Baghdad Ap 19 Darling Father. My letter was interrupted in the middle by hearing that the post was going; I quickly sent you what I wrote last night and had no time to finish. This evening I have a telegram from Sir P. saying that you and he in consultation had agreed that I had better not come. I feared he would warn you that the journey is now very difficult and I think the decision is a wise one, but I can't help feeling a dreadful tightening at the heart at the thought of not seeing you within measurable time. I do sometimes want you so much that I can scarcely bear it. Anyhow there's nothing now but to wait and hear Sir Percy's report. You could always get me home by making the India Office or the F.O. telegraph that they want me and asking the Admiralty to give me facilities. We'll see how things turn; it may be easier in a month or two. - I've almost forgotten about France in thinking of you and Mother and Maurice. It's wonderfully cheering to hear of Elsa's being so well but it weighs on me that you and Mother are so driven. These weeks must be a terrible strain - oh, if only they were over and we could feel for the moment safe again! Well, I'll go on with the tale of life here though my thoughts now are far away from it. I had told you about Babylon, hadn't I. The Willingdons invited themselves to tea in my garden the day after we got back. I had all my colleagues to meet them, some 20 people one way and another, and the garden being clothed in roses looked very pretty so that it was a successful entertainment. The Ws were charming to everybody. To my great joy Evelyn Howell came up from Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)] where he is D.C.C. on a 2 days' visit. He is a cousin of Philip's and a real friend. On the day after his arrival he and I and the P.O. Baghdad, a very nice boy called Gillan, rode out to lunch with the Keeper of the Mosque at Mu'adhdham [Azamiyah, Al] - you remember I had tea with him not so long ago. He entertained us not in his home but in a little garden by the river. The air was scented with orange blossom and the luncheon table under a vine-trelissed verandah was covered with roses. He gave us an excellent meal, all the nicer for his charming courtesy and friendliness. He made an attractive figure in his long robes and white turban, his kindly old face beaming at us as he cracked little jokes with which he was mightily pleased. I thought it would have been difficult to find a better illustration of the pleasant simplicity of Oriental hospitality. Today I've had another little tea party in my garden - dear Musa Chalabi, who is my landlord, with his wife and family. An Armenian woman whom I've known for a long time, Mme Sévian, came to see me at the office just as I was going home to tea and I brought her with me, and that was the party. I couldn't ask any men, you see, to meet veiled women. Musa's daughter brought her husband - she is very pretty; rather like Philippa. She wore a white satin gown with an embroidered net tunic, cut low in the neck and short in the sleeves. I felt rather dowdy in white and mauve print, but I couldn't run to dinner gowns at tea time. Musa Chalabi, who has been long in Constantinople [Istanbul], eyed us rather suspiciously and said he feared his daughter's costume wasn't right and I had hastily to assure him that it was exactly the thing. Kind General Stuart Wortley, with whom I ride pretty regularly, has had electric light and fans put into my house. The fans I don't need yet but the light is a great comfort. It is still amazingly cool and rains every other day which is very unusual at this time of year. I've a growing affection for the C. in C. He has just lost his step son who was like a son to him, in France - a boy of 20 - and is terribly miserable about it. But he puts such a brave face on sorrow. He is very considerate and I think much liked. He has just laid me under a debt of gratitude. There was a stupid muddle about two visits the Willingdons did - or didn't - pay on two very important people here and I wrote privately to the C. in C., told him how much hurt the two magnates were and begged him not to let such matters go through any hands but ours. He came in to see me at once to say he had known nothing of the matter (nor had the Ws) and to ask me to make apology in his name - which I've done. I kept him to tea and he stayed a long time, talking about his boy and France.
Ap. 20. [20 April 1918] This is becoming a sort of diary letter - it's because you are so much in my mind that I want to go on talking to you. Today it has been positively cold. I was dressed in a silk coat and skirt and shivered so much that I had to get into a white serge gown which was fortunately hanging up in my dressing room at the office. Amazing, isn't it. Last year we were grilling at this date. I can't believe that the poor tomatoes like it. They're chilly souls - and we have acres of them. Today I had my old friend Mustafa Pasha of Khaniqin [Khanaqin] to help in correcting a map and he was overflowing with gratitude because I had managed - through General Stuart Wortley - to get Mme Pasha sent up in a motor to Khaniqin to retrieve all their household goods which she had hidden and buried last year when she fled from the Russians. Remarkable to relate they seem to have been none the worse for 9 months under ground - a fact which Mustafa Pasha is inclined to attribute in some confused way to my benign intervention - anyway it's all very satisfatory and I'm delighted to have been able to do the old thing a good turn for he is a great gentleman and was infinitely kind to me in 1911. I went to tea with one of the Nawabs of Oudh - we've a lot of them living here, British subjects. He used to live in a splendid house on the other side of the river full of hideous and expensive furniture, but he fled down to us at Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)] and the Turks looted his belongings. He has now hired a little pig stye [sic] next door but he took me into his palace on the river bank to see the wreckage the Turks had made - deplorable, and it's no good being glad that the ignoble gear had been smashed to bits because he'll hasten to provide himself with its exact parallel as soon as the war is over. General Lubbock has just been to dinner, nice creature. I've brought in a work on Euphrates geography and tribes which has given satisfaction. I shall have to revise it now for I learnt so much more when I was down the river last month, but at least it's a beginning. I must tell you that I know a great deal about the Euphrates - and nothing about the Diyalah [Diyala (Sirwan)]. That's the next task when I can get at it.

