Desert Queen by Janet Wallach Page B

eminent German archaeologist Dr. Koldewey; he had lived in Baghdad and knew the leading sheikhs and notables.
    Desert travel itself was not so different in its way from her mountain climbing or even from academia: a test of endurance, it challenged her physical strength, her emotional equilibrium, her linguistic ability, her curiosity and cleverness and, not least of all, her courage. This would be her first real exploration on her own, and from the moment she mounted her horse and galloped across the bare, sweeping hills she felt free. Like a bird in an opened cage, she spread her wings and soared.
    Sending ahead her hired cook and two muleteers, she rode alone on the dusty path from Jerusalem, past parades of donkeys laden with tents and supplies, past caravans of British tourists led by Thomas Cook’s. Halfway to Jericho, along the route that General Allenby and his forces would follow almost two decades later, her own guide, Tarif, joined her, and together they continued east through the bare valley, their figures like two tiny dots against the sweep of brown barren mountains. Exhausted, they made their camp. A hot soak in her canvas bath, followed by dinner prepared by her cook, and she crawled into bed, pleased with her independence and protected by a wisp of mosquito netting.
    The following morning after breakfast, she mounted her horse and, crossing the wooden bridge that spanned the narrow Jordan River, rode into the Jordan Valley. The landscape had changed: where brown mountains had been before, the hillsides now sprouted grass, and the arid wilderness came alive with colorful fields. She gasped at the sight of the brilliant flowers, and later, in her letter home, she noted “the sheets and sheets of varied and exquisite color”: yellow daisies, sweet-scented mauve wild stock, splendid dark purple onions, white garlic, purple mallow, tiny blue iris, red anemone and scarlet ranunculus burst upon the scene.
    On a grassy plateau her servants pitched camp, and her tent was quickly surrounded by a group of Arab women, their faces tattooed with indigo, their heads and bodies covered in blue cotton gowns. Unveiled and curious, they sold her a hen and some sour milk—yogurt—called laban. Hanna, the cook, served her afternoon tea, and that evening, after dining on soup made of rice and olive oil (“very good!”), an Irish stew and raisins, she jotted down the day’s events, adding gaily, “Isn’t it a joke being able to talk Arabic!” She not only enjoyed the language; she loved the way of life.
    In order to continue her journey, she needed permission from the local Turkish authority, and after some haggling, a tall middle-aged Turk appeared. She invited him into her tent and with a great show of politeness offered him cigarettes (“You see a bad habit may have its merits!”) while her cook scurried to bring him a cup of thick, sweetened coffee. But the bribe did not work.
    Determined to wait until the cigarettes and the coffee had relaxed him, she turned the conversation to other matters, speaking as best she could in her most diplomatic way. Seeing her camera, he confessed that his greatest wish was to be photographed with his soldiers. She jumped at the news, offered to take his picture and promised to send him copies the absolute minute she had developed them. Before he departed, he too had a gift for her. “ For you ,” he said, he would send a soldier the next day. “I think it’s rather a triumph to have conducted so successful a piece of diplomacy in Arabic, don’t you?” she beamed in her letter home.
    The soldier escort arrived the next morning, a handsome, cheerful Circassian, red-haired and freckled, riding a strong white horse. She set off with him across the steppe on the way to visit the ruins of Mashetta. They passed flocks of storks munching on locusts and came upon scores of black tents of the Beni Sakhr, one of the most formidable Arab tribes and the last to submit to Ottoman rule. When