Gertrude Bell, the intrepid Victorian lady who wanted to decide the future of Mesopotamia

BarcelonaGertrude Bell died alone in her bed in Baghdad in July 1926. When her maid went to wake her, she found a bottle of sleeping pills on the bedside table. Bell was 57 years old and didn't have much hope for the future, even though she had just inaugurated the Baghdad Archaeological Museum. At that moment, perhaps she felt that she had been pushed aside by history, out of place, and had lost some of her power. She had been a desert queen without a crown, but she was no longer taken very seriously. "If I had to define her somehow, I would describe her as an English Bedouin. Bedouins are very conservative people who seek freedom and are always on the move," says Olivier Guez (Strasbourg, 1974). The French journalist and writer is the author of the book Mesopotamia (Tusquets), delves into the life of this wealthy British woman, adventurer, archaeologist, polyglot, climber, and spy who, always acting in the interests of the British Empire, sought to shape and define the future of a mythical and turbulent region.

Guez's interest in Bell dates back to her student days in London. "I learned about her in my Middle Eastern history class at the London School of Economics, and she was presented to me as the embodiment of what the British Empire had been," she says. Guez traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and came across Bell's name on several occasions. "I realized that Gertrude Bell had led an extraordinary life. She came from a very wealthy family, had a brilliant career at Oxford, and undertook journeys that few women ever made. She spoke Arabic and Persian. I decided to write a book after reading Hormuz"From Jean Rollin, and from seeing the photograph of the 1921 Cairo Conference, where Bell appears among men whom Winston Churchill ironically dubbed the 'Forty Thieves,'" Guez explains.

Bell's Sandcastles

Bell shared many things with his friend TE Lawrence, twenty years his junior, to whom filmmaker David Lean dedicated the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), but she is nowhere near as well-known. Both fled the straitjacket of British society and closed a door when they left England. "I am convinced that Bell felt she had betrayed her origins and hadn't done what was expected of her. She wanted to reinvent herself and make history, but when she was left out, there was only a void. In contrast, the other servants of the Empire remained British; they didn't try to be Jamaican or Arab," says Guez.

"Bell is less well-known than Lawrence, not so much because she was a woman, but because she didn't write The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), which is a work of art. Furthermore, Lawrence was fortunate to have a magnificent film adaptation. Books and a film have also been made about Bell. The Queen of the Desert (2015), directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicole Kidman, but it wasn't as successful," says the journalist and writer. Bell's geopolitical dream has turned out to be quite disastrous. "The Hashemite-led Kingdom of Iraq was decapitated by the 1959 revolution, and since then, dictatorships and wars have followed... Nothing remains of the geopolitical monster he wanted to build because it was completely artificial. Bell dedicated all his energy, his entire life, to building a sandcastle," he asserts.

Guez also delves into Bell's private life and love affairs: "I was interested in the dichotomy between the powerful woman and the woman blocked from a romantic, sensual, and emotional point of view." Bell fell passionately in love, but was unable to consummate any relationship. She did what she wanted because she was resourceful and highly intelligent, but she wasn't a feminist; she was even against women voting. She was very conservative. "I think her personal life is as important as geopolitics. Bell would never have placed so much importance on Mesopotamia if she had married and been happy in her marriage. She would have done much quieter things. Many other men who appear in the book were also unmarried or not in love with their wives, because their partner was the Empire; they were simply trying to reconcile their professional lives with their families," concludes the author. Mesopotamia.