Desert Queen (72 page)

Faisal’s reluctance to accept the mandate stemmed from his sense of betrayal in Syria. The British had made great promises to him during the war: Damascus, the seat of early Muslim empires, of the Omayyads and the Mameluks, would be his to rule. Visions of Greater Syria danced before his eyes, a land that once stretched from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey to the Euphrates in Iraq, from Alexandria to Arabia, and included Jerusalem and TransJordan. But the British had let him down.

As Faisal described the whole background of his current feelings, Gertrude hung on his every word. With sadness in his eyes, he discussed the events of the Paris Peace Conference and his gradual understanding that even though England had made him promises, it would abandon him to France. He spoke of his determination to establish an Arab Government in Syria and how he was finally forced out by nationalist extremists on his own side as well as by the French.

“In my opinion,” Gertrude responded, “there were scarcely words strong enough to express my sense of our responsibility for the Syrian disaster.”

“You must remember,” Faisal cautioned, his sorrowful eyes reflecting his disappointment, “that I stood, and I stand, entirely alone. I have never had the support of my father or my brother Abdullah. They were both bitterly jealous of the position which the successful issue of the Arab campaign had given me in Syria. When I was summoned to Europe after the Armistice, I was so conscious of their feelings towards me that I begged my father to send my brother Abdullah to Paris instead of myself. He refused but it was not because I had the confidence of my family. I have never had it.”

He reminded her of the Arab conference in March 1920, when he was proclaimed King of Syria. “Do you realize why I encouraged the handful of Iraqis in Syria to nominate my brother Abdullah, King of the Iraq?” he asked. “I knew that the whole business was laughable, but I gave it my countenance in order to appease my own brother. He is as you know older than I am—I wanted to give him a status in the Arab world in order to disarm his hostility. He and my father never cared to accuse me of working solely in my own personal interest. What did it matter to me whether I or another was King of Syria? My task was to obliterate family dissensions and therefore I encouraged the nomination of my brother Abdullah to the Iraq. I knew that it was absurd.”

But it was time to move on, he acknowledged. “I must form a new Arab ideal. Where shall I begin?”

“You must begin with Iraq,” Gertrude answered.

She could not but feel sympathy for the man. Later she noted, “We betrayed him and he has not only forgiven the betrayal but has continued to trust us. It is a great deal more than we deserve.”

Before Gertrude left the palace that afternoon, Faisal confided that he would never forget the gracious image she had drawn of snow; he did not want it to melt. If the British government gave him a treaty to which he could honorably (and that was the key) set his name, he would go ahead along the lines she suggested.

At the party in her garden that night, Gertrude moved happily among her guests, glittering as the lanterns she had strung through the trees. The draft of the treaty had arrived from London, and as servants passed coffee and ices, her Arab and English guests savored the terms. But the following day, when the document was presented before the Cabinet, the Ministers refused to approve it; it was all that she and Cornwallis could do to persuade them to continue the debate.

T
he summer air was thick as a hornet’s nest with controversy, the very word
mandate
stinging the Iraqi public. Once again the Shiite holy men called for an uprising against the British, and two Euphrates sheikhs who favored the mandate were murdered. In Baghdad large groups of notables visited the Naqib, warning him of shocking disasters if the treaty were accepted.

While the Cabinet Ministers argued heatedly over what to do, the King came out clearly against the mandate. Even the British offer to help Iraq obtain a seat at the League of Nations once the treaty was signed did nothing to placate the Arabs’ anger. Rumors spread that a large demonstration was being organized, and the foul smell of insurrection grew stronger. The debate raged on and the King kept stalling, raising objections, until, after another week of hearing one exception after another, Cox disgustedly declared that no further alterations to the treaty would be allowed.

Through it all Gertrude consulted with Ken Cornwallis. The King had become their excuse for a flirtation, and they not only talked about the King, they swam together and picnicked on Sunday afternoons, laughed together over weekday lunches, confided over dinners and teas, shared stories, compared notes on Faisal’s temperament, and agreed that, as much as the King embraced Ken, it was Gertrude’s hand that he preferred.

But even Faisal’s charm had its limits. Gertrude was livid at his double-dealing. Assuring her again and again privately that he was in favor of the treaty, he then did everything publicly to undermine it. When she ran into Nuri Said, she told him how she felt. The attitude of the King was entirely indefensible, she scolded; she did not see how she could continue to confide in him. Early the next morning, on July 6, a message arrived inviting her to the palace for tea. She begged to be excused. But two hours later, after Ken Cornwallis phoned and urged her to go, Gertrude marched reluctantly into the palace.

The warm welcome from Faisal did little to calm the Khatun. She was in no mood to be disarmed. She had come against her better judgment, she announced, and for fifteen minutes they talked acrimoniously. She did not believe a word he said, she told him. But if she left him at that, she knew, she would never come back. “We had better find a
modus vivendi
,” she finally said.

The King nodded in agreement.

