A Woman in Arabia (12 page)

North of Hama, April 17, 1905

What it's like to travel in a roadless and bridgeless country after and during heavy, not to say torrential, rains you can't imagine. . . . I was tired and wet and hungry and bad weather travelling is
exhausting to the mind and to the body. . . . We pitched camp in a downpour amid the mutual recriminations of all the servants who had had a hard time too and vented their displeasure on each other. There was nothing for it but to hold one's tongue, do the work oneself, and having seen that the horses were fed, I went to bed supperless because no one would own that it was his duty to light the fire! It was miserable I must say and this morning was just as bad. All the ropes were like iron after the rain and the tents weighed tons and as I splashed about in the deep grass . . . I thought I was a real idiot to go travelling in tents. . . . What my servants needed last night was a good beating and that's what they would have got if I had been a man—I seldom remember being in such a state of suppressed rage! . . .

North of Hama, April 22, 1905

I shall not soon forget the Cilician plain. . . . At the hands of Turkish muleteers I suffer tortures. They get into camp and when they have unloaded the mules they sit down on one of the packs and light a cigarette with an air of impartial and wholly unconcerned benevolence. I've gone to the length of dislodging them with the lash of my crop, freely applied. It makes no difference; they stroll on to the next pack and take up a position there smiling cheerfully. . . .

When she reached Adana, her luck changed. She was recommended a new servant: Fattuh, an Armenian Catholic with a wife in Aleppo. Fattuh was destined to become Jeeves to Gertrude's Wooster. She was soon writing home that he “would have been a prime minister or a commander in chief if he hadn't happened to be an ignorant Syrian peasant.”

April 24, 1905

I have taken on from Mr. Lloyd one of his servants whom he does not want any longer. His name is Fattuh and he is to be
general director of the transport and spare hand all round . . . . He seems very capable and has an excellent character from Mr. Lloyd, and my transport arrangements have not been going well for the last fortnight.

As the days passed, the problems melted away.

Konia, May 12, 1907, Letter to Chirol

There's one most eminently satisfactory peg on which to hang travel and that is the man [Fattuh] I now have with me. His allegiance is divided between George Lloyd and me—I cannot decide which of us he adores the most, but I fear it is George Lloyd. However, I am content to have him for a rival. Once in a life-time one gets hold of such a man, and not always so often. He is engaged in making all my arrangements for two months in the Kara Dagh, not an easy matter, I can assure you, in this country where the very first essentials of existence cannot be found. I would rather organise 50 commissariats in the desert than one in Asia Minor. The people seem themselves to live on bread alone . . . a lamb is quite out of the question. . . . I'm going to take a flock of sheep up with me to the Kara Dagh, and Fattuh is to be shepherd as well as butler, head stableman, excavator and friend. . . .

Binbirkilise, May 13, 1905

. . . My clothes arrived from Smyrna! If you had roughed it for 4 months with 2 tiny mule trunks you would realize what that meant. All things are by comparison and one evening when I put on a skirt that originally came from Paris, I felt almost too smart to move. . . . My servants are so charming. And then Fattuh, bless him! the best servant I ever had, ready to cook my dinner or pack a mule or dig out an inscription with equal alacrity—the dinner is what he does least well. . . .

Dedicated to Gertrude's well-being, Fattuh was to accompany her on most of her travels thereafter. She would take good care of him when he fell ill at Binbirkilise two years later, and in 1919, when Aleppo was suffering badly from Turkish oppression, she sought him out to check on his circumstances. They were every bit as hard as she had feared. “Fattuh . . . has been through an awful time. He has lost everything he had . . . and now he has only a horse and a small cart with which he brings in wood to sell in Aleppo. . . . We have had such happy times together. . . . My poor Fattuh.” She did what she could: gave him money and helped him rent a garden to grow his vegetables.

