Desert Queen (65 page)

G
ertrude’s challenge now was to put Faisal on the throne. Without allowing it to appear in any way that he was a British proxy, she had to convince the Iraqis that Faisal was their best and only choice. The plan was that the Sharif Hussein would announce his son’s candidacy for the position as ruler of Iraq; after that, Faisal would leave Mecca and travel by train from Basrah to Baghdad, delivering speeches, building a groundswell along the way. By the time he reached his destination, it was hoped he would have gained enough supporters to make it seem that the people themselves had chosen him as their leader; to those who wanted the British to rule, it would be made clear that Faisal had British approval. Iraqi elections were to be held, and with the British expressing their endorsement, Faisal would be crowned King.

Thirteen centuries earlier the same scenario had been played out by Faisal’s ancestor Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. But as Gertrude was keenly aware, the results had been nothing short of disaster. Called from Mecca by the Iraqi people to become their Caliph, Hussein arrived at Karbala in
A.D.
680, ready to assume the role of the highest religious leader. But in an unexpected turn of events, Hussein was savagely betrayed; instead of being welcomed by supporters, he was met by a rivalrous army. Only a handful of followers stayed with him, and almost all of them were killed; on the tenth of Muharram, Hussein himself was slain. Lighting torches, beating their breasts in somber processions, Shiite Muslims still mourn Hussein during that holy month. “
Absit omen
” (May it not be an omen), Gertrude murmured to herself.

Even before she and Cox returned to Baghdad, the air was being poisoned; during their absence the scurrilous Sayid Talib had been hard at work campaigning for the aged Naqib. The wily Minister of the Interior hoped that the frail old man would be chosen Emir; after he died, Talib himself would likely be named his successor. With the slogan “Iraq for the Iraqis,” he stressed the Naqib’s (and his own) Mesopotamian roots, as opposed to Faisal’s distant origins in the Hejaz. Making an extensive tour around the Euphrates, Talib assured the public he was a British favorite, and, while making threats of intimidation against the opposition, gave away thousands of British pounds to potential friends.

Indeed, one of the most powerful sheikhs in the region, Ali Suleiman of the Dulaim, supported the Naqib. But Gertrude believed that Talib had been less than successful. “He cut very little ice,” she wrote after her return on April 12. She suspected that because the recalcitrant tribes of the middle Euphrates mistakenly thought Talib was bolstered by the British, they would refuse to give him their support. On the other hand, she went on. “The last thing they think we should like would be a son of the Sharif.” After all, she recalled, the tribes had asked for a Sharifian the year before and were “jumped on” for their efforts.

Suspicious that the British Government was backing Faisal, Talib hosted a dinner party for Percival Landon, a visiting English journalist with the
Daily Telegraph
. The thirteen guests at Talib’s that night included the Tods, the French and Persian Consuls, and two important Arabs. The Khatun was not invited.

The morning after Talib’s dinner, Gertrude was greeted with news of the event by some of the guests. Plied with liquor, Talib had proclaimed himself “wholly satisfied” with Sir Percy Cox and the attitude of the British Government, but, he had said, “there were British officials in H.E.’s entourage [an obvious reference to Gertrude] who were known to be partisans and who were exercising undue influence.” Pointing out the power of his Arab guests (and, more important, his own power) to the English correspondent, Talib had threatened, “If any attempt is made to influence the elections, here is the Emir al Rabi’ah with thirty thousand rifles … and the Sheikh of Chabaish with all his men.” Then, reminding them all of the religious leader’s wide influence, he warned, “The Naqib will appeal to Islam, to India, Egypt, Constantinople and Paris.”

Talib’s remarks made Gertrude livid, and she immediately wrote up a report for Percy Cox. “It was an incitement to rebellion as bad as anything which was said by the men who roused the country last year, and not far from a declaration of
jihad
,” she fumed. Talib was “capable of anything,” she warned. His reputation for evil had not diminished. His power came from ruthless medieval methods: blackmail, extortion and cold murder. Known to have given orders to eliminate a Turkish official before the onset of the war, he had now summoned to Baghdad the very man who had carried out the killing. She feared that, at the very least, Talib, using the power of the Naqib’s name, would organize a tribal rebellion, a
jihad
, against the British; worse, she felt certain he would attempt to assassinate Faisal. The man was too dangerous; something had to be done at once.

