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Queen of the Desert
The life of Gertrude Bell, 1868 - 1926
by Barbara J. Euser
      

Excerpts:

     The thin woman with the aquiline nose sat astride her camel as it knelt outside the largest tent in the encampment. It was 1909 and she was dressed in a long, split riding skirt and wool jacket. A pith helmet wrapped in a long cotton kefiyah covered her thick, curly red hair and protected her face from the blowing desert sand. Gertrude Bell waited confidently for someone from the sheikh’s entourage to invite her into his tent. She had arrived unannounced, but she knew she would be received by the leader of this tribe, just as she had been received by the sheikh of every other tribe she had visited in her previous traverses of the Arabian desert.
     A tribesman dressed in robes with wild, matted hair and beard arrived. At his invitation, Gertrude dismounted and strode energetically into the leader’s tent. Sheikh Muhammad el Abdullah introduced himself by giving his relationships to other tribes in the area. Gertrude introduced herself as an Englishwoman, no other kinship required. Muhammad was tall and handsome with his black mustache and regal bearing. Bell knew he was also ruthless when it came to dealing with his enemies, and any traveler in the desert not known to be a friend was assumed to be an enemy. She therefore paid an obligatory call on every encampment she encountered. Not every sheikh would become her friend, but the ones who did were loyal friends for decades.
     In 1909, Bell was the only European woman making exploratory excursions alone into the remote recesses of the Arabian desert. She carried mapping tools and charted the regions she crossed, thus filling in blank spots on the maps of the British Survey. By training an historian and archeologist, she designed her travels to explore known archaeological sites and detoured whenever she heard rumor of new sites to be explored. Bell traveled by camel with a local guide and an entourage with tents, camping and cooking gear, photographic and mapping equipment, and weapons for self-protection.
     In the decades she spent in Arabia, Gertrude would become a confidante of sheikhs, mentor to T.E. Lawrence, architect of the boundaries of modern-day Iraq and advisor to Iraq’s first king. . . .

 


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