As Gertrude traveled, she investigated people and archaeological sites, took note of any Turkish barracks, and traveled far beyond help, accompanied only by male guides and camel drivers. She would spend up to ten or twelve hours in the saddle, then write her letter home and her abbreviated diaries. Having become a famous person, as soon as she arrived at a town or city and announced her presence, she would be pressed to take up residence in consulates and embassies. There, over dinner, she would add to their knowledge of the most recent tribal affiliations and enmities. A writer of innumerable letters, she would take the opportunity to send information by diplomatic bag to the Foreign Office.

As early as 1905, Gertrude's name was recognized throughout Britain as the country's best-known traveler. By 1915, she became the interpreter of all reports received from Central Arabia. Lord Cromer, a former British consul general in Egypt, later wrote that “Miss Gertrude Bell knows more about the Arabs and Arabia than almost any other living Englishman or woman.”

By the outbreak of war, her encyclopaedic knowledge had benefitted from her pioneer journey into unknown territory culminating in the interval in Hayyil. She had put on the map a line of wells and a mass of new information accumulated about the tribal elements from the Hejaz railway to Sirhan and Nefud. She brought the latest news about the state of the
House of Rashid, and its relations with the Sauds. Her friend Dr. David Hogarth, later the president of the Royal Geographical Society, wrote of Gertrude: “The jaded traveller, writing in April 1914 her diary and letters at Bagdad, had no suspicion that, in little more than a year, the knowledge and experience acquired during the past four months would become of national value.”

In 1900, on one of her first expeditions from Jerusalem, Gertrude was already “deep in intrigues.” She had decided to go to some ruined towns north of Salkhad. She would need to travel over the Jebel Druze mountains, where she wanted to meet the Druze, a supposedly dangerous tribe feared by the Turks, whose protection she would need to go farther. Meanwhile, she needed a permit from the Turks, and in order to conceal her real intentions she told them she wanted to go to Salkhad.

Bosrah, May 2, 1900

I went first to see the Mudir,
*
whom I found sitting in his arched and shaded courtyard. He gave me coffee and negotiations began.

“Where was I going?”

“To Damascus.”

“God has made it! there is a fine road to the west with such and such places in it, very beautiful ruins.”

“Please God I shall see them! but I wish first to look upon Salkhad.” (This is in the heart of the Druze country, where they [the Turkish authorities] don't want me to go.)

“Salkhad! there is nothing there at all, and the road is very dangerous. It cannot happen.”

“It must happen.”

“There has come a telegram from Damascus to bid me to say the Mutussarif fears for the safety of your Presence.” (This isn't true.)

“English women are never afraid.” (This also isn't true!)

“I wish to look upon the ruins.” And so on and so off, till finally I told him I was going nowhere to-day and he said he would come and see me later.

We parted, he saying “You have honoured me!” and I “God forbid!”

Jebel Druze, May 3, 1900

I've slipped through their fingers, and as yet I can scarcely believe in my good fortune. . . . Last night . . . as I was sitting reading in my tent, I heard the voice of the Mudir. I blew out my light and when Hanna came to tell me of his coming, I sent him a message that I was very tired and had gone to bed. I heard this conversation:
Hanna.
“The lady has been awake since the rising of the sun; all day she has walked and ridden, now she sleeps.”
Mudir. “
Does she march to-morrow?”
Hanna.
“I couldn't possibly say, Effendim.”
Mudir.
“Tell her she must let me know before she goes anywhere.”
Hanna.
“At your pleasure, Effendim.”. . . I hastily re-arranged my plans. He knew I was going to Salkhad and when he found that I had flown, he would send after me along that road as far as he dared; I decided, therefore, to strike for a place further north, Areh, where . . . a powerful Druze sheikh lived. . . . At two Hanna called me and I got up into the shivering night. By three I was ready, and the packing up began under the stars. . . . At 4 we were off. It was a ticklish business finding our way in the dark round the walls to the east. . . . At last . . . I hit on the Jemurrin road. . . . Oh! it seemed long to the first Druze village.

