Gertrude Bell (59 page)

Faisal left France in April 1919 a disappointed man, and visited the Pope in Rome before returning to Syria to put down a guerrilla war along the
coastline. In September, Lloyd George and Clemenceau reached a provisional agreement. British troops in Syria would be replaced by French garrisons. Arab troops would be maintained in the eastern region, under French supervision. The British government invited Faisal to discuss the situation in London. Faisal set out again, was again treated with discourtesy in Marseilles, and was forced to bypass Paris. At Boulogne and Dover he was received respectfully by a British admiral and a guard of honour, and at the station in London by Foreign Office representatives. He was informed about the recent prime ministers' agreement, but assured that the arrangement would be only temporary.

He returned to Syria to find that his father, Hussain, refused to acknowledge his negotiations. Neither would Hussain ratify or acknowledge the peace terms encapsulated in the Treaty of Versailles.
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When he arrived in Damascus, Faisal was greeted by ten thousand Arabs marching in protest against the forthcoming French mandate. An Arab Congress met the following March to demand complete Arab independence in Syria. Meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, along the Euphrates, Arab tribes were making war against Faisal's only allies, the British. Gertrude describes him at about this time:

Faisal, with his high ideals, his fair conception of the Arab cause which he alone represented and defended—acutely sensitive to sympathy or political antagonism, trying to hold his own against the covert hostility of the French and the ardent folly of his own adherents; harassed by his family, deserted by the British government . . . without one single person near him from whom he could seek affection and impartial guidance . . .

Caught between the priorities of the West and the extremists in Syria, Faisal was confronted by Arab nationalists demanding that he accept the crown of Syria. He took time to make his decision. He cabled Lord Allenby in Cairo, and asked for advice. If he accepted, he pointed out, it might be possible to fend off an uprising, but if he refused it might cause one. The answer also took time, and when it came it was so evasive and vaguely worded that he allowed himself to be elected King. Neither Great
Britain nor France acknowledged the coronation: Britain because she could not, France because she would not. Those who perceived Faisal as self-constituted were able to accuse him of going over to the extremists.

In April 1920, at the San Remo Conference, Syria was officially put under a French mandate. Faisal had been invited to attend, but he had grown weary of rushing across the world at the summons of the West, only to be treated in summary fashion and dismissed. By inexorable degrees, Syria had arrived at the point where a conflict was inevitable.

As soon as the Conference had agreed to the French mandate, Damascus erupted. Faisal's position was impossible. The Syrians were calling him pro-French, the French were calling him pro-British, and the British were saying he was backing the cause of Arab extremism. He could have submitted to the French or stood up for the Arabs. Choosing the latter course would have been natural for him, but the matter was taken out of his hands. General Gouraud arrived in Damascus as the first French High Commissioner, ironically the very general who had awarded Faisal the Légion d'Honneur.

He found rebellion in the air. There were now ninety thousand French troops in Syria, and the French had taken the all-important ports. When Faisal officially protested against the foreign occupation and appealed against the mandate to the Supreme Council, Gouraud made his move. He demanded from Faisal an unconditional recognition of the mandate, the adoption of French as the government language, an immediate reduction in the Syrian army, the abolition of conscription, the free movement of troops on the railways, the French occupation of Aleppo, and the punishment of all Arabs who had rebelled against the mandate. Faisal asked for forty-eight hours to consider, but before that time ran out the French produced another battery of ultimatums. Then, on 22 July, Arab tribesmen took the law into their hands and attacked a French outpost. The following day the French routed them and marched on to occupy Damascus. “The resistance of the Arabs . . . was not led by Faisal,” noted Gertrude, “and was in fact in defiance of his orders . . . General Gouraud immediately issued a proclamation, beginning ‘The Amir Faisal, who has brought this country to the brink of ruin, has ceased to reign.' ” Gouraud sent an order for him to leave Damascus within twenty-four hours.

