A Woman in Arabia (18 page)

With the courage that characterized her entire life, she accepted that she had broken the rules and that the rules were on the side of the marriage vow. Gertrude had reached the crossroads of her life. She searched for escape and found it, as always, in the desert. She decided that she would depart on a long, hard expedition. He would have to focus on her and be aware of the dangers she ran. She left six weeks after his own departure followed by his letter—“. . . you very clever and charming person—and you in your desert.” She resolved that if she could not write him private letters, she would keep a diary just for him. It would be the account of the adventures and dangers she intended to search out, and she would send it to him later, when she could do so.

Damascus, December 11, 1913, Letter to Chirol

I shall be glad to go. I want to cut all links with the world, and that is the best and wisest thing to do.
The road and the dawn, the sun, the wind and the rain, the camp fire under the stars,
and sleep, and the road again
—we'll see what they can do. If they don't cure, then I know of nothing that can. . . . Oh, Domnul, if you knew the way I have paced backwards and forwards along the floor of hell for the last few months, you would think me right to try for any way out. I don't know that it is an ultimate way out, but it's worth trying. As I have told you before, it is mostly my fault, but that does not prevent it from being an irretrievable misfortune—for both of us. But I am turning away from it now, and time deadens even the keenest things.

On the eve of his departure to Albania, Gertrude wrote to Doughty-Wylie of her plans to undertake an epic journey in one of the most dangerous parts of the desert. Dick was as worried as she could wish. He wrote back, “I am nervous about you . . . south of Maan and from there to Hayil is surely a colossal trek. For your palaces your road your Baghdad your Persia I do not feel so nervous—but Hayil from Maan—Inshallah!”
*

Her destination would be Hayyil, the almost mythical city described by Charles M. Doughty, Dick's uncle, in his famous
Arabia Deserta,
the book that had accompanied her on all expeditions. She proposed to travel sixteen hundred miles by camel, taking a circular route south from Damascus to central Arabia, then east across the interior and the shifting sands of the Nefud, becoming the first Westerner to cross that angle of the desert. She would make her way to the Misma Mountains, a coal-black landscape with flint pinnacles as high as ten-story buildings. She would then descend into the plateau of granite and basalt at the heart of which the snow-white medieval city of Hayyil floated like a mirage. Her return journey would be north to Baghdad and west across the vast Syrian Desert, back to Damascus. Much of the journey would be through unmapped territory and areas where her caravan was likely to come under tribal attack.

It was as daunting a prospect politically as geographically. Britain was supplying arms and money to the chieftain Ibn Saud, allied to the puritan Wahhabi sect of Islam. The Ottoman
government supported the opposing dynasty of Ibn Rashid of the Shammar federation, perhaps the cruelest, most violent tribe of Arabia, centered on Hayyil. The trip would allow her to provide the Foreign Office with detailed new information at a critical moment, with both sides poised to strike to take control of the Arabian Peninsula.

She had already warned the British government that Ibn Saud was better as a friend than as an enemy. She set out with the ultimate intention of reaching Ibn Saud and making contact with him in his stronghold of Riyadh.

Among the distinguished men who warned her against the journey were Sir Louis Mallet, future ambassador to Constantinople; her old friend David Hogarth; and the Indian government's resident in the Persian Gulf, Lieutenant Colonel Percy Cox, a name that would come to mean much to her later. Defiantly, Gertrude decided that she would go nevertheless.

Her first weeks in Damascus were taken up with organizing the most elaborate caravan she had ever undertaken, hiring her crew, buying gifts for sheikhs in the bazaars, and choosing seventeen camels. She wired her father for an extra £400 ($55,000 RPI adjusted), a not inconsiderable sum. She also visited the Rashid's sinister agent in the city, to whom she paid £200 ($27,500), getting in return a promissory note that she intended to cash in Hayyil to fund her return journey.

She had started keeping parallel diary entries. The first would be a cursory memorandum written daily while the memory was fresh. Reading these factual, ill-organized jottings, full of Arabic words and phrases, gives a vivid picture of Gertrude, tired and dirty after a day's march, her hair falling out of its pins, scribbling away at her folding desk while Fattuh put up her bedroom tent, unpacked, and arranged her possessions. These notes contained positions of water holes and Turkish barracks, routes through unmapped areas and other information that she would pass on to the Foreign Office. They were also the raw material for her upbeat letters home.