The Druze made her welcome and became her firm favorites among the tribes.

Areh, May 3, 1900

I told them my tale and how I escaped from the government and came to them, interrupted by many interjections of welcome and
assurance that there was no government here (Turks, that means), and that I was safe with them. . . . The sense of comfort and safety and confidence and of being with straight speaking people, was more delightful than I can tell you. . . . I asked if I could see the Sheikh. “Sheikh!” said they, “Yahya Beg is the head of all the Druzes in the land, of course you must visit him.” So we went off . . . Hammad and I finger in finger, and as we went he told me that the Beg had been five years in prison in Damascus and had just been let out, three weeks ago, and warned me that I must treat him with great respect. . . . And indeed I would defy any one not to treat Yahya Beg with respect. He is the most perfect type of the Grand Seigneur, a great big man (40 to 50, I suppose) very handsome and with the most exquisite manners. . . . He piled up his cushions for me on the floor and I waited till he sat down, very politely, for he's a king, you understand, and a very good king too, though his kingdom doesn't happen to be a large one.

Gertrude traveled on north, deciding to make a considerable diversion from the route in order to visit Palmyra.

Palmyra, May 20, 1900

. . . It began to be very cold. . . . I put on gaiters, a second pair of knickerbockers and a covert coat under my thick winter coat, rolled myself up in a blacket and a cape and went to sleep. . . . As we drew near Palmyra, the hills were covered with the strangest buildings, great stone towers, four stories high. . . . They are the famous Palmyrene tower tombs. At length we stood on the edge of the col and looked over Palmyra. I wonder if the wide world presents a more singular landscape. It is a mass of columns. . . . Beyond them is the immense Temple of Baal; the modern town is built inside it and its rows of columns rise out of a mass of mud roofs. And beyond all is the desert, sand and white stretches of salt and sand again, with dust clouds whirling over it. . . . It looks like the white skeleton of a town, standing knee deep in the blown sand.

The extra journey brought a couple of comical incidents.

Karyatein, May 17, 1900

Yesterday I fell off. I was sitting sideways in my saddle with a map in one hand and a parasol in the other when suddenly my horse began to trot. I hadn't even got the reins in my hands, so I jumped off, much to the amusement of my soldiers.

Caravans crossing the desert tend to accumulate hangers-on in the form of travelers seeking protection along the way. On the return journey from Palmyra, now in the company of Sheikh Muhammad of the ‘Agail Arabs and his raggle-taggle caravan—“the wildest, unkemptest camel drivers . . . carrying a club or an enormous lance 12 feet long”—she encountered a couple of pleasant tourists she knew. Miss Blount and Miss Grieve looked aghast at Gertrude's company but invited her into their horse-drawn carriage for tea and gingerbread biscuits.

May 23, 1900

. . . A carriage, driving across the desert and containing 2 Englishwomen whom I had met in Jerusalem! There they were very neat and tidy, with their dragoman on the box and their mules following behind with crowds of tents. I was glad to see them, for I liked them and it's pleasant to meet someone in the desert, but I felt rather disreputable with a troop of ‘Agail on their dromedaries round me and no dragoman and no nothing! . . . I wouldn't really have changed places with them and I prefer a Sheikh from Nejd to a dragoman from Jerusalem as travelling companion. . . . I wish I could manage to travel on the approved lines, but the fates are against me. I had laid all my plans for coming back from Palmyra like a lady, but no! it was not to be.

Gertrude completed her expedition a much more experienced desert traveler.

May 24, 1900

We were only seven hours from Karyatein. . . . I came in the last hour or two on Ahmad's camel—it's the greatest relief after you have been riding a horse for 8 or 9 hours to feel the long comfy swing and the wide soft saddle of a camel beneath you.

June 10, 1900

. . . You know, dearest Father, I shall be back here before long! One doesn't keep away from the East when one has got into it this far.