A Woman in Arabia (27 page)

Six months after Cox's departure, A.T. disbanded the Baghdad branch of the Arab Bureau, under whose auspices Gertrude had been appointed, and effectively demoted her from Oriental secretary—a role equivalent to that of a Cabinet member—to political officer. At about this time, the League of Nations required her to write a paper, “The Political Future of Iraq,” in which she made her feelings clear.

I propose to assume . . . that the welfare and prosperity of Iraq is not incompatible with the welfare and prosperity of any other portion of the world. I assume therefore as an axiom that if, in disposing of the question of the future administration of Iraq, we allow ourselves to be influenced by any consideration whatsoever other than the well being of the country itself and its people we shall be guilty of a shameless act of deliberate dishonesty rendered the more heinous and contemptible by our reiterated declarations of disinterested solicitude for the peoples concerned.

A.T.'s refusal to consider Gertrude's suggestions of negotiation with dissidents and the punitive tactics he employed to put down uprisings resulted, inevitably, in increasing subversion. Sidelined, Gertrude put her views privately in letter form to her influential friends and acquaintances in London. The year of jihad in Iraq, 1920, is remembered as a failure of the British administration. It should be remembered that Gertrude had no part in the decisions to bomb villages or in the decisions
that led to military confrontations with tribes and the murder of political officers on the borders.

January 17, 1919, Four Months After Cox's Departure

I might be able to help to keep things straight—if they'll let me. . . . We are having rather a windy time over self-determination. . . . I wish very much that Sir Percy were here.

December 28, 1919, Letter to Chirol

Sir P.C. is a very great personal asset and I wish the Government would let him come back at once. The job here is far more important than Persia.

January 12, 1920

I wish I carried more weight. But the truth is I'm in a minority of one in the Mesopotamian political service—or nearly—and yet I'm sure that I'm right.

February 1, 1920

We share the blame with France and America for what is happening—I think there has seldom been such a series of hopeless blunders as the West has made about the East since the armistice.

Baghdad, September 5, 1920

We are now in the middle of a full-blown Jihad, that is to say we have against us the fiercest prejudices of a people in a primeval state of civilization. . . . We're near to a complete collapse of society—the end of the Roman empire is a very close historical
parallel. . . . The credit of European civilization is gone. . . . How can we, who have managed our own affairs so badly, claim to teach others to manage theirs better?

Baghdad, April 10, 1920

I think we're on the edge of a pretty considerable Arab nationalist demonstration with which I'm a good deal in sympathy. It will however force our hand and we shall have to see whether it will leave us with enough hold to carry on here. . . .

But what I do feel pretty sure of is that if we leave this country to go to the dogs it will mean that we shall have to reconsider our whole position in Asia. . . . And the place which we leave empty will be occupied by seven devils a good deal worse than any which existed before we came.

A.T. was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in May 1920. Gertrude commented to her parents, “I confess I wish that in giving him a knighthood they could also endow him with the manners knights are traditionally credited with!”

June 14, 1920

Meantime my own path has been very difficult. I had an appalling scene last week with A.T. . . . Most unfortunately I gave one of our Arab friends here a bit of information I ought not, technically, to have given. It wasn't of much importance (Frank agrees) and it didn't occur to me I had done wrong till I mentioned it casually to A.T. He was in a black rage that morning and he vented it on me. He told me my indiscretions were intolerable, and that I should never see another paper in the office. I apologised for that particular indiscretion, but he continued: “You've done more harm than anyone here. If I hadn't been going away myself I should have asked for your dismissal months ago!” . . . At this point he choked with anger.

July 4, 1920

The tribes down there [in the south of Iraq] are some of the most lawless in Iraq. . . . But I doubt whether we've gone the best way to make them appreciate the benefits of settled government. For months I and others have been telling A.T. that we were pressing them too hard. . . .

December 20, 1920

Rather a trying week, for A.T. has been over-worked—a chronic state—and in a condition when he ought not to be working, which results in making him savagely cross and all our lives rather a burden in consequence.

Just as Gertrude was considering whether she or A.T. should resign, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Sir Percy Cox was requested to return to Iraq. London had recognized that A.T.'s tactics were not working and that insurrection was growing worse. It was costing too much to run Iraq his way, flattening revolt to protect the infrastructure. It was the end of A.T.'s official career.