The second diary, with entries written a few days apart, was a thoughtful and polished account of her journey and feelings, kept solely for Dick—with the proviso that his wife might read
them—and portraying her as a shade less robust in her attitude to dangers and setbacks. She bundled up these diary entries and sent them to Dick when she arrived at an outpost or town big enough to have a post office. As she now had to avoid the Turkish soldiers who were looking out for her, she often had to carry her papers with her for weeks until she could send them.

She traveled on through all kinds of danger and difficulty but once again fell under the spell of the desert, terrifying and beautiful, with its roaring silence and jeweled nights.

The caravan left Damascus on December 16, 1913. The journey was marred by torrential rain and bitter winds. Not a week later came a tribal attack in which shots were fired, and they were nearly robbed of all their rifles and possessions. Not long afterward, her camp was invaded by Turkish soldiers who demanded permits she did not have. They arrested her faithful servant, Fattuh, and her guide, Muhammad al-Ma'rawi. She managed to persuade the local governor, the qaimaqam, to get them released but was ordered to telegraph for permits to travel before the caravan could leave. Unfortunately, the British ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Louis Mallet, was the very man who had warned her against making the journey. He told her that His Majesty's Government would disclaim all responsibility for her if she went farther. It was no more than she had expected, and she wrote in her diary that night: “Decided to run away.” Before she left she was obliged to write a letter absolving the Turks from responsibility for her welfare.

The following extracts are taken from Gertrude's diary, which was written expressly for Dick. Since he spoke Arabic, Gertrude did not bother to translate every word.

January 16, 1914

I have cut the thread. . . . Louis Mallet has informed me that if I go on towards Nejd my own government washes its hands of
me, and I have given a categorical acquittal to the Ottoman Government, saying that I go on at my own risk. . . . We turn towards Nejd,
inshallah,
renounced by all the powers that be, and the only thread which is not cut though is that which runs through this little book, which is the diary of my way kept for you.

I am an outlaw!

February 11, 1914

Yesterday . . . we began to see landmarks; but the country through which we rode was very barren. In the afternoon we came to a big valley, the Wadi Niyyal, with good herbage for the camels and there we camped. And just at sunset the full moon rose in glory and we had the two fold splendour of heaven to comfort us for the niggardliness of the earth. She was indeed niggardly this morning. We rode for 4 hours over a barren pebbly flat entirely devoid of all herbage. They call such regions
jellad
. In front of us were the first great sand hills of the Nefud [al-Nafud]. And turning a little to the west we came down into a wide bleak
khabra
*
wherein we found water pools under low heaps of sand. The place looked so unpromising that I was prepared to find the water exhausted which would have meant a further westerly march to a well some hours away and far from our true road. We watered our camels and filled the water skins in half an hour and turned east into the Nefud. We have come so far south (the
khabra
was but a day's journey from Taimah) in order to avoid the wild sand mountains (
tu'us
they are called in Arabic) of the heart of the Nefud and our way lies now within its southern border. This great region of sand is not desert. It is full of herbage of every kind, at this time of year springing into green, a paradise for the tribes that camp in it and for our own camels. We marched through it for an hour or two and camped in deep pale gold sand with abundance of pasturage all about us, through the beneficence of God. We carry water for 3 days
and then drink at the wells of Haizan [Bir Hayzan]. The
Amir
, it seems is not at Hayyil, but camping to the north with his camel herds. I fear this may be tiresome for me; I would rather have dealt with him than with his
wakil.
*
Also report says that he informed all men of my coming but whether to forward me or to stop me I do not know. Neither do I know whether the report is true.

