Desert Queen (22 page)

He informed her calmly that she had better write to them both. Having read her letters before, his wife would find it odd if she were suddenly barred from seeing their correspondence. After all, “on voyages one lives at close quarters—not even with you would I like it, that is, not always, but only when we wanted to.… But what’s the good of writing like this?” he asked.

He was nearly ready to leave for the Balkans, prepared to say goodbye to Gertrude, taking away any hope of another rendezvous. And yet he continued to rouse her, telling her “we shall still meet in thoughts and fancies,” and taunting her with his lust. He ended the letter: “Last night, a poor girl stopped me—the same old story—and I gave her money and sent her home.… So many are really like me, or what I used to be, and I’m sorry for them.… These desires of the body that are right and natural, that are so often nothing more than any common hunger—they can be the vehicle of the fire of the mind, and as that only are they great; and as that only are they to be satisfied.”

And then it was time for him to go. Please write, he begged. She should call him Dick, and he would call her Gertrude, and even if his wife read the letters, their intimacy would seem to be nothing at all. Many people call each other by their first names, he told her. But as for the passionate words she had written over the past few weeks, he vowed: “Tonight I shall destroy your letters—I hate it—but it is rightful. One might die or something, and they are not for any soul but me. Even though I hide in the silent room, they pursue me. Goodbye, my dear, I kiss your hands.”

It had been the most intense, most extraordinary few weeks in her life. Finally she had met a handsome, intelligent, sophisticated man who shared her passions for the East, the desert, the Arabs, ancient worlds, modern politics, poetry, literature, solitude. He, like no one else, understood and loved them as much as she did. Now he was gone, and she was left with anguished memory.

S
he made plans to return to the desert. There was never a year more favorable for a journey into Arabia, or so they said in Damascus. Miss Gertrude Bell arrived in the city on November 27, 1913, eager to hear such news. Looking a bit weary after her voyage—by boat from England to France, a week aboard ship on the Mediterranean, then by rail from Beirut—the slightly agitated, forty-five-year-old Miss Bell stepped impatiently from her carriage, smoothed the wisps of ginger hair peeking out from her feathered hat, straightened her hobble skirt and marched briskly into the lobby of the Damascus Palace Hotel. She preferred this centrally located hotel, although it was first class and not deluxe, for she enjoyed the good rates and the good service, and the solicitous manager, who remembered her, of course; and although he might have forgotten how haunted her green eyes appeared, or how sharply pointed her nose, he recalled at once the commanding tone in her voice and the authority in her bearing. Flustered by the arrival of the famous lady (everyone in Damascus knew of the intrepid Englishwoman who traveled alone through the desert), he welcomed her with a profusion of bows and
salaams
, and she returned them routinely.

Gertrude signed her name at the register and, as always, with shoulders erect and head held high, proceeded to her room. A string of Arab boys in caftans scuffled behind, struggling to carry the heavy steamer trunk that Marie, her maid, had packed with smart French gowns, pegged skirts, fur coats, tweed jackets, fringed shawls, frilly blouses, plumed hats, parasols and linen riding clothes. One of the servants toted her toiletries case fitted with silver brushes and cut-glass flacons, their polished caps twisted tight to prevent any lotions from spilling. Two more boys bore the suitcase carefully stuffed with lacy corsets and petticoats, a masquerade for her maps, cameras, film, binoculars, theodolite and guns.

The rest of her baggage consisted of crates filled with Wedgwood china, crystal stemware, silver flatware, table linens, rugs, blank notebooks, sets of Shakespeare, archaeology texts by de Vogue and Stryzgowski, history books collected since her student days at Oxford, Doughty’s
Arabia Deserta
, Hogarth’s
The Penetration of Arabia
, the Blunts’
Pilgrimage to Nejd
, guidebooks, quinine, camphor, boric ointment, a remedy for diarrhea, bandages, soaps and flea powder. It would take two weeks in Damascus to reorganize before moving forward into the desert.

As soon as she settled in her room, simple but adequate, she sent for one of the Arab boys and, handing him some
baksheesh
, some coins, instructed him to deliver her calling cards, not to any Turkish officials, she warned, but to a few European acquaintances like Lütticke, the head of the well-known banking house, and Loytved, the German Consul, and to local Arabs she knew she could trust.

She arranged her clothes as best she could and smiled to herself as she took out her shoes and felt for the bullets inside them. “I need not have hidden the cartridges in my boots!” she wrote home. “We got through customs without having a single box opened.” She had foiled the Turks again.

After the sun set over the Syrian hills, she pinned up her hair, changed into a gown and checked to see that her cigarette case was in her evening purse before going downstairs to dinner. She was greeted warmly in the hotel restaurant, where full
pension
, but not wine, was included in the ten-franc daily room rate. The waiters hovered attentively, bringing her food that was reliable if not remarkable, as
Murray’s
guidebook had promised. After coffee she excused herself from the Bruntons, an English couple at her table, and went to her room, making a few notes in her leather diary before retiring.

In bed that first night in the city, she could hardly keep from thinking about the journey to Central Arabia that lay ahead. She had cherished the idea of this expedition for more than a dozen years. Time and again she had tried to organize the voyage, but in the past the warnings of friends like Sir Louis Mallet in the Foreign Office or Willie Tyrrell, the Secretary of State, had forestalled her. Four years ago Percy Cox, the British Resident in the Gulf who worked for the Intelligence office of India Civil Service, had cautioned her again; it was far too dangerous for anyone to cross the desert.

