Lawrence

by Michael Asher

  According to Lawrence’s description in Seven Pillars, his feverish reveries were suddenly disturbed by a crisp gunshot at close quarters. This did not bother him, as he imagined one of his Bedu was shooting a hare for supper. Not so. He was shortly roused by Sulayman, the ‘Utaybi, who led him over to another gully to show him the dead body of an ‘Agayli called Salem, with a gaping bullet wound in the temple. Lawrence clearly saw that the skin was burned at the edges, suggesting a shot from close quarters. At once he suspected Sulayman himself, remembering the feud between the ‘Utayba and the ‘Agayl, but ‘Ali – the senior ‘Agayli – assured him that the murderer had been none other than Lawrence’s own servant, Hamed the Moor. Lawrence sent the men to search for Hamed, and had just crawled back under his cloak when he heard a rustle. Opening his eyes wide, he saw the Moor lifting some saddle-bags nearby, evidently intending to load his camel and make off. Lawrence drew his pistol and stopped him in his tracks. The other Arabs came rushing back, and at once held court. Hamed confessed that he and Salem had argued, and he had lost his temper and shot the ‘Agayli at point-blank range. ‘Ali and the other ‘Agayl demanded an eye for an eye. Lawrence knew that this was the ancient desert law, and was anyway too shattered to argue the case for clemency – he agreed that the murder of Salem had been an unforgivable crime. It was clear that Hamed had to die, but who would perform the execution? If he died at the hands of an ‘Agayli, this would start another blood-feud between the Agayl and the Moroccans, of whom there were many in Feisal’s army. Only Lawrence, who stood in the role of a Sharif, and above tribal feuds, could safely execute the condemned man. He made the Moor enter a sandy gully which shrank to a crack a few inches wide, and allowed him a brief pause to come to terms with himself. Hamed crouched sobbing on the ground. Then Lawrence ordered him to stand up, and shot him in the chest with a trembling hand. The Moor collapsed, coughing blood, and Lawrence shot him once more but only fractured his wrist. Hamed lay in the sand, screaming, and Lawrence stepped close to him, laid the muzzle of his pistol under his jaw, and shot him for the third time. The body shivered slightly. Lawrence called the ‘Agayl to bury him, staggered over to his baggage and collapsed in his sleeping space. His diary entry for 12 March consists of a rough sketch-map of the Wadi Khitan with an arrow pointing to a place labelled ‘deathcrack’, and – in very spidery writing – the words: ‘Slept here. Terrible night. Shot.’9

