[6 March 1918] Baghdad March 6 Dearest Family. I'm going away the day after tomorrow down Euphrates again to gather up the remaining threads of tribal information which I want in order to complete my monumental work on Mesopotamian tribes. So if I don't catch a mail next week you'll know why. I'm looking forward to it very much and I hope I shall be able to get the material I want, but it's a difficult job and if one thing's more certain than another, it is that all one writes on tribes is sure to be full of mistakes. One ought to live for a month or two in each district in order to understand them.
This afternoon I attended a small function, the opening of a Civil Dispensary in the heart of the town. It has been the darling wish of Capt. Carey Evans (of whom I told you before, he's civil doctor in chief and Lloyd George's son in law) to have a dispensary on this side of the river, and it will be infinitely valuable. There's a ward with 6 beds besides accommodation for seeing outpatients. All the notables came, secular and religious; it was most gratifying as well as being most agreeable. I sat in a row with the Qadhi, the Mudir of Church Lands (Mohammadan) the Judge of Appeal and so on and so on, and we had tea and talked and were pleased to see one another. The Grand Rabbi, the Prior of the Dominicans, the Mother Superior and representatives of other Christian denominations were there too.

That's not the only party I've been to, but the other was unimprovised. Mr Bullard and I were riding last Sunday through the exquisite fruit gardens S. of the town and I insisted on paying a call on their owner. We found him in his orchards, a hale old man who owns 2 square miles, or thereabouts, of the richest gardens near Baghdad and plants his seedling potatoes with his own hands. I'm afraid his grandchildren will rouler auto[?] and I shan't like them nearly so well. He led us through his fruit trees, showed us where he was laying out a new orange grove and where transplanting spring onions. Apricot and peach, apple and greengage all in white and pink flower, and the thick grass lines the water channels, as it does only in exceptionally good years. Therewith he took us to his house and gave us an excellent tea of fresh bread and butter - the latter a rare luxury - and preserved fruits. We sat on a wide wooden bench in his mud-built guest room and listened to his shrewd talk, his tales of Vali and general in Turkish times and of how the Constitution had ruined the land - no good, he declared, had come out of the Young Turks and he's not far from right. As a sequel to the visit he sent me today a present of eggs and fresh beans, wrapped up in a red cotton handkerchief, bless him.

With Sir Percy away, I have even more visitors than before and most of my morning is taken up with interviews. The Naqib's water pipe has been the question of the hour. I may say it has devastated my prospect as well as swamping the Naqib's quarter, for nothing in this world will keep it in repair. Yet you can't treat it like an ordinary pipe for it is a religious bequest and must therefore be approached with the utmost circumspection. At length (and I hope finally) the Naqib, after much heart searching has agreed to let the Municipality be responsible for its upkeep and a load is slipping from my shoulders. But when you think of me as engaged in affairs of international importance, please call to mind the Naqib's pipe, for it's a good sample of the nature of my activities.

Yet it's because matters like this one have been so tactfully handled by Sir Percy that all the notables come to tea at the Civil Dispensary.

Oh my dear ones! a most bumptious young Cockerell has turned up, a brother of Tootoo's - such a youth! It has been my part to find him a Persian teacher. Except in his own estimation of himself he's by no means a fool, I should judge, but in that particular - words fail me.

It's still beautifully cool and fresh, an extraordinary contrast to the heat and dust of last spring when we had no rain. The Tigris has come down in the first flood and nobly fills its bed, instead of trickling through mud heaps. And now I must fill my bed, for what with the Naqib, Captain Cockerell and the rest, I'm sleepy. Your ever affectionate daughter Gertrude

The second half of last mail has just brought two delightful letters from Mother Dec 26 and Jan 2 and a charming long letter from Maurice which I'll answer next week, bless him.