Desert Queen (69 page)

They had become the closest of friends, the dark-skinned, black-bearded Arab Emir and the pink-cheeked, blue-eyed British lady, and while the charming King enfolded her in his flowing robes, the imperial Englishwoman protected them both with her parasol. Calling her constantly to the palace, he complimented her on her gowns and confided in her his deepest fears. He consulted with her on the settlement of tribal feuds (between the Anazeh and the Shammar), took her advice in choosing the members of his inner council, and depended on her to arrange the palace household. They picnicked, played tennis, attended the races, swam and took tea. And while a few flirtatious giggles passed between them, they spent most of their time working together to build a state.

“The week has been entirely occupied with subterranean agitation over the forming of the new Cabinet,” Gertrude reported to Hugh at the beginning of September 1921. “These first appointments are of extreme importance to Faisal because he will be judged by them. If he puts in figureheads, just because they are known to be safe men and loyal to us, all the ardent people,” she acknowledged, “will say the new Cabinet is a farce and Faisal not a King but a puppet of the English. On the other hand,” she recognized, “it should be staunch and steady.”

The choice of Cabinet members caused chaos in the ranks. British bickered with British, Arabs argued with British, and Arab nationalists, Shiite extremists and pro-Turkish politicians vied with one another for positions in the government. After her longtime friend the Naqib accepted the job of Prime Minister, and Jafar Pasha, Nuri Said and Sasun Effendi took their respective posts, the King conferred with Gertrude on the Minister of the Interior, “vacant,” she noted, “since Talib was bundled out.” They debated over Naji Suwaidi, well meaning enough for her and Mr. Cornwallis, but too unsteady for Percy Cox, and settled on Taufiq Khalidi, clever and well educated, but too pro-Turkish to have the complete confidence of Faisal. One of the leading pro-Turkish sheikhs was urging an uprising in the name of Islam.

With a beady eye on the proceedings of the Arab Government, she took charge of appointing the right man to be Treasurer to Faisal’s household and, without mentioning it to anyone but Cox, added a new portfolio, Ministry of Health, supplying a Christian physician from Mosul at its helm. “I must tell you in confidence that he is my appointment,” she revealed to Hugh; “everyone is delighted, but they don’t know it was I who did it.”

Her plans for Iraq were nothing less than grand. At tea with the King, in the reception room of the palace, she showed him first some photographs she had taken of him at a picnic, and then pulled out a map of Syria from
The Times.
Placing it in front of the monarch, she pointed out how the French had cut up the country into provinces.

“By God, it’s forbidden,” the King said scowling, swearing over the maps.

“There is only one hope for Syria,” Gertrude responded, knowing full well that Faisal still dreamed of ruling Damascus; “that we should sit quiet here and do our own job.” She turned to Jafar Pasha and Nuri Said, who had just arrived, and explained. “When we have made Mesopotamia a model state, there is not an Arab of Syria and Palestine who wouldn’t want to be part of it. Before I die,” she vowed, “I look to see Faisal ruling from the Persian frontier to the Mediterranean.”

To some, her endeavors appeared the efforts of a generous friend; to others, the hateful symbol of British imperialism or, worse, those of a female puppeteer pulling the strings behind the throne. But whatever their feelings, British and Arabs alike were calling her “the uncrowned queen of Iraq.” Faisal’s coronation was her own crowning achievement. Catching the attention of journalists, her name spread like a sandstorm around the world, from Arabia to Europe to America. Yet when, in July, an American newspaper published an article trumpeting her power, Gertrude winced, calling the publicity “unspeakable.”

“
MESOPOTAMIA’S
UNCROWNED
QUEEN
,” shouted the headline of the
New York Herald
:

Miss Gertrude Bell, Called Blessed by the Natives and All Wise by Downing Stret, Gives Invaluable Aid in Problems Arising from Mandate—English Ironmaster’s Daughter, Famed for Explorations and Later for First Line Service in War, Carries White Man’s Burden without Loss of Feminine Charms.

As “El Sitt,” “The Woman,” every Arab in the peninsula knows her. When you speak of “Gertrude” every Englishman from Cairo to Teheran knows whom you mean. And if he knows that middle eastern land too, that cradle of the race, he calls a fervent blessing on the name.

For in the Colonial Office in London, and in Baghdad, where Sir Percy Cox is trying to impose that newest fangled of Occidental governmental devices, the mandate, upon the oldest of all lands, she is the uncrowned Queen of Mesopotamia. She is Miss Gertrude Bell.

Bedouin sheiks and Bedouin beggars bless her—and call her wise. Learned university gentlemen who delve in the glories that were Sideon [sic] and the pomps that were Tyre admire her—and call her wise. People who design and sell the loveliest and the smartest of frocks in Hanover Square and the Rue de la Paix gladly give her of their best and call her wise. But when the tangled skeins of middle eastern affairs become inextricable at the nerve centre of the British Empire in Downing Street, they call in “Gertrude” and know that she is all-wise.

“I
mpertinent balderdash,” Gertrude retorted. “It’s not true that I’ve determined the fortunes of Iraq but it is true that with an Arab Government I’ve come into my own. It’s a delicate position to be so much in their confidence.”

