A Woman in Arabia (28 page)

“You, Khatun,” the Naqib was so kind to observe, “have an understanding of statecraft. I do not hesitate to say to you that I
loved the Turkish government when it was as l once knew it. If I could return to the rule of the Sultans of Turkey as they were in former times, I should make no other choice. But I loathe and hate, curse and consign to the devil the present Turkish Government. . . .The Turk is dead; he has vanished, and I am content to become your subject.

“You are going to London; you will see and converse with the great and this is what you shall say. Let Sir Percy Cox return to the 'Iraq and let there be an end of military rule. It would be a great wrong if it should continue. I do not speak against the Commander-in-Chief. His nobility is apparent in his face. I have visited him; though it is not my custom, when Sir Percy Cox asked me to visit Sir William Marshall (the Naqib grappled somewhat unsuccessfully with the Commander-in-Chief's name) I consented. It would not have been fitting if I had refused. I also visited Maude. Your country owes Maude great praise, and we also owe him gratitude. He was beloved in Baghdad. But in the days of peace, power should be in the hands of statesmen and not of soldiers. You must keep an army in this country for the preservation of order, but the army must not govern. This is what you shall say: ‘We wish to be governed by Sir Percy Cox. But do not say,' added the Naqib with some astuteness, ‘even though it be true, that you yourself have become a Baghdadi and that your mind is wholly occupied with the welfare of the 'Iraq, for that will cause your words [to carry] less weight in London and we shall have the less profit from you.'”

After this word of warning, the Naqib returned to the theme of self-determination.

“What is all this talk,” said he, “and what is its value? I trace it to America and I hear the voice of Wilson. Does Shaikh Wilson know the East, and its peoples? Does he know our ways of life and our habits of mind? You English have governed for 300 years in Asia and your rule is an example for all men to follow. Pursue your own way. Do not submit to guidance from Shaikh Wilson or from another. Knowledge and experience are your guides.”

With this opening it was not difficult to draw the Naqib back to the discussion of recent events in Baghdad.

“Most of those who have spoken against you,” said he, “are men without name or honour. Ramdi Pachahji is not of the slightest consideration; he is moreover possessed of the evil one (majnun). Who has ever heard of Ja'far Abu Timmam? He does not belong to the Ashraf of the town. But I tell you to beware of the Shi'ahs. I have no animosity against the Shi'ah sect,” he hastened to assure me and I was careful to give no hint of my underlying doubts. “They love and respect me and I am regarded by them as their Shaikh. But turn your eyes on the pages of history and you will see that the salient characteristic of the Shi'ahs is their levity. . . . Idolatry and mutability are combined in them. Place no reliance upon them.”

I then told the Naqib that we had a full list of those who had led the anti-British agitation, that, at the request of the Ashraf, it had been decided to arrest 6 or 7 of their members and that to the best of my belief the arrests had already taken place. He was stirred to the deepest interest and begged me to give him the names of those who had been arrested. I happened to have in my pocket a first and incomplete draft of the list of agitators, but I did not remember with precision which of these men were to be deported. At the head stood the names of 'Abdul Wahab al Naib and Shaikh Said, but these I omitted, as there was no intention of proceeding against them. The remainder of the names I read to the Naqib. There were only two of whom he had any knowledge. One of these two he knew too slightly to express any opinion about him; with the other, Shatur Chasibah, he was sufficiently well acquainted to pronounce with assurance that he was a rogue. I recollected that this man was not among those whom it had been intended to arrest and the Naqib asked me to give the Acting Civil Commissioner a message from himself to the effect that Shahir should not be allowed to remain in Baghdad. I then folded up the paper and said that all men were known to have made inflammatory speeches every evening in the coffee shops of the town, and that . . . they had undoubtedly done harm. There were, however, I added, two others who were still more harmful because they were men of high reputation. I alluded to 'Abdul Wabab al Naib and Shaikh Said. Owing to their position as Sunni divines it was not possible for us to take
steps which would silence them effectually. The Naqib listened with attention and remained for a moment in thought. Finally he said:

“No, you cannot either imprison or deport them. The scandal would be too great. But if I know that I have the approval of Colonel Wilson, I will send for both of them and express to them my condemnation of their line of conduct. I know that they have been actuated by religious motives and that religious considerations have formed the substance of their arguments. On any point which touches religious interests, I speak with authority.”

I thanked the Naqib warmly for this offer and said I had no doubt that Colonel Wilson would accept it with gratitude. A letter to this effect was despatched to the Naqib on the following day.