There was one final devastating argument over Gertrude's independence in making known her own views, as separate from A.T.'s. She wrote to people who were senior to him in the British government and India. A.T. was particularly incensed by her privileged private visit to the chief Shia family, the Sadr of Kadhimain, to visit the august mujtahid Sayyid Hassan. She entertained Arab nationalists to dinner in her own house, to keep the lines of communication open with potential leaders of a future Arab government. To her chief, this was tantamount to treason, although she was pursuing official London policy.

When A.T. left Baghdad, they parted in civilized fashion. As Gertrude said, “We shook hands warmly—you can't shake hands anything but warmly when the temperature is 115 [ 46°C].”

September 27, 1920

The night before he left he came in late to say goodbye. I told him that I was feeling more deeply discouraged than I could well say and that I regretted acutely that we had not made a better job of our relations. He replied that he had come to apologise and I stopped him and said I felt sure it was as much my fault as his and that I hoped he would carry away no ill- feelings, a sentiment to which he cordially responded.

Sir Percy Cox passed through Baghdad on his way to London in June 1920. He stopped off for a long discussion with Gertrude and left her his parrot to look after until his return to Iraq in October, when he intended to set up a provisional Arab government.

October 17, 1920

It's quite impossible to tell you the relief and comfort it is to be serving under someone in whose judgement one has complete confidence. To the extraordinarily difficult task which lies before him he brings a single eyed desire to act in the interests of the people of the country.

November 1, 1920

Oh, if we can pull this thing off! rope together the young hotheads and the Shi'ah obscurantists, and enthusiasts like Ja'far, polished old statesmen like Sasun, and scholars like Shukri—if we can make them work together and find their own salvation for themselves, what a fine thing it will be. I see visions and dream dreams.

As the international powers were preparing their positions for the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference, President Woodrow Wilson made it clear that he expected the nations whose governments
had been eliminated by the war to be allowed to decide their own future. Sir Mark Sykes, a respected adviser to the British government, engineered a joint statement with the French to prove to President Wilson that they were aligned with his intentions and did not intend to colonize. Understanding little of the situation in Iraq, the government in London required A. T. Wilson to seek the opinions of the most respected members of the region stretching from Basra north to the Kurdish area. Wilson set about the task halfheartedly, as he was a firm believer in colonization. Before the consultation process even began, the Sykes Anglo-French Declaration was already causing trouble. Muslim religious leaders, the large Christian and Jewish communities, and the more sober secular leaders and sheikhs were petrified that a sudden withdrawal of the British administration and its supporting army would open all borders to their enemies. Bolshevik Russia, Ibn Saud's Wahhabis, and the vengeful Turks were poised to overwhelm Arabia.

Out of necessity, Gertrude had to take much of the responsibility for the conduct of the consultation, which involved inviting representatives from the major cities and religious groups to select a total of seventy-five nominees to answer three questions. Were they in favor of a single Arab state from Kurdistan to Basra? Should the state be headed by an Arab emir? Was there any preferred candidate for the role?

The responses, as expected by Gertrude, were hopelessly inconclusive except that there seemed to be unanimity about a new nation state covering the whole region. The exercise provoked vociferous responses from young would-be politicians including extremists who stated their views in the coffee shops, where public debate still takes place. They objected to the British presence, they fomented Sunni-Shia differences, and they ignored the interests of minorities. It fell to Gertrude to write a difficult document attempting to summarize the outcome of the exercise, to be sent to the Paris Peace Conference. She chose to enter the facts in great detail, describing the difficulties encountered and the conflicting wide-ranging opinions elicited. The document was entitled “Self-Determination in Mesopotamia.”

Realizing that the document would be of no conclusive value, she took the initiative of consulting the most respected figure in Iraq, the elderly naqib of Baghdad, His Reverence Sayyid Abd ul-Rahman Effendi. The primate of the Sunni religious community, he was equally respected by the Shias. Her hour and a half spent with him is beautifully described below in an appendix she attached to the “Self-Determination in Mesopotamia” paper and sent to Paris.