She had become the subject of an Arabic children’s rhyme:

“
Miss Bell
Rikbat trambell
”

they chanted as they skipped down the street;

“
Miss Bell
Rode in a motor car
”

Their parents made their own verse:

“
Miss Bell dhirtat fial dira
W’al hakim dhiay’a tadbira,
”

commenting on her political power;

“
Miss Bell farted in the district
And the high official lost his bearings.
”

“One of the reasons you stand out so,” Nuri Said told Gertrude as he rode beside her on horseback, watching her return the salutes of villagers, “is because you’re a woman. There’s only one Khatun,” he explained. “It is like when Sidi Faisal was in London and always wore Arab dress, there was no one like him. So for a hundred years they’ll talk of the Khatun riding by.”

“I think they very likely will,” Gertrude remarked.

The telephone rang in her office later that September day, the voice on the other end asking her to dine with the King. Two Arab Ministers were already invited to her own house, but she called them quickly to cancel. “I think it’s best to treat Faisal’s invitation as commands,” she observed.

Dressed for the evening in her cloak and gown, Gertrude motored to the east bank of the Tigris and drove through the sandy entrance of the small brick palace. Curtsying, as always, before the King, she joined his three Arab guests. After dinner Faisal asked her to sit with him outdoors. On the balcony overlooking the river, the two friends smoked their cigarettes and spoke about the future. Thanks to a talk earlier in the day with Nuri Said, Gertrude now understood the sadness in Faisal’s face.

The object of scorn as a child, Faisal had suffered the unhappy fate of being a middle child. Squeezed between his brothers Abdullah and Ali, he had been derided, not only by them, but by his mother. After she died, Faisal became close to Zaid, the child of his father’s second marriage, creating even more of a gulf between him and Abdullah and Ali.

Faisal’s personality, calculating and profound, stood in sharp contrast to Abdullah’s candid, straightforward character. When Abdullah wanted something, he made it clear. But Faisal kept his intentions hidden and bore a
gravitas
that made him seem older than his years. It would be said later that when Abdullah died at the age of seventy, he looked fifty, but when Faisal died at the age of fifty, he looked seventy.

Now, as King of Iraq, Faisal was the target of of Abdullah and Ali’s envy. Feeling alienated and alone, and worried about troublesome signs in the country, he could hardly ignore the shadowy fact that it was also the middle of Muharram. Every night processions of black clothed Shiite figures marched through the streets, pounding drums, swinging chains, beating their backs in mourning for Faisal’s ancestor, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.

The King unlocked his heart to Gertrude. Like a wounded bird, he appealed to her nurturing soul. She had urged him to bring his wife and children from the Hejaz to Iraq, but he was nervous, he said, “so uncertain of the future.” He had not yet won the loyalty of the people, he confessed; large portions of the country seemed to be wavering back toward the Turks and their reformist leader, Kemal Atatürk. Lighting another cigarette, he went on. He was eager to sign a treaty with Britain granting protection to Iraq, but he had no idea what terms the British would insist on or whether he could accept them. On the other hand, pressure was growing from extremist nationalists to break the status of mandate. “The truth is,” Gertrude had told her father a few days earlier, “there is very little real patriotism in this country and won’t be until people see that the Arab Govt,
with us behind it
, isn’t going to come to grief. Meantime there is a considerable population of asses who conceive that they’ll either manage the show or overturn it. They can do neither.”

But for now, she reassured the King, there was no reason to be anxious. We might be thankful for Your Majesty’s winning personality, and why, she added coyly, doesn’t Your Majesty use it more?

Yes, he replied eagerly, he wanted to be more in touch—should he not have little dinner parties? he suggested. But whom should he ask?

She would draw him up skeleton lists of dinner parties, English and Arab, she promised. He mustn’t mind if they were boring, she warned. “The notables here mostly are boring, but the more you know them the better you like them.”

“
Wallahi
!” he burst out enthusiastically; “you’re the mistress of the house—ask whom you think best.”

“It looks as though I shall run the Court till it gets on its feet,” she remarked the following morning as she arranged for a series of dinners. She sent off invitations to be printed, instructed the staff on how to fill in the lines and showed them how to address the envelopes.

On October 2, a dozen guests, half of them Arab, half of them British, arrived at the palace for Faisal’s first official dinner. Under Gertrude’s watchful eye, servants poured champagne into the proper glasses, and the aides-de-camp moved people around so that everyone had a chance to talk to the King. She declared the evening a great success and Faisal a charming host, but it had taken enormous preparation and more than a bit of coaching to pull it off.

As comfortably as she fit into the shoes of mistress of the Arab palace, Gertrude herself was struck by the oddness of it all. It was as though she had been transformed from a girl in a Yorkshire garden to a princess in the East. She compared her background to Faisal’s and to that of her landowning friend Faiq Bey: “I sometimes think how curious it all is, whether it’s Faiq Bey or King Faisal. People whose upbringing and assocations and traditions are all so entirely different, yet when one is with them one doesn’t notice the difference, nor do they. Think of Faisal, brought up at Mecca in a palace full of eunuchs, educated at Constantinople, Commander-in-Chief, King, exile, then King again; or Faiq, tending his palms and vines, and jogging into Baghdad to seek out the best market for his dates—and both of them run out to greet me with outstretched hands and then sit down to tell me in their several fashions what they make of life, as if I were a sister. And I feel like a sister, that’s the oddest part.”