Page 160 - Gertrude Bell (H.V.F.Winstone)

140 GERTRUDE BELL

their own slock, their bodies scarcely cold, thrust hastily into
the deep wells of the Qasr, their women given no interval to
mourn husband and child before they were portioned out
among the usurpers ...
When I returned again to Damascus the man of Najd came
to me and said: ‘Have you news of that which has passed in
Hail since you left? Of Ibrahim?* Ibrahim was him who
received me in the Shammar city. ‘No, God save you,’ said I.
‘But what has befallen Ibrahim ... ?’ He looked at me in silence
and drew his fingers across his throat.
The life of the town is untouched by this blood strife. What
the Shaikhs do may be reprehensible but they are the Shaikhs ...
Under their leadership the Shammar tribes have lorded it over
northern Arabia ... my gatekeeper was Chesb, booty of war,
but he seemed to have identified himself with the interests of
his new masters. He was not behind the men of Hail in piety ...
His chant woke me every morning before sunrise. ‘Allahu
akbar, Allahu akbar — God is great, God is great. There is no
God but God. And Mohammed is the prophet of God. God is
great. God is great.’ Low and soft, borne on the scented breeze
of the desert, the mighty invocation, which is the Alpha and
Omega of Islam, sounds through my memory when I think of
Hail.
‘I go to Baghdad,’ she wrote with relief on leaving the city of
A1 Rashid. The road was infested with lawless tribesmen who
were up in arms against the Turks, and there were some nasty
moments, but within a fortnight she and her companions had
made their way along the ancient road of the Persian pilgrims,
and she was in sight of Najaf and familiar landmarks.

More letters awaited her in Baghdad. Doughty-Wylie had written
to his famous uncle to tell him of Gertrude’s journey and to pass
on her good wishes. ‘I wrote to my uncle and he thanks you and
wishes you a safe journey. It’s troubled me before but it is now
worse ...And the desert has you —you and your splendid
courage, my queen of the desert—and my heart is with you ... If
I was young and free, and a very perfect knight, it would be more
fitting to take and kiss you. But I am old and tired and full of a
hundred faults ... ’
The syntax became positively wild. ‘... you are right,-not