  Now, to kill in the red heat of battle is one thing, but to deliberately shoot a helpless man dead at close quarters must be an ordeal which few could stomach easily, especially while shaking with fever. Lawrence was not a hardened soldier: indeed, he had never fought in a battle. Even at the very end of the war, two years later and after all the killing he had seen subsequently, Alec Kirkbride wrote that he ‘appeared to be genuinely shocked by the free use which I made of my revolver …’Occasionally someone turned nasty … and I shot them at once … Lawrence got quite cross and said “For God’s sake stop being so bloody minded!” ‘10 This does not sound like the kind of person who would find it easy to place the barrel of a gun under a man’s chin and shoot him in cold blood. The contemporary entry in his diary suggests that something or someone was ‘shot’ that night, but it is characteristically cryptic. The fact is that there is no hint of the incident in Lawrence’s reports, and neither does he ever refer to it subsequently, though one would have imagined that such an experience would have a lasting residue. In his dispatch, written afterwards, he claims to have left Wejh with ‘four ‘Agayl and four Rifa’a’: given that he may have neglected to mention his servants, the Syrian and the Moroccan, there still remains the mysterious ‘Utaybi, Sulayman, who is not mentioned in any diary or dispatch, but only appears in Seven Pillars. Lawrence’s field-diary entry for 13 March reads: ‘with us 12 camels and men, Syrian, Zilfi, Rass, Anyza, Merawi, Rifaa’. There was a seventh name, but this has been heavily crossed out. Though this obviously does not add up to twelve, Lawrence is more specific in his later, typewritten dispatch. The ‘12 men’ is missing, and the entry for 13 March – the day after the alleged shooting – now reads: ‘I have with me a Syrian, a Moroccan, a Merawi, four Rifaa, and three men from Aneizah, Rass and Zilfi [i.e. ‘Agayl] respectively.’ The only discrepancy, then, is that of the Moroccan – presumably Hamed – whose name has apparently been scrubbed off the list in the earlier, handwritten diary, but appears in the later, official typewritten document. Is it plausible that one scrubs out a name violently – presumably from remorse – in one’s diary, and then includes the name in one’s official report? The obvious implication is that the name was scrubbed out after the official dispatch was published – suggesting that Hamed the Moor was alive and kicking on 13 March – the day after he was supposed to have been shot by Lawrence. On close reading, too, the description in Seven Pillars does not ring true. Lawrence describes the ‘Agayl as ‘running frantically about’ when he arrived to see the corpse, and says that he later sent them ‘to search for Hamed’. Yet the ‘Agayl and the Rifa’a were men who had spent their lives in the desert, tracking enemy raiders and stray camels: their first reaction to such a problem would certainly have been a methodical examination of the murderer’s tracks. In the Seven Pillars account, Lawrence says that they halted in Wadi Khitan after sunset, which would indicate that the entire adventure took place in darkness. He does not explain how, if this was so, he was able to see the dead man’s wound clearly enough in the dark to distinguish the powder-burns. In his official report, though, he states specifically that the party halted at 4.15 p.m. – a good two hours before sunset, which would indicate that the murder occurred while it was still light, when any tracks would have been clearly discernible. It is true that Khitan was a rocky wadi in which tracks might not appear, yet there were also evidently sandy patches where they had made camp, for no self-respecting Bedui would ever halt his camels on rocks, simply for fear of injuring the animals’ knees, and besides, Lawrence mentions the ‘sandy gully’ in which he shot his man. Finally, there is a familiarity about the pattern of the story – it is curiously similar in context to the tale of his near-murder at Tel Bashar in Syria in 1909. In both cases, Lawrence’s dreams of Herculean achievement failed due to illness and physical weakness, and in both cases he appears to present a trauma in order to expiate that failure. Is it significant that Lawrence’s apparent first reaction to the murder was ‘the feeling that it need not have happened today of all days, when I was in pain’? Did Lawrence shoot Hamed the Moor? Did someone else shoot him? Or was Hamed still alive on the 13th? Perhaps someone was killed on the night of the 12th, but given Lawrence’s character, and given the fact that he never referred to the alleged incident subsequently, it seems unlikely that he personally ever shot a man dead in cold blood.

  They were off at three in the morning, and Lawrence was now so sick that his men had to lift him on to his camel. After two more days of slogging through the maze of washes and harras that surrounded the Wadi Ais, Lawrence and his escort – which may or may not have included Hamed the Moor – couched their camels at the water pool of Abu Markha, where ‘Abdallah was about to pitch camp amid a great confusion of tribesmen and roaring and whinnying pack animals.

  Lawrence had preserved just enough strength to greet ‘Abdallah, hand him the instructions from Feisal, and retire. He waited for a tent to be pitched for him, then threw himself down on his bed. He did not leave the tent for eight days.