And so the first experiment in Arab self-determination was stamped
out by the French army boot. Faisal and his younger brother Zaid quietly left Damascus, his reign having lasted less than five months. From Der'a, the scene of the Arab Revolt's greatest triumph, he travelled under British auspices to Haifa, then to Egypt and Europe. Ronald Storrs was there to greet him on the platform at al-Qantara station, where he found the ex-King of Syria sitting on his luggage awaiting the train. Storrs saw that “The tears stood in his eyes and he was wounded to the soul.”

Gertrude reacted with pain and anger. “In my opinion there were scarcely words strong enough to express my sense of our responsibility for the Syrian disaster. It is impossible to see, nor I think can the French themselves see, where their policy is leading them . . .” Faisal told her in a later interview that he had counted on a firm alliance between the British government and the Hejaz:

You deserted me in Syria—it is therefore incumbent upon me to form a new scheme. You must remember 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 . . . I have never had the confidence of my family.

Faisal and Gertrude were by now on close terms, and he was speaking remarkably frankly. He continued:

While I was in Paris in 1919, my father was continually urging me to force the Allies to fulfil their promises to the Arabs. I did not even know what the promises were—I had never seen the correspondence with McMahon. But in any case to force the Allies was out of the question. What power had I? What wealth? I could only reason and negotiate. That was what I did. I continued to do so when I was left face to face with the French.

His hand was forced by his own followers, he said. At the same time as they had nominated him King of Syria, they had nominated Abdullah King of Iraq.

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.

Gertrude could see well enough, now, where the French policy in Syria was leading:

. . . the growing hatred of French control which has been the permanent feature in the history of Syria since our evacuation in November 1919, has by recent events been so deeply embittered that no palliative which can be applied by the French government can be of avail.

[Beside the Syrian Muslims and the Christians] another element has taken the field; the Druzes, flawlessly courageous, unassuageably vindictive, ruthlessly cruel, will neither fear to oppose their small numbers to the forces of the French Republic, nor forgive the injuries . . .

It is the French policy which has combined the . . . Druze and Syrian Arab . . . Their cause has become one . . . Sooner or later, the French must go.

In its attempts to subject the Arabs to military rule, France would further fragment Syria. In the summer of 1925, the Druze instigated a nationalist uprising. Once again Damascus exploded into war, and the French indiscriminately bombed the ancient city into a ruin. Syria would continue for years in a state of ungovernable chaos.

Meeting Faisal, getting to know him and watching with horror as events unfolded in Damascus; concerned about violence in Palestine; appalled by the scale of the insurgency breaking out along the Euphrates as A.T. completed his last months in office, it was no wonder that Gertrude described the disintegration of the Middle East as resembling the collapse of the Roman Empire.

As the British mandate in Iraq became official, A.T. was preparing for his own departure. Preparations also began for an Arab Constituent Assembly in Baghdad, but everyone was waiting for the return of the well-respected Sir Percy Cox from London. Gertrude, rejoicing in the imminent arrival of the man she trusted and could work with, now bent her mind to a workable scheme for putting in place some kind of democratic process: “I'm happy and interested in my work and very happy in the confidence of my chief. When I think of this time last year . . .”

At this most inconvenient moment she fell ill again with bronchitis,
and had to resign herself to vacating the office for nearly a week. She was not, however, allowed to disappear altogether. The summer-house in the garden received visitors at all hours, ostensibly to enquire after her state of health, in reality to pour out their fears and aspirations. Gertrude gave up any hopes of a quiet recovery. She donned her dressing gown, and in this most unsuitable of attire received a party of the distinguished Muslims of Baghdad, including the Mayor and the son of the elderly Naqib, one of the most important religious nobles in Iraq. Neither could Cox do without her. He called a special meeting to discuss the appointment of Arab ministers and British advisers, and held it in Gertrude's drawing-room.

