Page 270 - Life of Gertrude Bell

244 GERTRUDE BELL
sharp; and her silver hair is not inharmonious with the persistent
pink in her delicate complexion ... She keeps the reins of con­
versation in her own hand. She speaks Arabic almost without
an accent, often mixing it with her English, and emphasising
it with a dogmatic though graceful gesture. Her energy and
agility amazed me.

The Syrian, who lived in America at the time, enjoyed the one-
sided conversation and seemed to take to Gertrude, especially
when she agreed to help him join Sir Percy’s expedition to Ujair
where he would be able to meet the acknowledged king of the
desert. I-Ic noted that Khatun chain-smoked and paced up and
down her office, opening a casement window, flouncing on her
divan, puffing and talking and calling him ‘Ameen Effendi’. And
he wrote: T was pleased. I was relieved. The Khatun, I said to
myself, is still a woman, Allah be praised. I admired what she
exhibited of her mind at the first meeting; and when she unveiled
a corner of her heart I was surprised.’ She told him: T am an Iraqi,
and I want to see the people of Iraq achieve their freedom and
independence ... ’ Rihani was Enlightened and amused’ by her.
‘But my admiration of her as a woman could hardly vie with my
doubt in her ability to manage the affairs of her new Kingdom,
let alone its turbulent tribes.’ He was entertained by her at her
home and in the Salaam Library, Iraq’s first public library, of
which she was president, and he spoke of her ‘thoughtfulness and
kindly disposition’. In the end he went ahead of Cox to Bahrain,
whence he joined Ibn Saud.
As formal government became established the British advisers
to Faisal’s Cabinet took over more of the work that had once
belonged to the High Commission and the Political Office before
it. Sir Percy Cox and his successor Sir Henry Dobbs, loyally
assisted by Gertrude, concerned themselves increasingly with
government in London and with countering the criticism of the
cost of propping up the Hashemite kings in Iraq, Transjordan and
the Hijaz. It was chiefly Gertrude, however, who to the bitter end
fought the critics of the King and the regime; her pen never lost
its power or her intellect its cutting edge. The Department of
Antiquities became her refuge from the disappointments of office
and from private sadness as the years went by. ‘She slipped back,’
said Janet Courtney, ‘to the quiet ways of history and archaeo­
logy.’ At first she was indispensable to the King, looking after