Baghdad Sep 25 Darling Father. I shall now make a habit of sending any letters by aerial mail. You will get them once a fortnight which is "hardly any different from ordinary" (I wonder what has become of Susan Lushington?) and you will get them in 10 days, and later, when the air service is properly co-ordinated with the steamers, in a week. For your part if you choose you can communicate with Mr Bullard at the Middle Eastern Dept, Colonial Office, and ask him whether you can send your letters by air mail through him, as I send mine to you. This is all, as yet, by favour and is therefore not to be vaunted; presently we hope a civil post will be regularly established. One thing more: Mr Bullard bears the charge of stamping my letters but if you would send me some English stamps that would be avoided. Tell me what my letters to you generally weigh and how I should stamp them - I'm not very certain of post-war rates. I shall only send by airmail my letters to you or to my brothers and sisters. The general public is to be left unacquainted with the fact of there being a privileged air mail. But won't it be splendid when we can get each other's answers in a fortnight! even now we can get them in 3 weeks.
We've had a hot week - temp up again to 108° - but suddenly it dropped yesterday to 92° and today for the first time for 5 months I'm sitting in my little sitting room, with doors and windows open and no fan. It was so heavenly this morning when I went out riding at 6 (it being Sunday) that I rode right out across the desert to Fahamah, close on 2 hours' away, and breakfasted with my friend Faiq Beg. We sat in his garden, full of roses just breaking into their second lower, while I eat hard boiled eggs, native bread, and butter like cream, and Faiq Beg talked. His face, which is the colour of a rosy apple and much the same shape - if you can imagine a rosy apple with a fez on top - grew quite perturbed while he related to me the difficulties of cultivators nowadays - the labourers all gone off to better paid jobs in town, or taking up land of their own on the new canals; they think they do you a service in working for ten times their former hire and even so, yallah, you're lucky if they come an hour after dawn, don't knock off more than 4 hours at noon, nor leave earlier than an hour before sunset. Poor Faiq Beg! it's progress of course; the country is getting richer and the inhabitants expect more, but it's very awkward for the old society when progress steps in to dislocate it. And in the end it won't produce anything better than Faiq Beg; straight out of Arcady he steps, with his rosy apple face, his personal rectitude and his industrious days among his palms and orange trees, and barley fields. But in fact he is doing just the same thing as the labourers whose ambition he deplores. He has sent his eldest son to Beirut [Beyrouth] to study medicine at the American college, after which he is to go for 4 years to America for his medical degree. The father is as proud of him as he can be - the boy's photograph lay before us as I eat my hard boiled eggs - but "Khatun, the expense!" he sighs; "for the first time in my life, wallahi, I'm in debt. For the first time." I can well believe it. He himself lives on the produce of his land; a bowl of curds, a clot of bread, flavoured with dates, tomatoes, oranges to season.

Let me see what's been happening this week - I dined with King one night. They've an inconvenient habit of telephoning to you in the morning and asking you to dinner that night. It happened that I had invited two ministers, however I think it's best to treat Faisal's invitations as commands so I hastily put them off to next day. It proved very agreeable. No one was there but Rustam Haidar, Shaikh 'Abdullah (a darling old Hijazi whose father and grandfather have been in the service of Faisal's family) and an A.D.C. After dinner the King and I sat for long on the balcony overlooking the river. A late moon rose behind us and shone softly on the water while the quffahs loaded with melons floated down, each with its twinkling yellow light. And Faisal unburdened his heart. It arose out of my urging him to bring out his wife and children. He said he felt so uncertain of the future, the country was largely pro-Turk and he didn't know whether the British Government would not insist on terms in the future treaty which he felt he could not accept. On the last head I answered that it was absolutely necessary for us to come to agreement with him or acknowledge complete failure; if he went we must go too - we had no alternative - and I saw no reason for anxiety of any kind. As to the first I said that we might be thankful for his very winning personality and why didn't he use it more? Yes, he said eagerly, he wanted to come more into touch - should he not have little dinner parties? and whom should he ask? I said I would draw him up skeleton lists of dinner parties, English and Arab - he mustn't mind if they were rather boring, the notables here mostly are boring but the more you know them and were on familiar terms with them the better you liked them. He burst out with his charmingly impetuous enthusiasm "Wallahi! you're the mistress of the house - ask whom you think best". And then he went on to say that except Mr Cornwallis and Col. Joyce and me he didn't know the British officers and didn't feel certain that they would give him the sort of affectionately solicitous service he had had from us in Syria. I said of course they would - he had only to make friends with them and treat them as he did Mr Cornwallis and me and we parted full of plans.

Next morning I drew up lists and arranged a lot of dinner parties and then sent for Rustam Haidar and explained who the people were and all about them. Then Mr Garbett and I drafted an invitation form which I am having printed and it looks as though I shall run the Court till it gets on its feet. Curious isn't it.