Back at the office, she received a visit from her friend Fahad Beg, now not far short of eighty, who informed her that he had acquired two more wives. She gave a garden party for him at which, at one point, he opened his robes to show off a huge hole in his chest, acquired in a youthful
ghazzu
when a lance was thrust right through his body. The gasps and screams of the ladies were most gratifying.

Meanwhile Cox had made out a list of trusted and representative Arab candidates. The first Cabinet choice, without question, would be the Naqib of Baghdad, His Reverence Sayyid Abdul Rahman Effendi. Elderly and venerated, he was also the head of the Sunni community. He, like Faisal, traced his descent from the Prophet, and was custodian of the holy shrine of Abdul Qadir Gilani. He was a good friend of Gertrude's: he liked to talk with her, and she often visited his wife and sisters. “Abdul Rahman Effendi's friendship takes an agreeably tangible expression!” she wrote. “He sends in weekly a great basket of fruit from his estate—at this season it's filled with huge white grapes.” However, the Naqib lived in dignified religious seclusion, and she thought it unlikely that he would accept their suggestion. Cox went to see him, and after a short delay, and to everyone's pleasure, he did agree. He would now undertake the formation of the provisional government.

In no time at all he had invited eighteen men to form the Council of State, and it was installed in the Serai, the grand old Turkish offices. One of the most prominent figures was Faisal's army commander in the Revolt and his supporter in Syria, Jafar Pasha el Askeri. Soon after him came his brother-in-law, Nuri Pasha Said, a more formidable individual whom Gertrude came to admire as she got to know him. These were the
first of the pro-independence figures to be repatriated to Baghdad at the government's expense after the collapse of the Arab regime in Damascus. Jafar Pasha, a Baghdadi Arab with a command of eight languages, was invited by the Naqib to become Minister of Defence, and to focus on forming a native army to relieve the British. It was when he had heard of the public hanging by Jemal Pasha in Damascus of his Syrian nationalist friends that he had changed sides and thrown in his lot with the Arab forces. Gertrude commented: “I wish there were more people of his integrity and moderation.” After his experiences with Faisal in Syria he had, he admitted to Gertrude, many misgivings in agreeing to join the Cabinet. She promised him that, in the end, complete independence was what the British government hoped to give Iraq. “ ‘My Lady' he answered—we were speaking Arabic—‘complete independence is never given; it is always taken'—a profound saying.”

There was, inevitably, immediate trouble from the Shias, not only because they looked on the Cabinet as of British parentage, but because it contained fewer Shias than Sunnis. Shias, Gertrude pointed out to all protesters, were almost all subjects of Persia, and not eligible for office in a Mesopotamian government. Shortly, a Shia of Karbala accepted the Ministry of Education, which the Naqib had been induced to offer him.

The provisional Cabinet was to run the country while it prepared for the first general election. One of Gertrude's jobs was to suggest some kind of voting system to put before the Electoral Law Committee, one that would be reasonably fair and representative. She noted: “Cox sent an admirable letter to the Council saying that in the election assembly which was to decide on the future of Iraq every section of the community must be represented and that he must be able to assure his Govt. that this was the case.”

She had to overcome the problem that the big landowners in the Council would do their best to exclude the tribes from the voting process. Sasun Effendi Eskail, the head of the Jewish community, and Daud Yusafani of Mosul came to talk the matter over. “We were all agreed,” she wrote, “that it would be disastrous if the tribesmen were to swamp the townsmen, but I pressed upon them the consideration that . . . an Arab National Government could not hope to succeed unless it ultimately contrived to associate the tribesmen with its endeavours.”

Her first idea was to include thirty tribal members in the election assembly, one each from the twenty largest tribes, and the other ten representing
smaller ones. Jafar Pasha and Sasun came to her with a different scheme: they proposed two tribal representatives for each division of Iraq, but any tribesman who liked to register could vote in the ordinary way. She was delighted, no less that the Cabinet had produced a better scheme than that it had secured a minimum of ten tribal members in the assembly. At the first meeting of the Council of State of the first Arab government in Mesopotamia since the Abbasids, her excitement was intense.