  It was now 15 March. Feisal and Lawrence had hoped to have the Arab forces in position within ten days, and only five of those days remained. Lawrence was virtually paralysed by malaria, riddled with dysentery, and whether this was from nature, fear, or the added burden of conscience over a man’s death, he was hors de combat. If Fakhri Pasha’s forces got through to Tebuk, and subsequently managed to reach the Palestine front, the whole balance of the war would be upset. A major part of the Arab failure, he felt, would be down to himself. As he lay there, hour after hour, staring at the roof of the tent, a confused mass
of visions began to swirl about in his mind. He thought of his childhood longing for the East, the feeling he had had at school about ‘freeing’ the Arabs, the series of synchronicities which had brought him to Syria, to the Negev, and finally here to Arabia. All the events of his life had been leading to this point. He had never been a man of action. Yet one thought dropped into his mind with the cool clarity of a water-droplet striking the surface of a pool: he, Lawrence, was now as much in command of the campaign as he chose.11 The British looked at the revolt through his eyes, and his close liaison with Feisal meant that the Arabs saw the British largely from his perspective. He, Lawrence, was the pivot: he, Lawrence, was the uncrowned king of Arabia. He bestraddled the flow of information between the Arabs and the British and could manipulate events any way he pleased. His delirium stove through the barriers of his consciousness in a way that he had never experienced before: the fortifications broke down, and the barbarian tribes came rushing in. He experienced a powerful sense of connection, a profound sense of meaning. The liberation of the Arab nation and the winning of the war for the British: these two objectives it had been given to him to achieve. His first reaction to the revolt had been driven by the needs of the moment, but so much had been overlooked. Until now, everyone, including himself, had been obsessed with the capture of Medina, but what on earth was the good of Medina? A string of thoughts snicked into place like ratchets, and made him smile with sudden, thrilling insight. The war in the Hejaz was already won! It had been won the day Feisal’s army had marched into Wejh. From the moment the Arabs had threatened the railway the Turks had had no choice but to waste their strength in defending it. The Turkish garrison was stuck in Medina eating its own transport animals, steadily reducing its own power of movement. The Arabs did not need to take Medina, and to cut the railway entirely would merely give the enemy an excuse to march out. In Medina, they were no threat to the Arabs, nor to the British flank. Soon, his mind began instinctively to calculate. How big was Arabia? Perhaps 140,000 square miles. How could the Turks defend that vast region against its own people? To do so effectively, he reckoned, they would need a fortified post every four square miles, manned by at least twenty troops. That made 600,000 men for the whole of the Arabian theatre! Clearly, to defend Arabia was beyond the capacity of the Turks. Yes, they could defend it with an entrenched and fortified line as they had against the British in Palestine, but only if the enemy marched in formation, with banners flying. But suppose the Arabs were simply an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas?12 They were not obliged to engage the Turks head-on. The prevailing military philosophy of Clausewitz, that the aim of war was to concentrate the largest force at the enemy’s strongest point, and destroy him by sledgehammer blows, need not apply to the desert. Killing Turks was a luxury. In small, mobile parties, the Arabs could strike the enemy at his weakest point, and run away back into the wilderness, their sanctuary – a place where the Turks could not follow. Their advantages were speed, range and time, not firepower. They had no need to fight a pitched battle, nor present a target to the enemy. They could not sustain large numbers of casualties like a regular army, but a war of fading ghosts, waged against objects – machines, technical equipment, rails, stations and bridges – would achieve their purpose without exposing them to great risk. The desert was an ocean in which the Arabs cruised unseen, ubiquitous, independent of bases, communications or fixed points. Using the desert they could harass the enemy, evade decisive battles, sever lines of communication, hit hard and withdraw hastily. Lawrence saw with visionary clearness that the desert was his great ally: he had discovered ‘desert power’.

  After eight days of fever, the mists began to clear, and he remembered that he had been sent to prevent the Medina garrison from marching back to Syria. It was now almost two weeks since he had left Wejh, but there had been no move from Fakhri Pasha. In fact, although Lawrence did not know it, Fakhri had adamantly refused to abandon Medina, which was not to be evacuated until after the war. Lawrence wanted to resume his plan to hit the railway, not to cut it completely, but to dissuade the Turks from leaving Medina at all. On 20 March, he dragged himself out of bed long enough to talk to ‘Abdallah, whom he found indolent and complacent – his instinctive dislike of the Sharif came to the fore. He reported to Wilson later that the conditions in the camp were ‘unsatisfactory’. ‘Abdallah’s force of 3,000 ‘Utayba seemed to him inferior as fighting men to the Harb and Juhayna, and he found their Sheikhs ignorant and lacking in enthusiasm for the war. Just as he had used his rhetoric to boost ‘his’ Feisal, so he left no stone unturned in discrediting ‘Abdallah. He represented him as an obese playboy, ‘lazy and luxurious’, who ate well, read the newspapers, talked about the royal families of Europe, played cruel jokes on his ‘court jester’, and remained largely confined to his tent. He exercised no supervision over his men, rarely visited tribal Sheikhs, and allowed only intimates into his presence. ‘Abdallah was little interested in Syria – Lawrence’s obsession – but was making plans to annex the Assir, and subordinate the Yemen. Lawrence thought enough of his political acumen, at least, to take the possibility seriously, yet in general his observations are so scathing as to suggest that he felt a sense of rivalry with ‘Abdallah, who would not bend to his will. Indeed, his need to convince Wilson that ‘there was nothing between them’ was clearly an excusatio non petita – the unrequested denial which proves the fact. ‘Abdallah himself was not happy about Lawrence’s arrival. He had not wanted any foreign officers in Wadi ‘Ais, for the disconcerting effect a Christian presence might have on the tribes. In his memoirs he wrote that one of his Sheikhs asked him, ‘Who is this red newcomer, and what does he want?’ while another, a fanatic Wahhabi, castigated him for befriending Christians. He wrote that Lawrence had ‘an adverse influence on the fanatical tribes’ and that the general dislike of his presence among the Bedu was clear. The Sharif was concerned with taking Medina, and believed that a pincer movement by the three Arab armies – ‘Ali’s force in Rabegh, Feisal’s in Wejh, and his own in Wadi Ais – would capture the city. He disagreed with the idea of dissipating Arab strength by attacking too many points on the line. His view had something to be said for it: if the Arabs could have captured Medina, it would have been a tremendous moral victory, and would have freed all three Arab armies to move into Syria. Lawrence was now convinced, however, that the Arabs could not capture Medina, and a defeat there, with its multiple casualties, would have ruined the Hashemite cause. ‘Abdallah treated Lawrence kindly, but ultimately his attitude was that Hashemite strategy was no business of an Englishman, and that he should not interfere.13