I sometimes think how curious it all it, yes, whether it's Faiq Beg or King Faisal. People whose upbringing and associations and traditions are all so entirely different, yet when one is with them one doesn't notice the difference, nor do they. Think of Faisal, brought up at Mecca [Makkah] in a palace full of eunuchs, educated at Constantinople [Istanbul], Commander in Chief, King, exile, then King again; or Faiq tending his palms and vines, and jogging into Baghdad to seek out the best market for his dates - and both of them run out to greet me with outstretched hands and then sit down to tell me in their several fashions what they make of life, as if I were a sister. And I feel like a sister, that's the oddest part.

Next night I had my ministerial dinner, Haji Ahmad Ramzi (Interior) and Naji Suwaidi (Justice), with the editor of the most reputable local paper, Razzuq Daud, Mr Drower (acting advisor to Justice) and Capt Cooke of Auqaf. It was very pleasant. Haji Ramzi grew quite chatty - I like the old thing very much. Shaikh 'Abdullah came to tea that day and we cemented an incipient friendship. He is pure gold, with the acute Arab mentality added, like a sharply flashing diamond catching the light which the metal misses.

We have had a small fandango in the Arab Army. For weeks past, months indeed, we have known of insubordination among some of the officers, partly Turkish propaganda and partly pure Arab indiscipline, jealousy of Ja'far and Nuri mainly. With many misgivings, Ja'far has dealt it a knock out blow by arresting three ringleaders. The effect has been excellent. People have suddenly realized that the Arab Army is something tangible, that intrigue against Arab Ministers is high treason and will be dealt with as such, that Faisal and Ja'far and we behind them will stand no nonsense.

Another very encouraging circumstance is the collapse of the Turkish attack in the north. An officer and some 60 Turkish soldiers occupied Rawandaz [Rawandiz] (which we were not holding) roused the insurgent elements among the Kurdish tribes and proceeded to harry Batas and Rania [Ranya]. We have driven them out of the two latter with aeroplanes, Levies and tribal forces and the really satisfactory thing has been the efficiency of half trained or wholly untrained native forces with aeroplane co-operation. Aircraft bomb the way clear and the native forces walk in after like clockwork. It is of very good omen for the Arab Army when it is left with little but aeroplane help from us, as it soon will be.

You know that Armitage Smith has definitely been turned out of Persia? His second in command, a Mr Balfour has come here on his way home - A.S. goes back by Bakhtiari and Bushire [Bushehr]. He is very interesting about Persia, Mr Balfour. He thinks it is bound to get worse before it gets any better. There appear to be two alternatives. The country may split up into its exponent parts, a process which has begun already for the provinces of Azarbaijan and Gilan have declared themselves independent of the central Govt. Or the Bolshevists may come in - there is a concentration of some 100,000 Bolsh. forces in the Caucasus [Bol'shoy Kavkaz], and the Minister in Tehran [(Teheran)], Rothstein appears to be playing for a break with the Persian Govt. In the first case Persia will become chaotically negligible; in the second Bolshevism, by snuffing out another Moslem state will become thoroughly discredited in the Moslem world. I don't therefore think that either alternative can harm us here, and as for what happens to Persia I don't much care. We can do nothing more.

I must now break off to relate to you a tale of Mrs Rosita Forbes. The wife of one of our doctors here going home on leave observed a very elaborately clad lady get on the ship at Port Said and take a long and intimate farewell with a party in a fez - no doubt Hasanain. After he leaves the lady looks so solitary that Mrs Sinderson strolls up and sits down by her and ventures a remark on the weather. Her intercolutor [sic] rejoins with "I suppose you know who I am?" "Well" says Mrs Sinderson innocently "I knew your name is Forbes - I saw it on your hat box." Tableau! Really I think she must be mad. She spoke to no one on the voyage but at night when when the passengers wanted to give concerts, she sat at the middle table in the music room completely surrounded by books, foolscap and M.S., at which she never ceased to write busily. What a woman!

Sir Percy, who is a very keen sportsman, has got two hawks which are being trained. Every morning there is a hawk party in the office. Our hawks invite their friends and when I come in of a morning I find two or three falconers, each with a couple of hawks on his wrist waiting for Sir Percy to appear.
One of my daily jobs is to read and summarize the local papers. I have as an assistant a capital little Soudanese, black as your hat and merry as a cricket. The more work you give him the merrier he grows. His Arabic is excellent and his English far from bad but very colloquial. His comments on the newspaper tosh are a perpetual joy. Yesterday there was a literary piece by one of our local poets.

Makki. Oh Lord! this fellow! This is a silly fellow. He talks to the moon.

GLB. (severely) It's frequently done. Go on Makki, see if there's anything political in it.

Makki (reading) My sorrows thou seest, oh moon - oh Lord this fellow! no, it's all general, nothing serious.

G.L.B. Hurry up then, what's next? etc etc

I've got your and Mother's letters of Aug 24 and also Hugo's about his engagement. Well, it is interesting and I think it sounds most excellent. I'm writing to him and Mother. Every your very affectionate daughter Gertrude.

I'm dreadfully sorry to trouble you with an immense packet of papers from Mr Curmi[?] whom you saw here. He entreated me to send them!