The conversation had now reached a point of such intimacy that I ventured, with apologies, to put a searching personal question to the Naqib. He, unintentionally, led up to it by speaking of the candidature of the Sharif, or of one of his sons, for the position of Amir of Mesopotamia.

“I am,” he said, “a relative of the Sharif, I come of the same stock and I share the same religious opinions. You therefore understand that I am not actuated by difference of blood or of thought when I tell you that I would never consent to the appointment of himself or of his son as Amir. The Hijaz is one . . . the 'Iraq is one, there is no connection between them but that of the Faith. Our politics, our trade, our agriculture are all different. . . . The Hijaz is the holy land of Islam. It must remain a separate and independent state by which all Moslems can profit. Similarly with Jerusalem, which is a place of the highest sanctity to Moslems and also to Christians. . . . The rights of the Moslems and Christians alike should be guaranteed by the powers that all may reap advantage from their sacred shrine. As regards the government of Mesopotamia my detestation of the present Turkish administration is known to you, but I would rather a thousand times have the Turks back in the 'Iraq than see the Sharif or his sons installed here.”

Upon this I said, “If for political reasons which we cannot at present foresee, it were necessary to put an Amir at the head of the 'Iraq State, would you, in order to avoid the selection of an Amir from Hijaz, accept the responsibility, with our help and support?”

My hand was lying upon the wooden arm of his sofa; he gave it two or three reproving blows with his fingers and leaning forward said laughingly, but with great emphasis: “How can you put such a question as that to me? I am darwish—does not my habit protect me?” He made the familiar gesture of shaking open his black robe. “It would be contrary to the deepest principles of my creed to become the political head of the State. In the time of my ancestor, 'Abdul Qadir, the Abbasid Khalifs were accustomed to consult him, as you and your colleagues consult me; but he would never have consented to take an active part in public affairs. Neither would I, nor any of his descendants consent to do so. This is my answer on the ground of religion, but I will also give you an answer based on personal reasons. I am an old man. This 5 or 6 years of life which remain to me I wish to spend in reflection and in study. When you came today I kept you waiting. I was busy with my books. They are my constant pre-occupation.”

He broke off and I also kept silence for I was profoundly touched by his words. But he was yet dissatisfied with the reply he had given me and raising his voice he said slowly: “Not if it were to save 'Iraq from complete destruction would I alter what I have now spoken.”

The interview had lasted an hour and a half and after a few words of excuse for my last question, excuses which he waved aside as needless, I begged permission to take my leave. Before he let me go he was so good as to express his personal affection for me and to remind me of our ancient friendship which, as he said, dates from several years before the war. I told him how greatly I valued it and thanked him for the confidence he had reposed in me by speaking so openly during the conversation which had just ended. He replied by asking me to regard him as a father, and saying that he hoped for an early renewal of our intercourse, he bade me go in peace.

In May 1885, when Gertrude was sixteen, a son was born in his father's castle at Taif in the deserts of the Hejaz and named after the flashing downstroke of the sword: Faisal.

He was the third son of the Hashemite Hussein ibn Ali, sharif of Mecca and self-proclaimed king of the Hejaz, the western region of the Arabian Peninsula. He was an aristocrat twice over. His father was of the bloodline of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. His mother, Hussein's first wife, was his father's cousin and therefore was also a descendant of the Prophet. Following hallowed tradition, Faisal was taken from his mother at seven days old and carried off to the black tents of the desert, to be brought up by a Bedouin tribe until he was seven years old. He never saw his mother again. She died when he was three. Gertrude had lost her mother at the same age.

The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid, regarded the Hashemites with a mixture of suspicion and respect. He periodically rounded up the most powerful of the sharifs and ordered them to Constantinople, where he kept them in “honorable captivity” on frugal incomes, under the scrutiny of the sultan's sinister entourage of spies, guards, and black eunuchs. Sharif Hussein was held there for eighteen years.

In 1891, when he was six, Faisal was parted from his Bedouin foster family a year early and was taken with his brothers to join his father in a house on the Golden Horn crammed with the thirty-two women of his father's harem, with their suites and slaves. The political atmosphere of Constantinople was highly charged, with the city rife with secret societies,
most of them reporting to the sultan. Initially a reformer, Abdul Hamid became paranoid, fomenting horrific massacres: he liked to ensure that his archenemies were dead by demanding that their heads be delivered to him in a box.

The sharif's household, large as it was, could afford meat only once a week. Discipline was severe: the
falaka
was still being used—a form of corporal punishment whereby a child's feet were bound together by rope and then a cane was used to beat the soles. On the other hand, Hussein saw that his sons were given a sound education by tutors.