Political Views of the Naqib of Baghdad

I went by appointment to see the Naqib on the morning of February 6th in order to bid him farewell, as I was leaving on the 8th for England. I arrived at the house earlier than he expected and was received by his son, Saiyid Hashim, with whom I sat talking several minutes before the Naqib came in. The Naqib has been living since the occupation in his house opposite the Takiyah of Abdul Qadir, of which he is the head, the house which he usually occupies on the river next to the Residency, having been taken as a billet, with his consent. His domestic arrangements are studiously simple. The room in which he receives visitors is on the first floor, with windows looking into a small garden court planted with orange trees. Hard, upright sofas covered with white calico, are ranged round the wall. In one corner of the room, by the window, where the Naqib sits, there is a small table covered with a white-cloth on which some book or pamphlet is always to be found. The walls are white washed and the room unadorned save by its spotless cleanliness. The Naqib is an old man bowed by years and somewhat crippled by rheumatism. His dress is a long sleeved robe, reaching to the feet, made of white linen in summer and black cloth in winter, and opening over a white linen under robe which is confined at the waist by the folds of a wide white band. On his head be wears a white turban folded round a red tarbush.

At his entrance Saiyid Hashim withdrew and the Naqib gave orders that no visitors were to be admitted. I then told him that I was leaving Baghdad rather earlier than I had intended as I had
been summoned to Paris and I added that there were probably minor details, such as decisions as to frontiers where local knowledge might be called for. I instanced the question of the Mutasarrifliq of Dair from which place the ex-Rais Baladiyah had recently arrived with a request that the Mutasarrifliq might be attached to the Mesopotamian State, and I asked the Naqib for his opinion.

He replied that he had seen the man in question and was acquainted with his brother, who was an important citizen of Dair. Our visitors had been to the Naqib and had asked his advice on the future status of the district. A number of persons had however been present and the Naqib, characteristically unwilling to commit himself in public, had bidden the inquirer return on the following day when he himself would have had time to consider the matter. “He is waiting to see me now, and since we are talking confidentially I will tell you the answer I intend to give him. I shall say to him: ‘My son, you will do well to come under the British Government, for the British are known throughout the world for justice and fair dealing.' But I will make clear to you,” continued the Naqib, “what is in my thoughts. I do not like the French.” (It must be understood that he is taking for granted that the French will control Syria up to the boundaries of the Mesopotamian State.) “Yes, I admire their learning and I delight in their cultured minds. But I do not like their Government. It is not concealed from us that the Muhammadan population of Algeria has suffered under their administration. These things are known. It is my desire to keep the French as far as possible from Baghdad. Khatun Sahib, I am speaking now for your ear only and I must pray you to forgive my words. I fear an inevitable conflict between the French and the British. For when the British have put their foot down, they do not lift it; what they hold they maintain. They will encounter the ambition and jealousy of the French and even if it meant a war of 50 years' duration they will not give way. I am a darwish: my concern is not with the things of this world. But I have a long experience of men and affairs, and I lay bare to you my apprehensions.”

After embroidering this theme for some moments (for the Naqib is discursive in speech) he inquired, as is his invariable custom whenever I visit him, when we might expect the return of Sir Percy Cox. “Khatun,” said he, “there are a hundred and a thousand men in England who could fill the post of Ambassador in Persia, but there is none but Sir Percy Cox who is suitable for 'Iraq. He is known, he is loved and he is trusted by the people of 'Iraq. He is a man of sober years. . . . Moreover he is a man of great standing in London. He will act as our spokesman. If the government wishes to know our thoughts he will be able to give the necessary information and his word will be accepted. I bear witness in God that if Sir Percy Cox had been in Baghdad we should have been spared the folly of asking the people to express their wish as to the future. It has been the cause of great unrest, and the agitation in the town is not yet allayed. You know that I have taken no part, and I forbade my family to meddle with the business. My son, Saiyid Mahmud, was the first to resign his appointment as delegate to the Majlis. I told him to have nothing to do with it. But many have come to me asking for my advice or pressing me to agree to their views. I replied. The English have conquered this country, they have expended their wealth and they have watered the soil with their blood. The blood of Englishmen, of Australians, Canadians, Moslems of India and Idolaters has drenched the dust of the 'Iraq. Shall they not enjoy what they have won? Other conquerors have overwhelmed the country. As it fell to them, so it has fallen to the English. They will establish their dominion. Khatun, your nation is great, wealthy and powerful: where is our power? If I say that I wish for the rule of the English and the English do not consent to govern us, how can I force them? And if I wish for the rule of another, and the English resolve to remain, how can I eject them? I recognise your victory. You are the governors and I am the governed. And when I am asked what is my opinion as to the continuance of British rule, I reply that I am the subject of the victor.