Page 157 - Life of Gertrude Bell

HAIL *39

she told them, and asked again for a rafiq. But the eunuch told her
that nothing could be done. ‘I went to the men’s tent (after
prayer) and spoke my mind ... without any Oriental paraphrases
and, having done so, I rose abruptly and left them sitting - a thing
which is only done by great shaikhs, you understand.’ That
evening Sayid the eunuch returned with £200 and told her she
could go. With great dignity she replied that she had no intention
of leaving that night but wished to see the town in daylight next
day, after which she would go on her way. She was shown the
sights next day with great ceremony, and took tea with Turkiyyeh
and Fatima.
Her subsequent description shows that she had absorbed much
in her confined stay:

The narrow strip of palm gardens ... between the twin ridges
of Jabal Sumra widens out as it issues from the gorge, and in
the verdure lies the town of Hail. To the south west a few
walled palm groves, planted in the shining mirage of the plain,
rise fantastically green against the black crags. To the south
the plain has its way. It is as though you looked over die level
floor of the world ... Hail as it stands today is of comparatively
recent date but it preserves a traditional architecture which goes
back, I make no doubt, to very early times. Arab princes before
the Prophet must have received the poets of the Age of
Ignorance in just such palaces as those in which the Shaikhs of
Jabal Shammar hold their audiences. The battiemented ring of
mud wall encircles Hail, the line broken at regular intervals by
ruined towers, battiemented also, machicolated, narrowing
upwards like wingless windmills ... Dominating the city, the
great round towers of the Qasr, the Amir’s palace, crown the
massive defences which guard the secrets and the domestic
tragedies of the Rashid. You pass under the bastion formed by
the summer palace of the Amir Muhammed ... and so through
the Medina Gate under the watchful eye of its slave gate­
keepers ... Though it is a town, like any other, of streets and
houses, Hail retains something of the wilderness. There is no
clatter of civic life. Silent ways are paved with desert dust...
the creak of wheels is not heard. The noiseless slow footfall of
the camel is all the traffic here ... Since 1893 no European had
set eyes on Hail... Three times in the last eight years the
grown men of the Rashid have fallen to the sword of one of