[1 October 1923] Baghdad Oct 1 Dearest step-mother and father. Your letters of Sep 16 and 19 have just arrived - Father's written in Paris. I shall be much interested to hear of the time in Italy. All the R'ton [Rounton] doings - Lady Oliver, Richmonds, Mrs C. - sound very pleasant. It's curious to have been so lately part of them and now to be so rapt again into the life of the 'Iraq. But I am immensely happy here, there's no doubt of it.
I wrote to you last week by overland mail - I wonder when you will begin to write to me that way. The people who came over by it last week say it's admirably done. It costs £30 (to be reduced I believe to £20) from Beyrout [Beyrouth (Beirut)] to Bd - that includes motoring to Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] and the hotel bill at Damascus and all the food on the way. Rauf Chadirji was my informant. Mr Thomson and I dined on Thursday night with Ja'far Pasha, the other guests being Nuri, his wife and Ja'far and Rauf. I had a heart to heart talk with Nuri on the Assyrian question. The Arabs of Mosul [Mawsil, Al] have been making a terrific fuss over the return of some Assyrians who had made their way in the way via C'ple [Istanbul (Constantinople)] to Syria. They all come from the mountain block which is at present being administered by the 'Iraq though it's outside the Sèvres treaty frontier. It's the bit we want to get back from Turkey for the 'Iraq if we possibly can, first because it forms such an admirable bulwark and secondly because we can't in honour let the Assyrians go back to Turkish rule. "After our kindness that would be a shocking thing to do" as the oysters said. The Assyrians declare that they'll emigrate en bloc rather than be murdered by the Turks and suggest going to Canada! Meantime there's a good deal of bitterness between the Assyrians and the Arabs, mainly I think due to the Assyrian Levies. {That} It was an old fault of Sir Percy's - we all knew it at the time - to create a force within the country officered solely by us. The British officers have made the breach worse by constantly reminding the Levies that they're good British soldiers not dirty little Arabs, a point I'm constantly bringing to Sir Henry's attention. The Assyrians have no alternative but to come to terms with the Arabs and if our officers don't intervene, they ultimately will do so.

Rauf Beg spent a few days in C'ple and gave me a very interesting account of it. All reports we have confirm what he says, namely that there is a very strong current against Mustafa Kamal, not least in the army. He has made himself a dictator, dismissed all rival generals, many of them much Belloved by the army, and the C'ple newspapers are strongly attaching the complete subservience to the Ministers and the Assembly to him. No one believes he will last 6 months and I think there will be years of confusion and constant change of govt before Turkey settles down. The great danger is (I had a letter from Col Cornwall today, Father - you remember, the head of I branch with whom we lunched) that to save himself Mustafa Kamal is bound to adopt a very Chauvinistic attitude and might possibly try to rouse the country to fight over Mosul [Mawsil, Al]. I very much doubt whether he would succeed, however. Turkey is war weary. Rauf says the Ministers are effete - they haven't the least idea of their job and the Finance Minister doesn't understand the elements of finance.

On Friday I dined for once with myself - on Saturday with Ken Cornwallis, Marie had arrived that morning and the house was a confusion of boxes. It ought to have been a confusion by one box more, for one has been left in the customs house at Bombay and I need not tell you it contains all my best possessions. However Aurelia writes to me that they hope to recover it. It wasn't really Marie's fault but that of the Mespers agent who undertook to see everything through the Customs. Marie declared when they got into the ship that a box was missing and he assured her he had counted the full tale. I do hope I shall get it back. Otherwise Marie had a very successful journey.

Last night which was Sunday I had Ken, Bernard and Air Commodore Hearson to dine and play Bridge, a pleasant occasion for A.C. Hearson and I took 16 rupees apiece off the others. Also Marie taught Haji 'Ali to make a delicious cheese savoury which was much appreciated. I also had Saiyid Husain and Amin Kisbani (a nice Christian, a Syrian, in the King's diwan) to lunch. They were horribly gloomy, took the blackest view of everything and declared that 'Iraq would go to the devil or the Turks as soon as the treaty terminated if not before. So I spent the time pointing out that every indication was to the contrary.

I think that's true. No one knows how the Constituent Assembly will be composed. If the tribal shaikhs realize the power that has been given them by the general registration of tribesmen as primary electors, they will swamp the Assembly. On the whole I think the urban population is, certainly at present, the more steadfast, and if the shaikhs pull the strings the treaty should be ratified and the organic law passed without much difficulty. It will be extremely interesting to see how the elections develop. Almost all the returns of primary electors are now in; as soon as they are completed the hundred deputies will be allotted in proportion to the number of electors in the different divisions. So that we don't yet know, for instance, how many numbers Baghdad will have.

came down this morning from Mosul. He goes home in about a fortnight to be married and he has finally determined not to come back. I'm sorry; he has been one of our intimate circle, but I don't think he has done very well in Mosul this last 6 months. He has let things slip too much out of his hands and he is just the person who might have kept a much better control because he has the complete confidence of the King and the Cabinet. He is staying with Ken and I'm dining there tonight for a three-cornered talk.

My work in the office grows more interesting. I've got all tribal questions into my hands now. Bernard was strongly in favour of my taking it over from his assistant, who, poor man, isn't liked by Sir Henry and is ultimately going. He did the tribal work maddeningly badly I thought - so did Sir Henry who was enchanted at the suggestion that it should be given to me. The result is that all matters connected with Ibn Sa'ud and raids in the south, or with tribal quarrels across the French frontier are put up by me to H.E. with suggestions as to what should be done about them, draft despatches to General Weygand and so forth. It's very enjoyable, because I do know more about tribes than anyone else in our office and I hope Ken Cornwallis will find a marked improvement in the way we handle the documents on these subjects which come to us from the Interior.

I took my good Mr Gordon to a tennis party at the Palace last week where we drank tea and H.M. conversed with him affably through me as interpreter. I thought to myself that if I had been Mr Gordon I should have been much amused at being introduced into the intimacies of a friendly little Oriental court, and indeed I think he was. Nice man.