Desert Queen (60 page)

On Sunday morning, August 30, Gertrude was eating her breakfast of eggs and fresh figs when Talib appeared at her house. After florid inquiries as to her health and her family, he sauntered into the conversation. He regarded her as a sister and not as a member of the government, he said. Will you give me some advice? he asked coyly. She listened intently. He explained that he did not know whether to take financial support for his political party from the British Government. What did the Khatun think he should do? She pointed out that like his father, her father was a wealthy man, and like Sayid Talib, she too was doing valuable work for the government and justifiably taking a salary. “Rather than being indebted to any Tom, Dick or Harry, who would have a claim on you later,” she told him, he would be better off taking money “for services rendered.”

“I must say I liked and respected him,” she wrote somewhat naïvely to Hugh, “for having come to consult me about it. We’re often wondering what his real game is; though he has so far played perfectly straight—I’m sure he must wonder the same thing about us, though we’ve been equally straight. As long as he comes to me and talks openly it’s much easier to keep the balance level, but I’m not at all sure he would do it to anyone else. And so I stay, just on the chance of being useful.”

Talib was also being useful. His presence in Baghdad had calmed the angry townsmen; whether out of fear or respect was momentarily unimportant. Nevertheless, Gertrude still viewed him warily. If he hadn’t received financing from the British, she noted wryly, “he would get what he wanted by a system of blackmail, an act at which he’s adept.” Nevertheless, she told Hugh, “he’s bound to play a big part in the future and till that time comes we’ve got to try and keep him out of mischief.” Later, her own mischief would keep him from playing what some believed was his well-earned part.

E
xcept for some minor incidents, by late fall of 1920 the insurrection that began in May against the British had quieted down. It had cost Britain fifty million pounds and hundreds of British lives. More than ten thousand Arabs had been killed. Wilson’s tone had changed with the announcement of the mandate, but, as Gertrude noted, for the Arabs the change had come too late. They had already raised a storm of protest, and it was their own violent actions, the sheikhs believed, that had caused the turnaround. In fact, Gertrude acknowledged, “No one, not even H.M.G., would have thought of giving the Arabs such a free hand as we shall now give them—as a result of the rebellion!” A provisional government would soon be installed.

By the end of September Wilson was set to depart. The night before he left, he walked into her office to say goodbye. The two stood in her whitewashed room, he, tall and strapping, his dark hair slapped flat across his forehead; she, slim and almost delicate, her gray hair in a topknot and curls. She had won the game, Gertrude knew, but as teammates they had both been failures. She was “feeling more deeply discouraged than she could well say,” she told him. She “regretted acutely that they had not made a better job of their relations.”

He had come to apologize, Wilson said.

She held up her hand to stop him. It was as much her fault as his, Gertrude admitted. She hoped he wouldn’t carry away any “ill-feelings.”

He felt the same way, Wilson cordially replied. Then he left, still holding on to the dream of expanding the India Government’s power, believing, he later wrote, that “the eastward trend” of Britain’s responsibilities was “destined to increase.” Wilson went on to represent British oil interests as an official of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Later, he would become a Member of Parliament and a supporter of Adolf Hitler.

For the moment Gertrude felt only relief. “What he really thinks about it all Heaven alone knows,” she wrote to Hugh. “I have no reason to be satisfied with my part in the story and I suspect there’s nothing to choose between us, or if there is a choice I’m the more blame worthy because I need not have stayed when I found my views to be wholly divergent from his. Nor would I have stayed if I had known how deeply he resented my attitude.” But now that difficult part of her life had come to a close.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
EIGHT

Cox Returns

R
arely did Gertrude ready herself with such elation. Wearing a new silk dress, she pinned up her graying hair in a topknot, frothed the curls around her forehead, slipped on her favorite hat, smoothed her stockings, patted her pearls in place, grabbed her parasol and, tucking away some handkerchiefs for her chest cough, headed gaily for the train station.

It was only four-thirty
P.M.
, on Monday, October 11, 1920, but a large crowd had already gathered at Baghdad West, where she was ushered into the reception room and asked to wait. Within a short time some two dozen local dignitaries and the leading British officials joined her in the lounge. At precisely five-thirty, the British soldiers fired a seventeen-gun salute, but the wind carried off the sound in the opposite direction, and without other warning, the distinguished group was suddenly told to hurry along and take their places in the railed-off space near the platform. To the right stood Gertrude with the Judicial Officer, Sir Edgar Bonham Carter; the heads of the civil departments; the consuls and the religious leaders. To the left stood the Commander-in-Chief with his staff; Sayid Talib and the other deputies of the Constitutional Assembly; the Mayor; and the eldest son of the Naqib. The rest of the throng—British officers and their wives, Arab notables and others—were kept outside the enclosure.

A buzz of excitement fizzed the air, and Gertrude watched in triumph as the train pulled slowly into the station. After months of Wilson’s torturous rule, they were celebrating the return of Sir Percy Cox. But before anyone could let out whoops of cheer, the ceremonial duties had to be performed. With proper formality, the Commander-in-Chief, clad in khaki, walked forward to greet the new High Commissioner. Sir Percy, tall, smart, crisp in his snow-white uniform and gold-braid trim, emerged from the train, shook hands with General Haldane and stood at attention while the band played “God Save the King.”

