Page 239 - Life of Gertrude Bell

THE MANDATE 219
the better classes. Pas sans peine, though they meet one more than
half way ... I am now going to try a more ambitious scheme and
get the leading ladies to form a committee to collect among rich
families (themselves) funds for a small women’s hospital for the
better classes, about which some of them seem keen.’ Her relations
with the Arabs were based on much the same assumptions of
worth. As the shaikhs and men of the desert filtered through her
office, asking to see Cox or, later, Wilson, she would greet them
according to status and with unfailing excitement. There would
be a high-pitched greeting, the customary ‘Peace be upon thee’,
and then endless enquiries as to the health and prosperity of the
visitor and his family, accompanied by much gesticulation. If the
visitor was important, goodbyes would be prolonged and accom­
panied by many utterances of Fi avian illahl Go in the peace of
the Lord. If they were of lesser importance they would be sent on
their way with a mere riblab vmivaffaqab—bon voyage. When the
visitor had departed, the young Political Officers within earshot
would look out of the office doors leading on to the balconies and
repeat the performance to each other, simulating the gestures of
A1 Khatun, like Ibn Saud entertaining his desert warriors.

On December 18 th, 1919 Gertrude had written to her father to
tell him that she looked forward to a visit from him early in the
new year, that she had entertained thirty ladies to tea, was riding
a lot and generally enjoying life. There was, she said, no news of
demobilisation, but she hoped that they would get some of the
men out of the country before the hot weather came, though ‘I
shall miss all the nice people bitterly when they go’. She had been
to tea with one of her closest Arab friends, Hajji Naji, ‘the farmer
who takes no interest in politics as long as he is assured that we
won’t go’. Then came an aside which, in the light of what was to
happen in the months ahead, was to prove as prophetic as it was
contradictory:

The provincial magnates are going strongly against an Arab
Amir, I think, and even against an Arab Govt. They say they
don’t want to be rid of one tyranny in order to fall into the
clutches of another. I hope that is the way things will go, for I
don’t want a Court here and all the fuss and trouble. It could
not fail to be an impediment. However, that prospect is fading.
It’s a compliment to us isn’t it?