Baghdad Jan. 4. Dearest Father. This week I have had two helpings of letters from you and Mother, up to Nov 26. It was nice. Also I've heard from Elsa about Herbert's appointment, and rejoice. Poor Aunt Bella! She has made a brave business of life; it is sad that she should have to mark time at the end.
I have been away for a week - I'll tell you about that - and somehow absence and idleness and seeing the shaikhs and people outside Baghdad have combined to crystallize my ideas so that I've written Edwin (this is very private) an immense letter about the sort of govt. we ought to set up here and even sent him the rough draft of a constitution. I believe my premises are right though the constitution may be bad enough - it's difficult to make a success of one's first attempt at this sort of job, isn't it. If at home they will accept the premises, the rest will come of itself. At any rate I've done my best both to find out what should be done and to lay it before him. The rest is, as we say, 'al Allah, on God. I sometimes feel that it's the only thing I really care for, to see this country go right - I always feel it when I'm here, and at home I'm mostly thinking about it. So you understand why I can't come back to England with you.

I so much want you to come out, however, that I'm going to cable to you.

Now I'll tell you my life and times. On Xmas day I went to an enormous dinner party given by A.T. to all the political service and their wives. To judge from appearances most of them have two wives, and I wish I could get their names and faces by heart. Otherwise it was a pleasant occasion. I came home early, when they began to dance. I dance no longer.

Next morning, before 8 I caught a special train for Babylon and went there with the Lubbocks and General Hambro and some others, I acting as guide. We had a delicious 2 hours there after which General H. and Captain Bacon, his A.D.C. and I went on to Hillah [Hillah, Al]. There we lunched with my dear Major Tyler, the P.O. The lunch was gorgeous because Major Tyler had told the leading citizen, Saiyid Muhammad 'Ali Qazwini that I was coming and he had insisted on sending in the whole meal. The table groaned with delicious Arab foods, the chief dish being a stuffed lamb roasted whole with its tail in its mouth like a whiting.

Here I parted with General Hambro (he is so nice) and went on by motor to the other branch of the Euphrates where I found two young men, Captain Mann and Captain Wigan waiting with a launch to take me to the camp of my host, Major Norbury, P.O. of Shamiyah [Shamiyah, Ash]. Now the Shamiyah is the garden of Mesopotamia, the pleasure ground, if you like. I had almost forgotten how lovely it is in winter. The willows and Euphrates poplars which edge the bank of river and canal are gold and golden green, and as a background forests of palms, all about 15 years old, i.e. at the most charming monent of their life before they become leggy. (It's curious to reflect that the palm acquires the physical peculiarities of a Backfisch with age.) It was dark when we reached our camp, which was pitched in open ground half way between the trees of two canals and about 2 miles from the river. Major Norbury is the most lavishly hospitable creature and the camp was luxurious - every comfort, carpets, baths, oil-stoves, excellent meals. Next morning when I woke and stepped out of my tent into the bright sun and saw all the trees and things I wondered how anyone could live in Baghdad, or anywhere but the Shamiyah.

But I must tell you the camp was pitched quite near the little village which is the headquarters of the principal shaikh of the district, Ibadi al Husain - I knew him before, of course. So after dinner he invited us to his mudhif, his guest house. Now a mudhif you can't picture till you've seen it. It's made of reeds, reed mats spread over reed bundles arching over and meeting at the top so that the whole is a huge, perfectly regular and exquisitely constructed yellow tunnel 50 yards long. In the middle is the coffee hearth, with great logs of willow burning. On either side of the hearth, against the reed walls of the mudhif, a row of brocade-covered cushions for us to sit on, the Arabs flanking us and the coffee-maker crouched over his pots. The whole lighted by the fire and a couple of small lamps, and the end of the mudhif fading away into a golden gloom. Glorious.

So there we sat and drank coffee and talked for an hour.

We spent next day in camp, Major N. and another man shooting - there's a mass of game - while Captain Mann and Wigan and I took horses from Ibadi and with the latter's brother rode down to the Hor, the marsh, half lake, into which all canals empty themselves. It's a rice country and they have had this year a bumper crop. The yellow reed villages lay fat and comfortable in the winter sun, banked up with rice straw. The great golden heaps of rice were not all housed or shipped away but lay on the harvest floors. Did I say glorious before? I'm afraid I did. When we reached the Hor we got into tiny sajahs, the local canoe-like boat, and rowed out by passageways through the reeds to the open water. There were thousands of duck and teal and other water birds. The osprey breeds here. The water was covered with the dying leaves of a small water lily on which buffaloes were peacefully browsing, standing Belly-deep in the Hor. Of all incongruous diets for a buffalo, water lilies are certainly the most preposterous.

We rode home and lunched with Ibadi in his mudhif. The lunch wasn't ready till past 3 by which time we were hungry but we couldn't make so much as an impression on the mountains of food provided. All the tribe must have been fed that day from what was left. As a concession I was allowed a spoon for my rice - I do drop it about so. The others eat with their fingers.

Next day we all went to Najaf [Najaf, An], which is Major Norbury's headquarters, by boat and motor, lunching on the way. We got in about 4 and one or two people came to see me. The following morning Major Norbury and I, with Hamid Khan, his assistant (a cousin of the Agha Khan) devoted to paying visits on the notables. I loved it. Firstly I was glad to see them again and secondly we had some interesting talks. Each one provided us with delicious Persian sweetmeats which I eat all the time. I am amused to find that my status in Najaf is rising. As a rule the great religious leaders, the Mujtahids, don't see me - I don't propose it - because they never look on an unveiled woman, but this time one of them, a first class Mujtahid, but an Arab, not a Persian, sent to ask me to come. He is an imposing figure, tall and big, with a beaming countenance under a white turban as large as the Quangle Wangle's hat, but the visit wasn't really very interesting because Shaikh 'Ali talked without interruption and though there were things we wanted to say to him we couldn't get a word in edge ways. After lunch I walked round the walls of Najaf to the high cliff which looks over the Syrian desert - it's a wonderful view, the whole desert before you (where I came up from Najd [(Nejd)]) and on the other side the walled town with its crowded houses, and the great golden dome of the shrine of 'Ali rising out of the middle of them. But it was even more wonderful as I had seen it the night before when I ran out after tea to the great mound at the southern angle of the city wall. It was almost night, a bar of red shone between cloud banks over the desert and over the town hung the clustered lights which ring the four minarets of the mosque. We walked back through the bazaars, half lit, still crowded with Persian pilgrims, mysterious beyond all belief. That's what it is, Najaf, mysterious; malign, fanatical, but drawing you, with wonder and reluctance, by its beauty and unfathomableness.

The last time I had been there, I was lunching with Captain Marshall, who was murdered 8 days later. And we walked the same path round the town and said just these things about Najaf - alas, too truly. He was a very gallant creature.

In the night it rained a little and was still drizzling next day, but we carried out the appointed programme. Captain Wigan and I went by motor and launch down the Euphrates to Umm al Ba'rur which is the place where Captain Mann is A.P.O. I must tell you that I sent him out here. Prof. Margoliouth sent him to London to see me and on my warm recommendations Wilson, A.T.