Later that same afternoon, the innocent Lady Cox held her regular Saturday tea. Although Sir Percy announced that he was too busy to come and went off to the races, a number of guests, including Gertrude and Major Bovill (who had been keeping a close surveillance on Talib for Cox), attended. At four-thirty Sayid Talib arrived, stayed half an hour to chat, and said goodbye. Gertrude escorted him to the front door of the Residency and, after seeing him to his car, walked back inside. With his chauffeur at the wheel, Talib drove off, but as soon as his car reached a nearby bridge, it was blocked by a broken-down truck. Talib’s automobile was forced to stop, and at the order of Major Bovill, who suddenly appeared—and who himself was under orders from Percy Cox—the putative candidate was arrested and removed to an armored car. Talib had driven directly into an ambush. “The wiliest man in Arabia had walked into the simplest of traps,” Philby said. Two days afterward Talib was deported to Ceylon.

Cox had taken a big risk. By deporting Talib, he could have roused sympathy for the politician and turned him into a martyr. But instead, as Cox believed would happen, the public felt eased by Talib’s removal and reacted acquiescently to the show of British power. “Not a voice has been raised against Sir Percy’s coup, on the contrary the whole country is immensely relieved at Talib’s disappearance,” Gertrude wrote.

A major barrier to Faisal’s election had been removed and Gertrude breathed a sigh. “Lord! how glad I am that I gave in a careful report of that speech,” she rejoiced to her father. “Didn’t I tell you there was no one like Sir Percy in the handling of a delicate political problem! I feel a load off my mind.” Once again she blamed her former enemy: “It’s the final unravelling of the harm that A. T. Wilson did, for no one knows what he promised Talib when he brought him up.”

But the problems surrounding Talib were not over yet. Each of the Arab Ministers had been assigned a British Adviser. Talib’s Adviser, Philby, felt deeply distressed over the seizure of his charge. Strongly opposed to a monarchy, and fearing that Talib had been removed to make way for Faisal, Philby immediately went into Cox’s office and offered his resignation. But the High Commissioner assured him that the British had no intention of imposing Faisal as King. Moreover, he added, he needed Philby to run the Interior Ministry.

Gertrude and Philby had long been close. They had worked well together since their days in Basrah, had developed a personal friendship and even spent one Christmas together along the Tigris. They shared a common loathing of Wilson and a common vision of an Arab Iraq. But now, knowing of her support for Faisal, Philby blamed Gertrude for Talib’s downfall and grimaced whenever they passed in the halls. His chilliness was painful, and finally she insisted they talk. She told him that she had done only what was “obviously incumbent” upon her. He did not dare quarrel with Cox, and she refused to let him quarrel with her. They were back on speaking terms, she reported a few days later, but whether or not her colleague would stay in Iraq if Faisal was chosen Emir, she did not know.

Two weeks later, on May 21, she attended a dinner at the Coxes’. Thanks to Sir Percy’s passion, the house was a zoologist’s dream, a menagerie of birds, dogs and a fully grown bear (that would one day turn wild). Ignoring them all, Gertrude marched proudly into the drawing room, her fifty-two-year-old figure strikingly thin, her head high, her posture erect, her dress a cream lace gown stylishly flounced. With one exception, she wrote her parents, the evening was “very friendly and pleasant.” Mrs. Philby, however, was “markedly standoffish.” Gertrude could not imagine why. “It’s conceivable, after all, that she just doesn’t like me.” As for Mr. Philby, she wasn’t seeing him very much, but when she did, he was “quite pleasant.”

Not pleasant enough. With Talib gone, Philby was running the Ministry of Interior and was thereby in charge of all internal organs. When Gertrude proposed, with Sir Percy’s approval, to start a nationalist newspaper as a tool to promote the Sharifians, Philby said, flatly, no. “He has a strong prejudice against Faisal,” she complained to her father.

