The Desert and the Sown

She most certainly could write, and as said, the relevance is still profound in today's world. I also enjoyed her subtle, clever British humor. Yes, I too would have appreciated a map and better quality for the pictures. Still, this book is worth every penny (and they are a modest number of pennies considering what you get in return)!

Of all the Westerners who decided to explore the Middle East in the last couple of centuries, none seemed to equal Gertrude Bell for her erudition as well as empathy for those who lived there. She writes with passion and wonderful descriptive powers, the subject quote being just one example. The title of the book is derived from Omar Khayyam: "The strip of herbage strown that just divides the desert from the sown." She undertook the journey described in this book in 1905, and declares her motivation in the first sentences: "To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel. The gates of the enclosed garden are thrown open, the chain at the entrance of the sanctuary is lowered, with a wary glance to right and left you step forth, and, behold! the immeasurable world." Later in the book she reports on the resonances from the native people to this sentiment: "...and when I meet the rare horseman who rides over those hills and ask him whence he comes, he will still answer: `May the world be wide to you! from the Arabs.'" Gertrude Bell was fleeing the restrictive atmosphere of Victorian England, ironically experiencing a sense of freedom amongst societies not generally known for female emancipation. The essential factor is unquestionably being "the other," that is, NOT being a member of a given society. Bell's motivation to leave her own society and experiences in the Middle East have always resonated with my own; substitute restrictive Victorian England for the ennui of a consumer society and the sins of a colonial war, and I too found that exhilarating sense of freedom, the ability to run "free and clear," by being the other in a society that let you roam. The book, published in 1907, contains an excellent map which outlines the author's journey. Her journey started in Jerusalem, went through Jericho, Amman, north around the Jebel Druze to Damascus, and on to Homs, Hamah, Aleppo, Antioch, and ending back on the coast, at Alexandretta. The book contains numerous black and white photos, some of the most arresting being the enormous waterwheels at Hamah, on pages 221 & 225 (this was the town that Assad "flatten," killing over 50,000 in 1982), and a tree-shaded well, the Ras Ul `Ain, in the Baalbek Valley on page 187. Overall, her trip covered the area where the land of agriculture abutted the desert towards the East. All of it was part of the Ottoman Empire, in its very last days, and which would be dissolved in not much more than 10 years. One of the many relevancies for today's readers: it was Gertrude Bell who was primarily responsible for cobbling together three disparate provinces of that empire into present-day Iraq, and indeed, she has been informally dubbed "the Queen of Iraq." Her actions then are yet another verification of Faulkner's dictum: "The Past is not Dead; It is not even the Past." Of particular interest to me was her report, compliments

Gertrude Bell, known as the Desert Queen, has written a book of her adventures during her travels in the Middle East. Bell,an Enlishwoman, a scholar, one of the first of her gender to graduate Oxford, is equipped with knowledge of languages, customs, and geography of Mesopotamia and modern Iraq. She writes with passion and uses exquisite descriptions and apt metaphors. Anyone interested in her eloquent prose, and wishes to learn about the history in her era and the cultures of the Arabian desert should read this book.

Having read a current bio about Gertrude Bell (Desert Queen), which I found a bear to get through due to the less than amazing quality of writing, I was curious about Bell's own writings and thrilled to find some still in print. Gertrude Bell could write!! What a wonderful book. Having an interest in archaeology and the history of ancient civilizations, I enjoyed the material she offered. But even if those aren't areas of interest to you, the people she met and talked to give one a better understanding of the midEast and of people in general. This was a hard book to put down. My only desires were that a map had been provided and that all of her wonderful pictures would have been printed on glossy paper so they could have been better appreciated. (I would have paid the extra!)