February 13, 1914

We have marched for 2 days in the Nefud, and are still camping within its sands. It is very slow going, up and down in deep soft sand, but I have liked it; the plants are interesting and the sand hills are interesting. The wind driving through it hollows out profound cavities,
ga'r
they are called. You come suddenly to the brink and look down over an almost precipitous wall of sand. And from time to time there rises over the
ga'r
a head of pale driven sand, crested like a snow ridge and devoid of vegetation. These are the
tu'us
. At midday yesterday we came to a very high
ta's
up which I struggled—it is no small labour—and saw from the top the first of the Nejd mountains, Irnan, and to the W. the hills above Taimah and all round me a wilderness of sandbanks and
ti'as
. When I came down I learnt that one of my camels had been seized with a malady and had sat down some 10 minutes away. Muhammad and the negro boy, Fellah, and I went back to see what could be done for her but when we reached her we found her in the death throes. “She is gone” said Muhammad. “Shall we sacrifice her?” “It were best” said I. He drew his knife out, “
Bismillah allaha akbar!”
and cut her throat. . . .

We have a wonderfully peaceful camp tonight in a great horseshoe of sand, with steep banks enclosing us. It is cloudy and mild—last night it froze like the devil—and I feel as if I had been born and bred in the Nefud and had known no other world. Is there any other?

February 15, 1914

We came yesterday to a well, one of the rare wells on the edge of the Nefud, and I rode down to see the watering. Haizan is a profound depression surrounded by steep sand hills and the well itself is very deep—our well rope was 48 paces long. They say it is a work of the . . . first forefathers, and certainly no Beduin of today would cut down into the rock and build the dry walling of the upper parts—but who can tell how old it is? There are no certain traces of age, only sand and the deep well hole. We found a number of Arabs watering their camels, the 'Anazeh clan of the Awaji who were camped near us. The men worked half naked with the passionate energy which the Arabs will put into their job for an hour or two—no more. I watched and photographed and they left me unmolested, though none had seen a European of any kind before. One or two protested at first against the photography, but the Shammar with me reassured them and I went on in peace. We go two days more through the Nefud because it is said to be the safest road and I am filled with a desire not to be stopped now, so near Hayyil. My bearings are onto Jebel Misma, which is but a few day's journey from Ibn al Rashid. I want to bring this adventure to a prosperous conclusion since we have come so far
salinum
—in the security of God.

February 16, 1914

I am suffering from a severe fit of depression today—will it be any good if I put it into words, or shall I be more depressed than ever afterwards? It springs, the depression, from a profound doubt as to whether the adventure is after all worth the candle. Not because of the danger—I don't mind that; but I am beginning to wonder what profit I shall get out of it all. A compass traverse over country which was more or less known, a few names added to the map—names of stony mountains and barren plains and of a couple of deep desert wells (for we have been watering at another today)—and probably that is all. I don't know what
tete
[offer] the Rashid people will make to me when I arrive, and even
if they were inspired by the best will in the world, I doubt whether they could do more than give me a free passage to Baghdad, for their power is not so great nowadays as it once was. And the road to Baghdad has been travelled many times before. It is nothing, the journey to Nejd, so far as any real advantage goes, or any real addition to knowledge, but I am beginning to see pretty clearly that it is all that I can do. There are two ways of profitable travel in Arabia. One is the
Arabia Deserta
way, to live with the people and to live like them for months and years. You can learn something thereby, as he [Charles Doughty] did; though you may not be able to tell it again as he could. It's clear I can't take that way; the fact of being a woman bars me from it. And the other is Leachman's
*
way—to ride swiftly through the country with your compass in your hand, for the map's sake and for nothing else. And there is some profit in that too. I might be able to do that over a limited space of time, but I am not sure. Anyway it is not what I am doing now. The net result is that I think I should be more usefully employed in more civilized countries where I know what to look for and how to record it. Here, if there is anything to record the probability is that you can't find it or reach it, because a hostile tribe bars your way, or the road is waterless, or something of that kind, and that which has chanced to lie upon my path for the last 10 days is not worth mentioning—two wells, as I said before, and really I can think of nothing else. So you see the cause of my depression. I fear when I come to the end I shall not look back and say: That was worth doing; but more likely when I look back I shall say: It was a waste of time. . . . That's my thought tonight, and I fear it is perilously near the truth. I almost wish that something would happen—something exciting, a raid, or a battle! And yet that's not my job either. What do ineffective archaeologists want with battles? They would only serve to pass the time and leave as little profit as before. There is such a long way between me and letters, or between me and anything and I don't feel at all like the daughter of kings, which I am supposed here to be. It's a bore being a woman when you are in Arabia.