The Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria [Paperback]

Of all the Westerners who decided to explore the Middle East in the last couple of centuries, none seemed to equal Gertrude Bell for her erudition as well as empathy for those who lived there. She writes with passion and wonderful descriptive powers, the subject quote being just one example. The title of the book is derived from Omar Khayyam: "The strip of herbage strown that just divides the desert from the sown." She undertook the journey described in this book in 1905, and declares her motivation in the first sentences: "To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel. The gates of the enclosed garden are thrown open, the chain at the entrance of the sanctuary is lowered, with a wary glance to right and left you step forth, and, behold! the immeasurable world." Later in the book she reports on the resonances from the native people to this sentiment: "...and when I meet the rare horseman who rides over those hills and ask him whence he comes, he will still answer: `May the world be wide to you! from the Arabs.'" Gertrude Bell was fleeing the restrictive atmosphere of Victorian England, ironically experiencing a sense of freedom amongst societies not generally known for female emancipation. The essential factor is unquestionably being "the other," that is, NOT being a member of a given society. Bell's motivation to leave her own society and experiences in the Middle East have always resonated with my own; substitute restrictive Victorian England for the ennui of a consumer society and the sins of a colonial war, and I too found that exhilarating sense of freedom, the ability to run "free and clear," by being the other in a society that let you roam.

The book, published in 1907, contains an excellent map which outlines the author's journey. Her journey started in Jerusalem, went through Jericho, Amman, north around the Jebel Druze to Damascus, and on to Homs, Hamah, Aleppo, Antioch, and ending back on the coast, at Alexandretta. The book contains numerous black and white photos, some of the most arresting being the enormous waterwheels at Hamah, on pages 221 & 225 (this was the town that Assad "flatten," killing over 50,000 in 1982), and a tree-shaded well, the Ras Ul `Ain, in the Baalbek Valley on page 187. Overall, her trip covered the area where the land of agriculture abutted the desert towards the East. All of it was part of the Ottoman Empire, in its very last days, and which would be dissolved in not much more than 10 years. One of the many relevancies for today's readers: it was Gertrude Bell who was primarily responsible for cobbling together three disparate provinces of that empire into present-day Iraq, and indeed, she has been informally dubbed "the Queen of Iraq." Her actions then are yet another verification of Faulkner's dictum: "The Past is not Dead; It is not even the Past."

Of particular interest to me was her report, compliments of the amazing "desert telegraph," that relays information from mouth to mouth over hundreds of miles. And she was at least that far away, but thanks to that "telegraph" of the Shammar tribe, she was able to report on the events around Hail, where Abdul Aziz ibn Saud had just defeated Ibn Rashid, driving him back to his hometown, and restricting him to land only a few miles to the south of it.
(p 44-48)

Her erudition extended to the Arab poets of the "jahaliya," the time of "darkness," before the Prophet Mohammed. In particular, she quotes Imr ul Kais, who, she says: "...had seen the Pleiades caught like jewels in the net of a girdle...". She sums up her praise for these pre-Islamic poets: "Born and bred on the soil of the desert, the singers of the Age of Ignorance have left behind them a record of their race that richer and wiser nations will find hard to equal." As for the love of the land, she says: "The Arabs do not speak of desert or wilderness as we do. Why should they? To them it is neither desert nor wilderness, but a land of which they know every feature, a mother country whose smallest product has use sufficient for their needs."

Overall, the book is an excellent read, both for its time and place, as well as the light it sheds on today's latest developments. Highly recommended.

Note: Page numbers refer to the Virago edition.

(Note: Review first published at Amazon, USA, on May 02, 2009)

An excellent book, the service was also excellent and very quick. I am very satisfied.