A Woman in Arabia (5 page)

Florence, Gertrude's stepmother, had been brought up in Paris and spoke English with a charming French accent. Most of the family's holidays abroad were taken in Italy and Germany, and Gertrude was not the kind of traveler who would visit a country without mastering at least the basics of the language. As soon as she arrived at Weimar she arranged to have German lessons, and as soon as she arrived in Venice, she arranged to have Italian lessons. Gradually she acquired, besides her English and French, fluent Italian, German, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The latter she learned very quickly, but it was the only language she found difficult to remember. Her around-the-world trips gave her enough Hindustani to dispense with an interpreter, and a smattering of Japanese and Urdu. She described her progress in each language, somewhat boastfully, in her letters home to her family.

Of all the languages, Arabic proved the most difficult for her to learn. Staying in Jerusalem in 1900 with family friends Nina and Freidrich Rosen—he was the German consul—she took six lessons in Arabic a week, which did not prevent her from reading Genesis in Hebrew before dinner, for light relief.

Persia, from Gula Hek, the Summer Resort of the British Legation, June 18, 1892, Letter to Her Cousin Horace Marshall

. . . Is it not rather refreshing to the spirit to lie in a hammock strung between the plane trees of a Persian garden and read the
poems of Hafiz—in the original mark you!—out of a book curiously bound in stamped leather which you have bought in the bazaars. That is how I spend my mornings here; a stream murmurs past me which Zoroastrian gardeners guide with long handled spades into tiny sluices leading into the flower beds all around. The dictionary which is also in my hammock is not perhaps so poetic as the other attributes—let us hide it under our muslin petticoats!

I learn Persian, not with great energy, one does nothing with energy here. My teacher is a delightful old person with bright eyes and a white turban who knows so little French (French is our medium) that he can neither translate the poets to me nor explain any grammatical difficulties. But we get on admirably nevertheless and spend much of our time in long philosophic discussions carried on by me in French and him in Persian. His point of view is very much that of an oriental Gibbon. . . .

London, February 14, 1896

My Pundit was extremely pleased with me, he kept congratulating me on my proficiency in the Arabic tongue! I think his other pupils must be awful duffers. It is quite extraordinarily interesting to read the Koran with him—and it
is
such a magnificent book!

London, February 24, 1896

My Pundit brought back my poems yesterday—he is really pleased with them. . . . Arabic flies along—I shall soon be able to read the Arabian Nights for fun.

Jerusalem, December 1899

I'd rather do this than be in London, it's more worthwhile on the whole. I'm very sorry but one can't do everything and I would rather well get hold of Arabic than anything in the world.

. . . I don't think I shall ever talk Arabic, but I go on struggling with it in the hope of mortifying Providence by my persistence . . .

My teacher's name is Khalil Dughan and . . . I learnt more about pronunciation this morning than I have ever known. . . . I either have a lesson or work alone every morning for 4 hours—the lesson only lasts 1 ½ hours. I have 3 morning and 3 afternoon lessons a week. I am just beginning to understand a little of what I hear and to say simple things to the servants, but I find it awfully difficult. The pronunciation is past words, no western throat being constructed to form these extraordinary gutturals. . . .

Comes my housemaid, “The hot water is ready for the Presence” says he. “Enter and light the candle” say I. “On my head” he has replied. . . . That means it's dressing time.

Jerusalem, January 11, 1900

. . . Language is very difficult [and] there are at least three sounds almost impossible to the European throat. The worst I think is a very much aspirated H. I can only say it by holding down my tongue with one finger, but then you can't carry on a conversation with your finger down your throat, can you? . . .

I took Ferideh
*
for a drive . . . and talked Arabic extremely badly and felt desponding about it. However there is nothing to be done but struggle on with it. I should like to mention that there are five words for a wall and 36 ways of forming the plural.

Jerusalem, February 18, 1900

Do you know these wet afternoons I have been reading the story of Aladdin to myself for pleasure, without a dictionary! . . . I really think that these months here [in Jerusalem] will permanently add to the pleasure and interest of the rest of my days! Honest Injun. Still there is a lot and a lot more to be done first—so to work!

Ain Tulma, Palestine, February 28, 1900

I hurried on . . . with 5 little beggar boys in my train. They were great fun. We had long conversations all the way home. It's such an amusement to be able to understand. The differences of pronunciation are a little puzzling at first to the foreigner. There are two k's in Arabic—the town people drop the hard k altogether and replace it by a guttural for which we have no equivalent; the country people pronounce the hard k soft and the soft k ch, but they say their gutturals beautifully and use a lot of words which belong to the more classical Arabic. The Bedouins speak the best; they pronounce all their letters and get all the subtlest shades of meaning out of the words.