Gertrude presented the evidence that showed his duplicity: although he had said he was for the treaty, he had deliberately worked to defeat its passage. Faisal admitted he “had worked and would continue to work against the acceptance of the principle of the mandate.” The heated discussion went on. At last, after two hours, she rose to go. The King stood too, and taking her in his arms, he embraced her warmly. But it was a standoff: “We parted on rather unsatisfactory terms of close sentimental union and political divergence!”

Her only hope was that the British could persuade the King to go along with the treaty on the premise that, soon afterward, H.M.G. would abrogate the mandate. Surely, Churchill could give this assurance privately to Faisal. “The mandate is tosh,” she wrote home. “If we can’t do that, hell will be let loose in Iraq, Faisal will lose his second throne, and where do you think he will find a third? At the moment,” she confided, “I feel spiritually exhausted.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
FOUR

Farewell to Cox

F
or several more months in 1922 Iraq floundered in a sea of crises: Cabinet Ministers resigned almost as soon as their names were announced, and Faisal seemed to float along, oblivious of the danger of a teetering government, treading against the Naqib, swimming against the advice of the pro-British Nuri Said and nearly drowning in the clutch of the extremists. As fond as she was of the King, Gertrude felt that he might destroy both himself and the British with his fatal flaw. “The King is rather a beloved himself,” she wrote. “Weak as water, he is full of the finest instincts. He reacts at once to everything that is noble and generous; he is naturally fine and discriminating; but he has the fatal defects of the Oriental—lack of moral courage and lack of intellectual poise; the latter, I suppose, a necessary corollary of ignorance … his indecision and cowardice may after all defeat us.”

In spite of the dizzying pace of protests by the extremists and more waffling by Faisal, first to the side of the nationalists, then to the side of the British, the month of July ended on a satisfying note. Dining
en famille
with Faisal on her fifty-fourth birthday, Gertrude won the King’s support for a law she had written to protect the country’s archaeological excavations. Even better, Faisal agreed—with Cox’s approval—to make her provisional Director of Antiquities.

Two weeks later, on Sunday the thirtieth, after receiving Arab guests at home, Gertrude set off for the weekly swimming party with Ken Cornwallis and their British colleagues Captain Clayton and the Nigel Davidsons (he, the new Judicial Adviser). This time, they were joined by Faisal. “The King was immensely pleased with himself,” Gertrude noted. He had just bought a bathing costume, but she added with a scoff, “he’s not much of a swimmer.”

With fig trees for her dressing room, she stepped out of her jersey swimsuit to change into dry clothes, and munching a ripe green fig, she toweled her hair. Over a bonfire of palm fronds, the King’s servants had roasted ten huge fish, surrounding them with an array of Syrian dishes. As the guests lay like the ancient Greeks on cushions plumped up on carpets that covered the grass, they ate by moonlight and chatted under the tamarisk trees. Faisal talked to Gertrude about his family, still living in Mecca, confiding his worries over whom his daughters would marry and how his son would be educated.

“It didn’t seem at all fantastic in that setting of crescent moon and quiet river,” she mused later, “but when I come to think of it, it is curious to be settling the family affairs of a descendant of the Prophet who is also King of Iraq.” But her concern over losing influence still lingered. “I hope he’ll go on being as devoted to me as he is now,” she wrote nervously, “for it does make things easier to deal with. Mr. Cornwallis also—it’s we two who ultimately guide him, and with him the destinies of the Arab world, if I’m not mistaken.”

O
n the first anniversary of Faisal’s accession to the throne, in August 1922, the country remained deeply divided over the treaty. Gertrude believed the majority of the people still wanted the King to sign it. If Faisal rejected the pact, Gertrude felt they would push him to abdicate the throne. But she was equally convinced that even if he did accept the treaty, ultimately the British would be forced to evacuate. Either way, the British were doomed. The Cabinet had resigned in protest against the King’s support for the Shiite extremists. Ten days later Gertrude remarked, “The Humpty Dumpty Cabinet is not up again yet, nor are the King’s horses and the King’s men going the right way to do it.” The unending conflict permeated her thoughts.

On August 23, the day of the anniversary celebration, Gertrude set off, wearing her lace dress and parasol; meeting up with the uniformed Percy Cox, she motored with him in a procession to the palace. Several hundred people had already crammed into the royal courtyard, and as the two British officials plunged through the mob, a voice shouted something they could not quite hear. The crowd applauded, and although neither Sir Percy nor Gertrude could understand what was said, the air seemed to ripple with anger. Inside the palace, their audience with Faisal went smoothly; yet to add to their suspicion, the King was noticeably nervous. Later in the day, after querying her informers, Gertrude learned the mob had been part of a popular protest; the demonstration had been sanctioned by the King. “Down with the mandate!” was the cry that had been shouted in the courtyard. It was a slap in the face of the British Empire. Cox dashed off an angry letter, but a public confrontation was avoided; once again, appendicitis felled the King.