Philby’s attitude continued to upset her: “It seems most unnecessary that your official policy should be in any way hindered by one of your own officials. He never comes to see me so I suppose he looks on me as the arch enemy—or not far from it. And I can’t give him a friendly word of warning. But he is spinning a bad cotton for he is earning a name as an opponent. I’m very sorry, but I’ve done my best to make a bridge and if he won’t walk over it I can’t help him.”

His frostiness only added to her frustration. Faisal’s arrival was long overdue. Several secret messages had been sent by Cox to the Sharif Hussein asking him to announce that Faisal was coming to Iraq. But for nearly two months there had been no answer. Then, on June 12, 1921, to the great relief of Cox and Gertrude, the telegrams arrived: Faisal was on his way. For all the excitement, however, Gertrude worried over what would happen once he appeared:

“At the back of my mind there’s the firm conviction that no people likes permanently to be governed by another,” she wisely observed. “Now we’re trying to foster nationalism, but I’m always ready to admit that nationalism which is not at the same time anti-foreign is likely to be a plant of weak growth. Faisal walking hand in hand with us will not be so romantic a figure as Faisal heading a
jihad
might be! He won’t head a
jihad
; that’s not his line. Can we get enough of the breath of life into him, without that, to enable him to put real inspiration into the Arab State.… All depends on his personality and Sir Percy’s discretion in keeping in the background.”

At least she knew she could rely on her chief: “He is a master hand at the game of politics,” she said deferentially; “it’s an education to watch him playing it.”

T
he announcement in the
Baghdad Times
(the government’s English-language newspaper) of Faisal’s imminent arrival prompted the Mayor and a number of younger, pro-Sharifian politicians to call at her office. They asked her suggestions on what to do next. “We had to settle on a temporary flag,” she reported to her father, “and then there was the difficult question as to where Faisal should be lodged.” Through Gertrude’s persistence, rooms were readied in the Serai, the former Turkish Government offices which had been under repair, and on her advice a town meeting of five hundred people was called. Sixty men (including Haji Naji, Gertrude’s “personal spy”) were chosen to form a delegation to go down to Basrah to welcome the future Emir. To mollify Philby, Cox appointed him as Faisal’s official escort.

In the midst of it all, Gertrude opened her mail and found an invitation from the Philbys to attend a ball. “It’s a perfect mania here,” she groused. “They dance at the Club four times a week. It’s accursed, I think. Men who are as hard worked as our officials can’t sit up till one or two in the morning and be in their office at seven or eight. It’s the wives that do it, confound them—they take no interest in what’s going on, know no Arabic and see no Arabs. They create an exclusive (it’s also a very second-rate) English society quite cut off from the life of the town. I now begin to understand why the British Government has come to grief in India, where our women do just the same thing.”

The night of the ball at the posh Alwiya Club, where British officers could swim, play tennis or shoot pool, Philby politely danced with Lady Cox. Then, dancing with Gertrude, he let her know that the plan for Faisal was no longer a secret. “The Cairo cat is out of the bag,” he declared. By the end of the evening, as they twirled around the floor, he was drunk and argumentative.

The following week, dressed once again in a long gown, Gertrude left her house at nine
P.M.
, stopping first at the train station to say farewell to Mme. Talib, who was joining her husband in Ceylon. Then she was off again to another ball, this one given by Lady Cox. She reached the Sports Club to find the guests outdoors, gliding on carpets spread on the grass, but she declined to dance. Instead, she supped with Sir Percy and came home at midnight with Mr. Tod. “The gay Lady Cox,” she noted snidely, “danced till 4
A.M.
” Only a few weeks before, with Gertrude’s help, Lady Cox had given a garden party for four hundred guests. Carpets were laid on the lawn, couches and chairs brought outdoors and lights strung up in the trees. But after Gertrude had done most of the work, the High Commissioner’s wife took her breath away. Wasn’t it “a pity we hadn’t had all the trees washed,” said Lady Cox; they were “so dusty!”