In 1903, when Gertrude was enjoying her second world tour, the eighteen-year-old Faisal joined the Turkish army, patrolling the desert with the Turkish camel corps. A few years later, he was put in command of the Arab camel cavalry and instructed by the Turks to quell a rebellion of Arab tribesmen in Asir. Faisal and his brother Abdullah could not prevent the Turks from burning villages and were sickened by the mutilation of dead Arab rebels.

Six years later, the Sultan was deposed. In the reorganization Hussein gained the important title of emir of Mecca, the most holy city of Islam, with the very profitable supervision of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage. Faisal was to represent the constituency of Jidda in the Turkish parliament. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Hussein was ordered by the Turks to declare a jihad of all Muslims against Christians. The autocratic and courageous Hussein refused, saying that the Turks themselves had a Christian ally, Germany. He was supported in his refusal by an earlier approach from Lord Kitchener, suggesting that the Arabs and the British might become allies.

Now in a precarious position, Faisal was sent by his father to Damascus to propose a military uprising against the Turks in Syria. He communicated with his father in covert ways, by means of trusted retainers who carried messages to and fro in sword hilts, in the soles of their sandals, or written in invisible ink on wrapping paper. Faisal's friends in the Arab nationalists' political “clubs” could have betrayed him at any time, and he was particularly vulnerable as he was obliged to stay with the Turkish governor-general whenever he was in Damascus.
General Mehmed Jemal Pasha was suspicious of Faisal and continually put him to the test. He would send for Faisal and make him watch the public hangings of scores of his Syrian friends. These brave men went to their deaths without making any appeal to Faisal, who needed all his training in self-control not to betray his disgust and anger. As T. E. Lawrence wrote in
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, “Only once did he burst out that these executions would cost Jemal all that he was trying to avoid, and it took the intercessions of his Constantinople friends, chief men in Turkey, to save him.” In January 1916, while Gertrude was in India talking to the viceroy, a second group of Arab nationalists was being condemned. Jemal Pasha noted that Faisal “moved heaven and earth” to save them. Those were the only two times that Faisal let his feelings show. He knew that one false step would have meant the end of the mission for Arab independence.

Hussein now ordered Faisal back, to lead the Arab troops raised by Faisal's brother Abdullah. Although Faisal believed the time was not yet ripe, he extricated himself from Jemal Pasha and on June 2, 1916, Hussein fired the shot that began the Arab Revolt. He had given Faisal an impossible job: to pit his few thousand ill-equipped troops against the twenty-two thousand Turkish soldiers in the garrison of Medina. Having learned the strength of the enemy with their battery of artillery, Faisal withdrew his troops into the desert and set about raising a larger force of Bedouin.

A later strategy would isolate Medina from the rest of the Turkish army, but, meanwhile, Faisal had gained the love of his men, who called him Saiyidna Faisal (“our Lord Faisal”) and won their admiration for his courage. It would always be remembered that when his tribesmen were reluctant to cross an open stretch of land while being fired on from the walls of Medina, Faisal laughed at them then walked his horse slowly across the valley, never quickening his pace. From the far side, he beckoned them to follow and they galloped after him.

Turkish revenge, directed against the Arab citizens of Awali, was devastating. Lawrence wrote that they massacred “every living thing within its walls. Hundreds of the inhabitants were
raped and butchered, the houses fired, and living and dead alike thrown back into the flames.” The shock waves reverberated across Arabia and increased the hatred of the tribes for the Turks. Wherever Faisal led his tribes into battle, women and children were spared; and when the Turks would have slit the throats of their captives, Faisal would pay a pound a head for his prisoners to be captured alive.

Charismatic and patient in settling the private petitions of his tribesmen, Faisal was described by General Edmund Allenby as looking “the very type of royalty. . . . He combined the qualities of soldier and statesman; quick of vision, swift in action, outspoken and straightforward. . . . Picturesque, literally, as well as figuratively! Tall, graceful, handsome—to the point of beauty—with expressive eyes lighting up a face of calm dignity.”

Notwithstanding his victorious leadership of the Arab Revolt, Faisal was ignored at the Paris Peace Conference as the Middle East was carved up between the British and French. Subsequently elected king of Syria by that country's nationalists, he was expelled by the French army in July 1920 and returned to the Hejaz a bitterly disillusioned man.

Knowing his history and having spent some hours in his company in Paris, Gertrude prepared for the Cairo Conference knowing exactly who she wanted for king of Iraq.

Christmas Day, 1920

I feel quite clear in my own mind that there is only one workable solution, a son of the Sharif and for choice Faisal; very very much the first choice.

