Beautiful, charming, tireless traveller. And also spy. Gertrude Bellwhich went down in history with the exotic and romantic name of Queen of the Desertremains a timeless example of independent woman, as cultured and ambitious as a person greedy for boundless knowledge can be. To revive the timeless myth of her on the big screen was the actress Nicole Kidman in the 2015 film directed by Werner Herzog: a sumptuous story full of bewitching images as her protagonist. The sunny sands of the desert, the fairy-tale and sometimes disturbing landscapes of the Middle East, the diplomatic intrigues, the thousand encounters with characters of shining beauty but also of dark and questionable nature, inaccessible even to British intelligence, are the backdrop.
Secret agent on Middle East mission
She brings into play her easy grace combined with determination and strength of character every time she has to resist the hostility of places and when she is in the presence of men of power who could without hesitation make her risk her own life. Yet her charm always wins and the apparent simplicity with which she manages to get away with it, even in the most delicate situations, will make it one of the British Secret Service agents most important and in sight of that era. Bourgeois by birth, accustomed to living in the midst of the comforts of her wealthy family of origin, she does not hesitate to face a thousand risks in order to pursue her dream: that of an archaeologist and art scholar but also a skilled photographer and cartographer. In fact, it will be thanks to her commitment that i will be fixed for the first time with absolute precision borders hitherto random dell’Iraq. But her fate, almost blowing a favorable and gentle wind throughout her entire existence, induces her to take delicate decisions of great political weight at the same time, making her an extraordinary protagonist of twentieth-century society in its infancy. For this reason, his versatility in learning languages is decisive, combined with his extraordinary ability to fit into unknown and always different environments, immediately absorbing their customs and culture.
Chi era Gertrude Bell
Gertrude was born on July 14, 1868 in Washington Hall, England, the daughter of members of the English upper class famous for owning numerous coal mines in County Durham. Endowed with a not at all submissive disposition, she enters early in contrast to the conservative mentality parents because of her rebellious spirit, of that insatiable hunger for adventure that drives her, very young, to leave without delay for Iran, where she intends to complete her studies on art and ancient civilizations. You go there counting on the hospitality of a maternal uncle and in short you fit so well into that context that you want to learn its language and customs. In the last years of the century she Gertrude visits the territories of western Asia, crossing Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, but also Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon. Her secret lies in knowing magically integrate everywhere vada, maintaining relationships of great friendship with the Bedouins of the desert, but also with emirs and sheikhs and this thanks to innate gifts of seduction, empathy and the great ease of speaking the local language fluently. Surprisingly, the girl would soon demonstrate that she could master Arabic, German, Persian, Turkish, French and Italian.
Gertrude he never got married, nor would her deeply free nature in any case have allowed her to have real romantic relationships. However it is said that it was in Iran that she fell in love with the handsome Henry Coghan, a simple employee of the British embassy. Theirs was a intense but very short love, seems interrupted by the hostile attitude of the young woman’s parents who, after all, had seized the opportunity to escape the too tight noose of that bond and the no longer sustainable monotony of those places, with her gaze now turned elsewhere, attracted by new explorations, from different worlds. Her passion as a historian led her to live in very close contact with women Arab populations, adopting the clothing of the nomads, attracted by the study of the archaeological ruins that spoke to her the persuasive and irresistible language for every lover of antiquity. She also used to hold numerous diary always very up-to-date and written with extreme care, also from a stylistic point of view. Testimonies of great depth and accuracy, which, dense as they were with interesting information enriched by visual suggestions, would have been translated into books of enormous cultural interest. Gertrude was one mixture of nobility and wildness, of shamelessness and reserve, of resourcefulness but also prudent evaluation of what was convenient to do in every circumstance. Suffice it to say that in his book “Journey to Syria” he makes us relive through documents and photographs the most profound aspects of a civilization hitherto considered barbaric and indecipherable.
The commitment to the independence of the Arab countries and the last few years
She traveled far and wide but thanks to some of her letters we learn that she did so accompanied by a large number of dromedaries and servants to drag along his incredible baggage which included, among other things, a tent equipped with a travel bed and even a bathtub. In 1909, during an excavation campaign in Karkemish, on the border between Turkey and Syria, he met a young Thomas Edward Lawrence, before he became the famous Lawrence d’Arabia, also passionate about archaeology. Their destinies would have crossed several times and it seems that Lawrence was not at all insensitive to the charm exercised by that woman with a strong character but with an enchanting appearance: she always rejected him, because the ancient decision to never have a man next to her was final, irrevocable and without appeal. But just together with Lawrence Gertrude continued relentlessly to create the conditions forindependence of countries such as Transjordan and Iraq, proving to be of enormous help to the British Army during the First World War. This earned her such high credibility as to make her the only woman, later wanted by Churchill also in the Orientalist group after the end of the war, with the post of political officer in the British armed forces.
She spent her last years in Baghdad, in a magnificent mansion on the banks of the Tigris River, where she was well known and known to all Iraqis as the ‘Uncrowned Queen of Iraq’. She had given everything to that country, going so far as to have one of the most important museums in the Arab world built a few years before her death: l’Iraq Museum. And this counting on the influential help of a close and special friend: the Egyptian King Faysal I. The years of existence that remain tell of a disappointed woman, embittered by the disproportionate colonialist aims of England, betrayed in her expectations of reunion and autonomy of the peoples, but above all oppressed by the unhealthy climate of Baghdad, which had caused her a serious malarial fever. It’s a summer day in 1926, July 12, when the body of the Queen of the Desert is found lifeless. At only 58 years old, after an existence marked by incredible overdoses of sensations and experiences, after having given every drop of energy, Gertrude Bell closed her eyes to her world because of her decision. She celebrating once again the noble value of a free and indomitable will, the very essence of her. As she had always done.