Improbable Women: Five Who Explored the Middle East

17. Joyous Journeys

189 17 Joyous Journeys Gertrude’s writing is suffused with such enthusiasm and joy that it is easy to lose sight of the difficulties and challenges she faced. The trips from Jerusalem were far from easy and bore their share of danger, but did not compare to the journeys in Mesopotamia and northern Arabia in either difficulty or danger. The latter trips leap over the line that divides travel from exploration. The first of these began on February 10, 1911, from Dumayr, a town northeast of Damascus. Her journey would actually take her southeast, but once again she was misleading the authorities, who were under the impression that she was headed for Palmyra in the company of four zaptiahs, Turkish police officers. In fact, her caravan consisted of fifteen, including Fattuh her cook and caravan master Ali, a desert postman who would be their guide, an old sheikh from Kubeisa who was returning home, four camel men, and seven merchants who were going across the Euphrates to buy sheep. She began the journey riding her mare, but when they were well into the desert, she mounted a riding camel. She is the most charming of animals. You ride a camel with only a halter which you mostly tie loosely round the peak of your saddle. A tap with your camel switch on one side of her neck or the other tells her the direction you want her to go, a touch with your heels sends her on, but when you wish her to sit down you have to hit her lightly and often on the neck saying at the same time: “Kh Kh Kh Kh,” that’s as near as I can spell it. The big soft saddle, the “shedad,” is so easy and comfortable that you never tire. You loll 190 • Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell about and eat your lunch and observe the landscape through your glasses: you might almost sleep.1 She has a knack for idyllic description, as when she describes their camp on the third night: “The name of the place is Aitha, there is a full moon and it is absolutely still except for the sound of the pounding of coffee beans in the tents of my traveling companions. I could desire nothing pleasanter” (270). Or, their departure on the sixth morning: We were off at five this morning in bitter frost. Can you picture the singular beauty of these moonlit departures! the frail Arab tents falling one by one, leaving the camp fires blazing into the night; the dark masses of the kneeling camels; the shrouded figures binding up the loads, shaking the ice from the water skins, or crouched over the hearth for a moment’s warmth before mounting. “Yallah , yallah, oh children!” cries the old sheikh, knocking the ashes out of his nargileh. “Are we ready?” So we set out across the dim wilderness, Sheikh Muhammad leading on his white dulul [riding camel]. The sky ahead reddens and fades, the moon pales and in sudden splendour the sun rushes up over the rim of the world. (273) And then an interesting remark: “To see with the eyes is good, but while I wonder and rejoice to look upon this primeval existence, it does not seem to be a new thing; it is familiar, it is a part of inherited memory” (273). There was little doubt that Gertrude was in command. Nine days into their march, they encountered sleet and generally inclement weather, and on the following day when Gertrude and the merchants were ready to start, the sheikh and her camel drivers were still in their tent, sitting over the coffee fire. Gertrude simply pulled out their tent pegs and brought the tent down on their heads, to the delight of the rest of her caravan. They continued south into what is now Iraq, passing to the west of Baghdad through Kubeisa where the old sheikh left them. They stopped at the Castle of Ukhaidir where Gertrude had stopped before, and she made corrections to her Joyous Journeys • 191 previous plan of the site in addition to measurements for the preparation of an elevation. She then cut directly across the desert to An Najaf in order to find rumored ruins and draw plans. It being March and the rainy season, much of this travel was in the rain or under the threat of rain. While this might seem a pleasant...