“I thought as he stood there in his white and gold lace, with his air of fine and simple dignity that there had never been an arrival more momentous—never anyone on whom more conflicting emotions were centred, hopes and doubts and fears, but above all confidence in his personal integrity and wisdom,” Gertrude recalled later. With all eyes focused upon him, Cox strode into the enclosure, and as he did, Sir Edgar presented Miss Bell. Nearly giddy and flushed with joy, she curtsied deeply; it was all she could do to keep from crying.

Out of the train stepped her longtime friend Mr. Philby, serving as Cox’s deputy; Captain Cheesman, Cox’s personal secretary; and Lady Cox. Like everyone else, Gertrude stared in amazement at the wife of the High Commissioner. After a ten-hour journey through showers of dust, she looked, Gertrude said, “as if she had emerged from the finest bandbox—‘a miracle,’ ” the group told Lady Cox as they all exchanged warm greetings.

After each of the dignitaries in the enclosure was presented to Cox, a welcoming address was read by Jamil Zahawi, a famous Baghdad orator. Sir Percy responded in Arabic, saying that he had come “by order of His Majesty’s Government to enter into counsel with the people of the Iraq for the purpose of setting up an Arab Government under the supervision of Great Britain.”

This was the first time the name “Iraq” was used officially by the British, a deliberate decision by Sir Percy to recognize the Arabic identity of the future state. Iraq would belong to the Arabic people and be ruled by the Arabic people. His words aroused a swell of pride and a chorus of cheers from the people gathered around.

Charged by Lord Curzon to obtain “a stable spot in the Middle East” and redeem the country “from misrule and anarchy,” Cox planned to fulfill his mission at once. As the crowd interrupted his speech with murmurs of praise and words of agreement, he asked that “the people cooperate with him in the establishment of settled conditions” so that he could proceed immediately with his task.

Then, it was off to Sir Percy’s house. Lady Cox (who had brought some things for Gertrude, among them her fur coats, an afternoon gown for the winter, a billycock riding hat, a pair of black riding boots and more flower bulbs from Kent and Brydon), now the official hostess, supervised the servants as they brought in tea, but she soon dashed out to see the new home being built for the High Commissioner.

It was then that Gertrude, Philby and Cox sat down to talk, and the moment Sir Percy spoke, Gertrude felt the pain of the past few months wash away. He intended to form a provisional Arab Government at once, without waiting for a complete halt to the rebellion, which was still going on in more than a third of the country. He planned to set up an Arab Council, call on a local notable to serve as Prime Minister and have him head a provisional Cabinet made up of Arab Ministers (whom the British would choose). Cox himself would appoint a British Adviser to each of the Arab Ministers; and he wanted the cabinet to take on the job of preparing and holding the first general election. Gertrude, Philby and Cox all agreed how difficult it would be to find the right person to serve as Prime Minister, but Sir Percy thought that the Basrah politician Sayid Talib, with his substantial constituency, could do the job.

Hearing the name made Gertrude anxious. “You had better see people here and form your opinion,” she said, trying to hide her distaste for the nominee. “But whatever you do,” she promised Cox, “we will do our utmost to further. The main thing is to decide on something and get it done.” She knew she would not have to worry. Sir Percy never jumped to decisions but moved with caution and care. A seasoned statesman, the model of a British diplomat, he was a man who projected strength in his very presence and offered wisdom in whatever he said. And if he had his eccentricities, like his passion for birds or keeping a pet bear in his home, they made him all the more an Englishman. Cox belonged to that special world inhabited by her father and few other men; she held him in the highest esteem.

Respected by the Arabs (as he still is today) and sympathetic to their plight, Cox was the antithesis of the imperious Wilson, who had belittled her and the Iraqis for desiring independence. Only a few days after Wilson’s departure she felt as if she had awakened from a nightmare. “I didn’t realise till he had left how horribly oppressive it had been,” she admitted in a letter home. “One thing is certain. I’ll never again work for A.T. If he comes back here, I step out, that instant. I can’t work with any man as unscrupulous as he. I’m not the first; Mr. Dobbs had the same doubts.” So too did the able Mr. Philby, who had clashed with the arrogant Wilson years before in Basrah and refused to work for him under any circumstances. But as for Cox, she revered him: “It is quite impossible to tell you the relief and comfort it is to serve under somebody in whose judgment one has complete confidence,” she wrote in girlish wonder; “he brings a single-eyed desire to act in the interests of the people of the country.”

To her delight, at the dinner given by the Commander-in-Chief that evening, Sir Percy was seated beside her. Her excitement nearly heated up the drafty room—not enough, however, to keep from making her bronchitis worse. Nevertheless, early the following morning she made her way cheerfully to the Residency. Sir Percy summoned her almost at once. “We talked over some telegrams,” she reported to her father, “I trying to conceal the fact that it was a wholly novel experience to be taken into confidence on matters of importance!”

Returning down the hall, she found her own office deluged with visitors and letters, but it took her aback when she learned they had all come to express their anger: the notables invited to the welcoming ceremonies had been herded together, kept outside the privileged area, left to stand humiliatingly in the open dust. They hadn’t even had the opportunity to shake Sir Percy’s hand, they complained. One old sheikh cried furiously, “We came in love and obedience, and when we tried to get near His Excellency we were pushed away.” Kokus was enormously admired by the Arabs, but she knew this sort of rebuff could lead to a dangerous reaction. It was clear that something had to be done to heal the wounds.