At the Cairo Conference in March 1921, Cox, Gertrude, and Lawrence successfully convinced Churchill that Emir Faisal was the best candidate for king of Iraq. Not only was he a war hero and brave ally of the British during the revolt, but he presented the strongest hope for success and stability in Iraq.

Churchill asked whether the administration could deliver an election vote in favor of Faisal: “Can you make sure he is chosen locally?” Western political methods, he added, “are not necessarily applicable to the East, and the basis of the election should be framed.” It was more than a recommendation; it was an order. Cox and Gertrude would have to see that Faisal came to power as the country's own choice, but he had to be seen to be elected independently of British wishes.

There now followed an inevitable delay while Churchill consulted with the Cabinet and obtained HMG's consent for Faisal to run as a candidate. Faisal was approached, and the French sounded out. Heavily occupied by their problems in Syria, from which they had expelled Faisal in July 1920, the French concurred on condition that he gave up all claims to Syria and all support for the Syrian nationalists. Faisal agreed and was ready to abandon his father's claims to Palestine in return for the throne of Iraq for himself and ruler of the newly created Emirate of Transjordan for his brother Abdullah.

Gertrude's self-determining Iraq was beginning to take shape. She and Cox had finally succeeded in persuading the most respected man in Iraq, the elderly naqib of Baghdad, head of the Sunni community, to undertake the formation of a provisional government. This would be followed by an elected parliament once Gertrude had devised a fair and representative voting system. The first job, however, was to pacify the country. Violence continued along the Euphrates and in the north, where RAF planes were bombing tribesmen who attacked British garrisons. Cox was determined to secure peace before taking another step, and he put down the disturbances with all the force he could muster. Gertrude hated the bombing and the burning but recognized that a nascent Arab government could not have coped with a raging insurgency.

How was she to deliver a form of democracy to a country so ignorant of national politics and comprised of so many factions? As she wrote:

The rank and file of the tribesmen, the shepherds, marsh dwellers, rice, barley and date cultivators of the Euphrates and Tigris,
whose experience of statecraft was confined to speculations as to the performances of their next door neighbours, could hardly be asked who should next be the ruler of the country, and by what constitution.

Any simple majority voting system would have left great areas of the country unrepresented. Gertrude's efforts to resolve boundaries and develop structures for new governments had always been devoted to avoiding incompatible conjunctions of races and creeds. It was now her job to ensure that nobody suffered as a member of an oppressed minority in a country split by racial, religious, and economic differences. It was work after her own heart, and it would occupy her for months to come.

Baghdad, February 16, 1920

I'm acutely conscious of how much life has after all given me. I've gone back now, after many years, to the old feeling of joy in existence, and I'm happy in feeling that I've got the love and confidence of a whole nation. It mayn't be the intimate happiness which I've missed, but it's a very wonderful and absorbing thing—almost too absorbing perhaps. You must forgive me if it seems to preoccupy me too much. . . .

October 3, 1920

If you're going to have anything like really representative institutions you would have a majority of Shi'ahs. For that reason you can never have three completely autonomous provinces. Sunni Mosul must be retained as part of the Mesopotamian state in order to adjust the balance. To my mind it's one of the main arguments for giving Mesopotamia responsible government. We as outsiders can't differentiate between Sunni and Shi'ah; but leave it to them and they'll get over the difficulty . . . just as the Turks did, and for the present it's the only way of
getting over it. The final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a
mujtahid
-run state, which is the very devil.

November 3, 1920

The Shi'ahs complain that they are not sufficiently represented on the Council, wholly overlooking the fact that nearly all their leading men are Persian subjects and must change their nationality before they can hold office in the Mesopotamian state.

December 12, 1920

I'm entertained to find myself in the eyes of the Ministry of the Interior (and of the Arab Government) as the first authority on tribes. . . . I've worked at them for years. So it's really I who have settled the details of tribal representation. It's not only right in itself that the tribes should be represented but it's also essential for the safety of the National Government that the tribes should be associated with it. Moreover there's a strong feeling on the subject in advanced nationalist circles. All the same it's a bold step. The townsfolk and landowners who hate and fear the tribes (as the tribes hate and fear the townsmen) won't a bit like their gaining political status. It's the landless intelligentsia who want it and they are the backbone of the nationalist party. All the big landowners on the Council, from the Naqib downwards, will try to keep the tribes out.

Once the insurgent tribes had submitted, Cox granted a general amnesty. Churchill had wired London from Cairo: “Both Cox and Miss Bell agree that if procedure is followed, appearance of Faisal in Mesopotamia will lead to his general adoption.” Now it was their responsibility to make it happen.