The Mule on the Minaret (56 page)

‘Even if he were thirty years older than herself?'

‘Even if he were forty years older than herself, which very well he might be.'

‘So it is really every other rank that you approve.'

‘Why, yes, now that you point it out. Though it had not occurred to me before. Yes, that is how it is, every other rank. Captain, Colonel, General: yes. Subaltern, Major, Brigadier: no.'

‘General is, alas, beyond me. But Colonel. If I try very hard I think I could become a Colonel.'

‘That is a worthy ambition for you, my idle Captain.'

‘Then I will achieve it, my beautiful Annabelle; and if I do, will you prefer me then to that ridiculous French flying man?'

‘But he is not ridiculous. It is you who are being ridiculous to call him so. You are jealous of him because I respect him as an honourable man, which you, my charming and wicked Captain, alas, are not.'

‘You say I am not honourable; while he is. But is it honourable to court you because you are rich. He wants to marry you, yes; but would he want to marry you if you were poor?'

‘My silly Captain; it is you now who are ridiculous. Would he love me if I were poor? Who could love me if I were poor? I would not be myself if I were poor. Would you yourself pay me these flattering, discreditable attentions if my fingers were not manicured?' And she shook her fingers before his eyes. ‘If my hair did not shine. If the powder did not lie smoothly on my cheeks; if the black pencil did not mark my eyebrows; if garnets did not dangle from my ears; if garnets did not match them round my neck; if the figure that a kind providence has given me were not accentuated and embellished by a master's craftsmanship? And do you not think it is a little unworthy of a man who claims to love a woman not to want to see what he calls her beauty enhanced perpetually? If he cannot himself afford so to enhance it, should he not be grateful to the parent whose money can do this for her. If a man is poor, if he cannot give a wife all that he would wish to give her, is he not wise to seek a bride who is able out of her own resources to adorn herself? Would it not be ignoble in him to seek a wife who would, through marriage to him, become a drudge, a scarecrow? Would that be generous in him? Surely it is more honourable to seek a wife who is able to adorn herself; so that he can offer her not only the honourable estate of marriage, but through her parents the means with which to make it glamorous. Would you not call that honourable, my wilful Captain?'

It was the familiar eighteenth-century badinage, but there was an undercurrent of animosity. There was a sharpness, a readiness, a will to wound that had not been there before. Yes, there was a change in Beirut. He had a sudden feeling that Farrar's life here had gone sour on him.

This feeling was stressed during the conference on the following morning. Once again Stallard opened the proceedings. ‘Many of you will remember last November in Cairo. I told you that I had come out here not to instruct but to be instructed. That I had more to learn from you than you had to learn from me. The only thing I said that I could show you was how your problems fitted into the
overall pattern of the war. We in London, and those others of us who are in Washington, have a sense of the global picture which you here in the Middle East cannot expect to have. That does not minimize the importance of your problems. It only places them in a different focus; so that once again I am going to say very little now. I am going to listen to you all in turn and then at the end I will make a final estimate, showing you how I see your problems in terms here of the all-in picture. Last November I learnt a lot and I hope that as a result of what I learnt you have found a readier, a more sympathetic response from us in London. I trust that the next year will show results equally beneficial to us all. I am now going to ask you, centre by centre, to give me your appreciation of the particular issues with which you have to deal.'

Iraq came third upon the list. Reid's speech followed the line on which he and Mallet had agreed. ‘Some of you,' he said, ‘may remember a little of what I said in Cairo last November. I was then speaking in terms of Beirut. I explained how different our position was in the Lebanon and Syria from yours in Baghdad, Cyprus, Jerusalem and Cairo. Each of those countries were part of the British Raj and in each of them, in consequence, a security organization had been built up well before the war began. Lebanon and Syria on the other hand had been a part of the French Raj. We were treated with very great suspicion. In Syria and Lebanon, we had no organization before 1941. We had to start from scratch. I had suspected what a difference it was, but I did not then know that I was going to be posted to Baghdad. In Iraq we had a twenty-year-old organization.'

