourteen, her hair touching her waist? She does not exist! So complete independence under existing condition is impossible.” He turned to Gertrude: “But because I believe in your honesty of purpose, I am ready to work with you for the salvation of my country—and when I go to my brothers to persuade them to help they turn aside and say: ‘You’re English.’ ”

Gertrude empathized. She had often been accused by her colleagues of being too sympathetic toward the Arabs: “It’s your turn,” she answered. “For the last year when I spoke to my brothers they turned from me and said: ‘You’re an Arab.’ ” But, she reassured him, “complete independence is what we ultimately wish to give.” The canny general was quick to reply: “Sitti [My lady],” he said, “complete independence is never given; it is always taken.”

T
hings were progressing well, yet every day seemed to bring a small crisis. One of the worst came when the pro-British Sasun Effendi Eskail (“the ablest man here,” she had called him), a well-known Jewish businessman, who, it was assumed, would become Minister of Finance, turned down the post. When Gertrude heard the news she left the cup of tea on her desk and rushed to tell Philby, but he was out. Spying the light on in Sir Percy’s office, she reported at once to him. The High Commissioner was obviously upset. Make Sasun change his mind, he demanded.

Leaving the Residency, she went off, “feeling as if I carried the future of Iraq in my hands,” and arrived at Sasun’s house in the nick of time. Philby and Captain Clayton were already there, but they had made no headway convincing their host to take the job. It seemed that Sasun Effendi wanted nothing to do with a cabinet that included Sayid Talib. Yet the British had little choice but to include him. Talib was too powerful with the people to be left out of the government. Nevertheless, if Sasun refused to join the Cabinet, Gertrude believed, it would be damned from the beginning, doomed to failure.

Quickly taking the reins of the conversation, she tried to persuade Sasun that the British were not pushing Talib on anyone, but the man must be given a chance. Give him enough rope, she argued; if he failed, he would hang himself. After an hour, Sasun still would not give in. But he did agree to think it over. That night she hardly slept, tossing and turning, going over the arguments she had used. Could she have done a better job? How else could she have convinced him? At ten o’clock the next morning the tall, slim Sasun appeared at her office. To her great relief, he announced that he had decided to accept the post.

H
er work entailed constant meetings with Iraqis; editing local newspapers for propaganda in Arabic and English; compiling fortnightly Intelligence reports on the Arabs’ activities for the Foreign Office; maintaining a network of agents throughout the country; reading secret reports that arrived from around the world; and at least three times a week hosting teas and dinners at home for British and Arab notables. In short, her house became the center of Baghdadi power. On one Saturday night, when the guests included leading Iraqis—Sasun Effendi, Jafar Pasha and Abdul Majid Shawi—and three of her most important British colleagues—Philby, Captain Clayton and Major Murray—the talk turned to the insurgents. Jafar pleaded eloquently for an end to the tribal rebellion: “The peasant must return to his plow, the shepherd to his flock. The blood of our people must cease to flow and the land must once more be rich with crops. Shall our tribes be wasted in battle and our towns die of starvation?” he asked.

“Long Life to the Arab Government,” Gertrude wrote to her father the next day. “Give them responsibility and make them settle their own affairs and they’ll do it every time a thousand times better than we can. Moreover, once they’ve got responsibility they’ll realise the needs and the difficulties of government and they’ll eliminate hot air in favour of good sense. Because they’ve got to run the show, and they can’t run it on hot air.”

“T
he Council of State of the first Arab government in Mesopotamia since the [thirteenth-century] Abbasids” met on Tuesday, November 2, 1920. Along with Sasun Effendi as Minister of Finance, Jafar Pasha as Minister of Defense, and six other ministers, the Council included the inevitable Sayid Talib as Minister of the Interior. For the most part, the members did little besides trying to figure out the relationship between the Arab Ministers and their British Advisers. Nevertheless, there were problems. The Shiites, almost to a man, stood entirely against the Arab Government; it looked to them like a British scheme, and worse, although there were a million and a half of them and fewer than a million Sunnis, few Shiites were in the Council. The Sunnis made every effort to keep them out of power, arguing that they had never taken part in any administration under the Turks and had not the slightest knowledge of public affairs. The only way to stall more rebellions was to hold an election as soon as possible for a national assembly. Gertrude was certain the assembly delegates would ask for a son of the Sharif Hussein—either Faisal or Abdullah—as Emir. “I regard that as the only solution,” she affirmed.

A few nights later, at another of her dinners, her partner, a wise politician, turned to her and said: “You British wish to build the Government of Iraq in the usual solid English fashion. You want to begin with the foundations and then follow with the walls, the roof and then the decorations. That is not my idea of the way to build now for Iraq.”