But she had never given up her desire to uncover the mystery of Central Arabia. She was well aware that its vast, relentless desert, the Nejd, was fraught with hazards. She knew she might face endless days parched from lack of water, and endless days soaked from floods, as heavy rains drenched the impervious ground. It was winter and there would be weeks when the temperature dropped below freezing at night and weeks when the sun blazed furiously at noon. She knew she would have to fight off hordes of fleas that hovered around the camels, and that she would find snakes and scorpions stalking the sand. And there would be the inevitable sand; sand as far as the eye could see, sometimes bleak black sand, sometimes yawning yellow mounds of sand, sometimes hard, gray, unforgiving sand.

And yet, she loved the desert. For her it meant escape. She had written years before: “To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel. The gates of the enclosed garden are thrown open, the chain at the entrance of the sanctuary is lowered … and, like the man in the fairy story, you feel the bands break that were riveted about your heart.” Indeed, the bands around her heart were not just the obstacles of English society but the shackles that constrained her love for a married man. Travel would let her break free.

T
he morning brought good news. Fattuh, the loyal Armenian who had served her on a decade of desert journeys, had arrived from his home in Aleppo. There was much to be done before she could set out from Damascus, and they went off together to see one of the people who could assist her the most, Sheikh Muhammad Bassam, a man she had met in the desert long ago. Rich and well-connected, Bassam shared the friendship of the Bedouin sheikhs as well as the confidence of the notables in town. He could help her hire the most experienced guide, help her find the best and cheapest camels, help her lay out a path in the shifting Arabian sands.

The weather was “heavenly,” she wrote home, and with only a jacket to cover her blouse and long skirt, and a felt hat on her head, she hurried along the streets. She reached the seedy façade of sun-dried bricks that formed a wall around Bassam’s house, knowing that beyond it lay a large courtyard graced with bubbling fountains and colored stones. Her low heels clicked againt the marble floor of the patio, and she paused for a moment to breathe in the sweet scent of oranges, lemons and pomegranates. Ah, it was good to be back in the East!

Bassam welcomed her, as did his wife (a handsome woman born in the Nejd), to the sitting room, but as soon as the greetings were over, the woman disappeared. A servant arrived, bringing the English guest a coffee that was thick and pleasingly bitter. Gertrude spoke in classical, florid Arabic, moving the conversation as quickly as she could. How was his father? his sons? she asked politely. How were his orchards? his sheep? the friends they had in common? And what about Turkey? What did his friends in Damascus think? How did the desert Arabs feel? she wanted to know. Bassam asked her opinion of the Ottoman state, now in the throes of revolution, and noted that in Basrah, in Mesopotamia, where Great Britain had a stronghold, the people wanted British protection. Finally the conversation reached her plans to penetrate the desert.

She was determined to meet the leaders of two of the greatest Arabian clans: Ibn Rashid and Ibn Saud, the two formidable rival warriors of Central Arabia. With the Ottoman Empire in a weakened state, there was reason to believe that both men would welcome her, each eager for the latest political news. As for her own government, the journey would prove highly significant. If war were to come, the fate of Arabia might hang in the balance. The British would want to know who would be reliable Arab allies against the Turks.

She turned to her host. Among those she had already spoken to, she had heard conflicting comments. Now she asked Bassam’s advice. Did he think it was safe to enter Central Arabia? There was no need to worry, Bassam reassured her; it would be perfectly easy to go to the Nejd this year. The atmosphere was calm; fighting had ceased between Sauds and Rashids. She had come at “an exceedingly lucky moment,” she wrote later to her mother; “everyone is at peace. Tribes who have been at war for generations have come to terms and the desert is almost preternaturally quiet.”

An ivory holder between her fingers, she smoked a cigarette, and as the breeze blew in from the garden, they sketched a route she knew well, east of Damascus, then south to the great Nejd, the vast Arabian desert, remote and rarely traveled, a virtual battleground for Bedouin tribes. Only three or four Europeans had survived the journey, but with skillful guides and the right
rafiqs
—tribal escorts paid to guarantee safe journey through each tribe’s territory—Gertrude hoped to avoid the murderous raiders and treacherous thieves who crisscrossed the Nejd. She planned to arrive, first, in Hayil, the nineteenth-century headquarters of the Turkish-supported Ibn Rashid. From there she aimed to go farther south to meet his enemy, Ibn Saud.

She should avoid going near the Hejaz Railway, she and Bassam agreed. With the Ottoman Empire in disarray, the Turks suspected the British would encourage Arabs to revolt. Inquisitive officials and bored police would ask too many questions. What exactly was she doing there? they would demand to know. She could answer truthfully that she was an archaeologist seeking Byzantine ruins, or that she was an author researching a book, but they might not believe her. Indeed, they might even detect some deception in her tone, though she would never let them know it was the pain of a love affair that she was hiding. She had successfully avoided the Turks before, and she felt sure she could outwit them once again. Nevertheless, the thought of the game sent a shiver down her spine.

The servant brought another coffee and she drank it quickly, thanking Bassam for his support. She stamped out her cigarette and said goodbye.