He explained in detail where the difference lay. In every district there were men whom they could trust. They had also at their disposal compatriots who knew the country, who had worked there in oil, in business and in banks. They had moreover a government that was co-operative; that relied on them for its maintenance. That government had had and still had its enemies. And the number and strength of those enemies determined the extent of the government's reliance and dependence on them. Those facts, he argued, were decisive in the direction of their centre's work. ‘We have,' he went on, ‘two jobs of work to do there. We have the immediate and all important job of making our contribution to the war effort, but we have also a long view to take. We have to remember that Iraq is
going for many years to play an important part in our policy in the Middle East. Iraq is going to be very vital to our interests, to our whole national economy. We want a strong and independent Iraq, but we want an Iraq whose interests are identified with ours.

‘A year ago, we faced the possibility of battle on our frontiers. There is now no such danger. There are very few active troops there. We have a skeleton force. We have only as many troops there as are necessary to maintain order. We are doing police and garrison work. In view of the actual immediate conduct of the war, we have one function only, to provide safe transport of our aid to Russia. That is our function in terms of the all-in strategy of the war. But in terms of post-war conditions, we have a separate and important function, the safeguarding of the prosperity of Iraq. Let us put ourselves in the position of those Germans who are sitting at the Middle East desk. They are wondering what they can do to damage us in Iraq. They can no longer envisage an attack there, but there is an opening for sabotage on our oil installations in Kirkuk, and in Abadan; in regard to sabotage, we have to consider Persia and Iraq as one, as a part of Paiforce. I am surprised that no attempt at sabotage has been made. Perhaps the difficulties are greater than we suppose; they have a great many irons in a great many fires and I think that we, in defensive security, sometimes make the mistake of over estimating the forces that the enemy has at his disposal. We are so busy protecting ourselves that we hamper ourselves. We become immobile. I try to picture myself as a German Intelligence officer in Berlin wondering how he can most hinder our war effort and I imagine I would decide that the best way to do it would be by promoting internal dissatisfaction, by causing political unrest. In the north, there are the dissident Kurds; they have a genuine grievance; those grievances could be fostered. There is dissatisfaction in the army. There always has been dissatisfaction in the army. Think of the revolts there were during Iraq's ten years of Independence. There is also a great deal of poverty and privation among the people. There is a great disparity of wealth. There is a suitable breeding ground for Communism. At the moment, we do not feel that any genuine Communism, in the Russian sense, exists. There was no line of direct communication with Russia; as there was and is in Syria, through France. In Damascus, there are genuine Kremlin-trained Communists. It is not long before there will be such Communists in Baghdad. There are Russians in Tehran and on our frontier in Kannaquin. We
have to watch this closely. If I were a German intelligence officer, I should concentrate on three points: I should try to make trouble with the Kurds, I should foment disloyalty in the army, I should spread revolutionary propaganda among the proletariat. And in that respect German intelligence is not ill-equipped. As you all well know, there was a very competent and very popular German consul in Iraq before the war, who can give German intelligence a very useful briefing. He knows whom to approach, and how. That is where in my opinion there lies a danger to our security in Iraq. If we have political unrest there, our war effort will be hindered. The smooth flow of “Aid to Russia” will be impeded.

‘This imaginary German intelligence officer in Berlin is concerned only with the immediate effects of his subversive acts. He has no longer a long-range interest in Iraq, no equivalent for the Kaiser's dream of a Berlin-Baghdad axis. He does not care what happens there when the war is over. We do, however. We have a very real responsibility towards the future. We want to help our successors. After all, somewhere or other in Baghdad the work of our Centre will continue. When I came here first in the late autumn of 1941, the walls of the Spears Mission were placarded with notices: “Think, plan and act in terms of March 1942.” I should like to placard the walls of our Baghdad Centre with “Your work today will bear fruit in 1960”.'