From Her Tent Pitched at Ayan Musa, March 20, 1900

We were soon surrounded by Arabs who sold us a hen and some excellent sour milk, “laban” it is called. While we bargained the women and children wandered round and ate grass, just like goats. The women are unveiled. They wear a blue cotton gown 6 yards long which is gathered up and bound round their heads and their waists and falls to their feet. Their faces, from the mouth downwards, are tattooed with indigo and their hair hangs down in two long plaits on either side. . . . Our horses and mules were hobbled and groomed. Hanna brought me an excellent cup of tea and at 6 a good dinner consisting of soup made of rice and olive oil (very good!) an Irish stew and raisins from Salt, an offering from Tarif. My camp lies just under Pisgah. Isn't it a joke being able to talk Arabic!

March 25, 1900

I . . . came back to my tent where I was presently fetched by a little Turkish girl, the daughter of an Effendi, who told me her mother was sitting down in the shadow of the wall a little below my camp and invited me to come and drink coffee. We went
down hand in hand and I found a lot of Turkish women sitting on the ground under a fig tree, so I sat down too and was given coffee and as they all but one talked Arabic, we had a cheerful conversation.

Of Her Druze Muleteers, April 2, 1900

They both talk with the pretty, soft, sing-song accent of the Lebanon. I have a good variety of accents with me, for Tarif has the Bedouin and Hanna the real cockney of Jerusalem. They appeal to me sometimes to know which is right.

Gertrude traveled to Malta and Italy with her family, then went on alone to several countries farther east.

Haifa, Palestine, April 7, 1902

This is my day: I get up at 7, at 8 Abu Nimrud comes and teaches me Arabic till 10. I go on working till 12, when I lunch. Then I write for my Persian till 1.30, or so, when I ride or walk out. Come in at 5, and work till 7, when I dine. At 7.30 my Persian comes and stays until 10, and at 10.30 I go to bed. You see I have not much leisure time! And the whole day long I talk Arabic.

Haifa, April 2, 1902

It's perfectly delightful getting hold of Persian again, the delicious language! But as for Arabic I am soaked and saddened by it and how anyone can wish to have anything to do with a tongue so difficult when they might be living at ease, I can't imagine. . . . The birds fly into my room and nest in the chandelier!

“My First Night in the Desert,” May 16, 1900

My soldiers are delighted that I can talk Arabic; they say it's so dull when they can't talk to the “gentry.” They talk Kurdish together, being of Kurdish parentage, but born in Damascus. Their Arabic is very good. Mine is really getting quite presentable. I think I talk Arabic as well as I talk German (which isn't saying much perhaps!), but I don't understand so well. It's so confoundedly—in the Bible sense!—rich in words.

On Gertrude's second around-the-world journey, she was accompanied by her half-brother, Hugo.

India, in the Train from Alwar to Delhi, January 18, 1903

My thrice blessed Hindustani, though it doesn't reach to any flowers of speech, carries us through our travels admirably and here we were able to stop where no one has a word of English, without any inconvenience.

Burma, on the Irrawaddy River, March 2, 1903

We came to a very small steam boat. . . . A steep and slippery plank led out to the boat. I took my courage in both hands, crept along it, lifted the awning, and received a broadside of the hottest, oiliest, most machinery laden air, resonant with the snores of sleepers. I lit a match and found that I was on a tiny deck covered with the sheeted dead, who, however, presently sat up on their elbows and blinked at me. I announced firmly in Urdu that I would not move until I was shown somewhere to sleep. After much grumbling . . . one arose, and lit a lantern; together we sidled down the plank and he took us back to one of the mysterious hulks by the river bank. It was inhabited by an old Hindu and a bicycle and many cockroaches.

Tokyo, May 24, 1903

In one of the temples, a wonderful place all gold lacquer and carving set in a little peaceful garden, a priest came up to me and asked if I were an American. I said no, I was English. . . . I replied in Japanese, in which tongue the conversation was being conducted. . . .

During the years in Mesopotamia she came to speak many Arabic dialects so well that she once disguised herself and was able to tease King Faisal by convincing him that she was a talkative camel driver.

Baghdad, November 29, 1920

I love walking with the beaters (at a shoot) and hearing what they say to each other in the broadest Iraq dialect, which I'm proud to understand.

Baghdad, June 23, 1921

. . . I have been elected President of the Bagdad Public Library. . .
*

Notice Distributed by Gertrude to English Publishers, Asking if They Would Care to Donate Books to the Salam Library, 1921

 

NOTICE TO ALL AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS

The Salam Library, Bagdad, intends to issue a periodical publication—in Arabic and English—the object of which is to review books published in Oriental languages, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Syriac, Hindustani, etc.; and also books published in European languages, English, French and German, etc.

This publication will deal only with books presented to the library with a request from the publisher or author asking for a review or notice of the book.

It will also give an account of such manuscripts as may be found in the library or are to be found in local bookshops. Thus the Salam Library's periodical publication will be the best means for introducing European books to Orientals and Oriental books to Europeans and will serve as a means to facilitate the sale of books.

The Committee of the Salam Library is composed of Arab and British members who will undertake the publication of the periodical.

(Signed) GERTRUDE BELL

President, Salam Library

BAGDAD