Ap. 24. [24 April 1918] It's still been raining on and off and the Tigris rose terrifically in consequence. I rode one morning along the bank downstream where there is a charming suburb of Baghdad and found the path interrupted in places because it had fallen into the river. We are doing our best to prevent the houses from following its example. On the 21st, which was Sunday, I went to tea with 'Abdul Rahman Pasha Haidari and his wife; he's one of the magnates of Baghdad and she is an attractive woman, educated by the nuns and speaking very good French. It was an enjoyable party. A.R. used to be Mayor of Baghdad and had many interesting tales to tell. The nuns are making me a muslin gown - however it turns out it will be a monument of love and care, for I really believe they lie awake at night thinking what new stitches they can put into it, dear old things. I often go in to see them after tea; we sit on the balcony in their courtyard and talk of France and Baghdad. And then they all troop down in a body to the door to wave me farewell down their narrow, curling street - it's not 6 ft wide, nor are any streets wider in the heart of Baghdad.
Yesterday I rode with the O.C. of one of the big hospitals, Col. Crossley, and think of it! He had been for 2 years in Richmond, had taught and examined many of our R. Cross detachments and been to our field day in 1912. He asked what relation I was to you and he had seen Maurice at Catterick races. I took him through the lovely fields and gardens where my friend Haji Naji lives. The whole air was heavy with the scent of orange blossom. Along the little paths through the fields grow hedges of the pale pink roses from which they make rosewater. The girls gather the roses every morning after sunrise; I come upon them piling up great heaps of pink petals when I ride there early. Today there came in to see me a man who crossed the desert with me from Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] in 1911, while we were snowed up for 24 hours, and went down with me to Arabia in 1913 - Ali Shuqal, an idle dog, I parted with him in anger when we reached Baghdad in 1914. Nevertheless he had been very useful on that difficult journey up from Hail and after greeting him sternly I ended by giving him a present and promising more if he behaved well. He was living at Hit [(Is)] when we took it the other day, and at once attached himself to the Intell. Officer, my friend Major Eadie, on the strength of his acquaintance with me. Major Eadie came in to see me today - he's now at Hit - and told me that Ali had been useful. He has a superlative knowledge of the Syrian desert, as I've experienced.

The Najaf business, about which I told you, is ending in triumph for us. Dry rot has set in among the reBells, our friends are gaining courage and already a good number of the actual murderers of Capt. Marshall have been handed over to us. I expect and hope that we'll hang them. The whole business has been very skilfully managed thanks to Capt. Wilson, the D.C.C., acting C.C., and to Capt. Balfour. I don't think I've ever told you about Capt. Wilson, a very remarkable creature. He began by regarding me as a "born intriguer" and I not unnaturally regarded him with some suspicion also, knowing that that was his opinion of me, but perhaps with more amusement than anything else. (I had a very difficult time when I first came out here, you know; it makes me laugh now to think of it.) We have ended by becoming firm friends and I have the greatest respect for his amazing intelligence. I think I've helped to educate him a little also, but he educates himself and some day he will be a very big man. He is getting so much more tolerant and patient, such a statesman. I love working with him. The kind Red X has just just given me sheets and pillow cases and sandfly nets against the summer. It's your launch I trade on! it's still the pride of the river.

Ap. 25.[25 April 1918] I had a superstitious feeling that something awful would happen in France on this day, which has before been so terrible a day - but there's a lull and the next great test seems to be postponed. I rode out early this morning in the green desert which will soon be burnt up for the sun is getting hot. And in the afternoon I gave a tea party in my garden, the darling little matron from the convalescent hospital, Miss Maclean, and one of her nurses, a number of my colleagues, Sherrard Godman and others. I met Col. Godman in the street and he introduced himself to me. It was so nice to talk to someone who knew my own family. The mail goes tomorrow and I must write some other letters. Goodbye darling Father - I think and think of you. However long I'm away from you your love and Mother's is like the solid foundation on which all life rests. But I don't feel as if I could bear not seeing you for very much longer dearest Belloved Father. Your daughter Gertrude.