Nigel Farrar followed Reid. He still looked thin and drawn, but there was vitality, there was animation in his manner. There was no trace of nervousness. He was completely self-assured. ‘I was not in Cairo for the conference last autumn,' he began, ‘but I read the shorthand transcript of Major Reid's report to you. I was greatly impressed by it. I have been out here three times as long as he has, but I learnt a great deal from it. I was astonished that he should have been able to catch so quickly the essence of our problems; to distinguish between the essential and the inessential. Yes, I was astonished, but then I reminded myself that...' he paused, he looked towards Reid, ‘we must remember that our Prof, is really a rather remarkable person.' A smile lit his face. There was warmth and affection in it. There was warmth and affection in the little ripple of laughter that ran round the audience. He was surprised as well as touched. He had the feeling that they all rather liked him. He had not expected that.

‘Remembering what he said at this conference eight months ago, I was very curious to hear what he would have to tell us now about
Iraq. I was confident that he would get inside the problems of that country as he had, in about the same amount of time, got inside ours in Beirut. I was expectant and I was not disappointed. I learnt a great deal from his report. I more than ever realized how different our work here in Beirut is from his in Baghdad and that of you others in Cyprus, Jerusalem and Cairo. The basic difference being this, that you have post-war responsibilities in your Centres. We have none.'

He checked. He looked round him. When he went on, his voice had dropped a tone. He spoke more slowly; he spoke more seriously.

‘The moment the war is over,' he said, ‘our office will close down. M.I.5's role will end. M.I.6 will take over in a restricted way. I cannot foresee how the French are going to handle their problems here, but I am convinced that they will insist on handling them alone. And I regret to say that I do not have the slightest confidence in their administration here.

‘I am almost a fanatical Francophile. You remember Josephine Baker's song: “J'ai deux amours, mon Pays et Paris”? I would not be so provincial; I would go further. I would say: “J'ai deux amours, mon Pays et la France.” France is the cradle and guardian of our culture. And many experts agree that her record as a colonizing power in Algeria, in the Far East, in the West Indies, and more recently in Morocco, is a very fine one. She is trying to work on the Roman Imperial pattern by which colonies become departments of Rome; eighteen hundred years ago a man born in Spain could count himself a Roman, and today a peasant born in Martinique thinks of himself as a Frenchman. Does a Moslem born in the Punjab think of himself as a Briton? That is a significant difference.

‘But here in Syria and the Lebanon the situation is different. Syria and the Lebanon were not colonies. The French only had a watching brief. The French had played a very small part in the Liberation of the two countries. They had only a small cultural stake here. The Syrians and Lebanese did not want them. They indeed appealed against their presence here. Most Arabists are agreed that it was a mistake to grant the French that mandate. It was part of a hurried packaged deal at the Peace Conference with Clemenceau and Lloyd George playing power politics with each other.

‘From the start it worked out badly. Although Syria and the Lebanon were not French colonies, the French here behaved as
though they were. Yet because they were uncertain of their tenure here, they did not behave in keeping with the traditions of their colonial past. They tried to get as much out of the country as they could during the period of their Mandate. We British can honestly say that we sent to the various Ministries in Iraq technical advisors whose job was to make themselves expendable. We did not try to make ourselves indispensable. The French did. They were rapacious and they tried to maintain their position by dividing the various tribal interests, playing off the one against the other. In my opinion the best Frenchman did not come out here. There was no equivalent for Lyautey. The French are paying the price now for the bad faith they showed. Perhaps bad faith are the wrong words to use. A mandate presented a new problem to them. They had not an effective technique for it.

‘Perhaps you will say that all this is beside the point. I do not think it is, because it explains why our problem in Beirut is different from that of the rest of you. We are not concerned with France's position here after the war. We are concerned only with the winning of the war. We do not take a long-term view here; as you others can. We want to avoid trouble between the French and the Syrians and the Lebanese because such trouble would hinder the war effort. I have a hunch that very shortly the French are going to do something very silly and chauvinistic here in Lebanon. I am trying hard to find out what it is; and if possible prevent it, but only because that act will be a nuisance in terms of the conduct of the war. It is no concern of mine whether the action that the French may take will ruin their chances of re-establishing their prestige and power after the war.