  Lawrence was, however, more successful with ‘Abdallah’s second in command, Sharif Shakir, a slim, boyish-looking fellow of twenty-seven who had been a childhood companion of the Hashemite princes. With Shakir, Lawrence’s aesthetic sense was brought into play, for while he thought ‘Abdallah undignified, Shakir seemed to him ‘the born aristocrat’, who nevertheless identified with the Bedu, calling himself an ‘Utaybi, wearing his hair in plaits in Bedu style, deliberately cultivating head-lice, and even wearing the brim – a girdle of thorns supposed to confine the belly. Here was another ‘noble Arab’ to add to the list which included Feisal and ‘Ali ibn Hussain al-Harithi, but which definitely excluded the ‘vulgar’ – but intellectually gifted and fiercely independent – ‘Abdallah. Lawrence said that the ‘Utayba ‘worshipped’ Shakir, and would take orders from him rather than his chief, but he clearly appreciated Shakir most for the simple reason that he was amenable to the ‘congenial guidance’ which Lawrence could give him – guidance to which the headstrong ‘Abdallah was immune. Lawrence’s position with the Arabs – great and small – had always been paternalist: he knew what was best. Specifically, Lawrence liked Shakir because he agreed to his plan of striking at the railway immediately. Lawrence also appreciated the help of Dakhilallah al-Qadi, the hereditary lawgiver of the Juhayna, a man of forty-five
– short, tough, weatherbeaten, with the ‘manner and appearance of a toad’. Dakhilallah had been with the Turks in Wadi Yanbu’, and indeed, it was he who had guided them down to the town on the night of 11 December 1916, when they had been scared off by the ethereal patterns of the naval searchlights. It was he who, by way of compensation for that act, had blown the bridge near Aba an- Na’am station about three weeks previously – the only action, Lawrence reminded his superiors, that ‘Abdallah’s forces had executed since moving to Wadi ‘Ais. Dakhilallah had his own reason for being attentive to Lawrence: he wished to make peace with Feisal after having helped the Turks. This was useful, for without Dakhilallah’s influence Lawrence would have been unable to organize anything at all.

  Though his spirit was willing to start at once, his body was still weak. Fever, boils and swellings returned and confined him to bed for the next two days. On the 22nd he managed to send a message to Pierce Joyce, who had taken command in Wejh, saying that he hoped to organize a force of his own shortiy, and intended to get down to the railway the following day for a reconnaissance. He said that he would stay in Wadi ‘Ais for a time, to make sure something was done, and asked Joyce to beg Feisal not to stay in Wejh, as the mere knowledge that he was moving against the railway would both inspire the Arabs and frighten the Turks. Lawrence’s insistent tone in the message, in fact, is indicative of the ascendancy he had already gained over the Arab leader: he told Joyce to say that ‘he hoped most strongly to find [Feisal] at Jayadah or ‘Ain Shefa soon’.14 He had decided to leave on Sunday the 25th, but the following day he wrote in his pocket diary, ‘am still beastly ill really.’15 He finally started the day after, intent on attacking the station at Aba an-Na’am, which lay, conveniently, almost opposite the mouth of the Wadi Ais, shielded from its view by an outcrop of ridges – the Dhula. Lawrence collected about thirty ‘Utayba, and a handful of Sharifs, which would be the scouting party of a much larger force commanded by Sharif Shakir, equipped with howitzers and machine-guns. They left the camp just after first light, their camels’ feet crunching on the hard flints of the wadi floor, and by a tremendous effort of will Lawrence put his fear behind him. After riding for two days the party reached the Dhula, where they made camp in the lee of the rocky outcrops, amid some great tamarisk trees. Leaving camp, Lawrence climbed a 600-foot ridge to spy on the station, and found himself shattered after his fever, panting and halting to get his breath frequently. At the top, though, he was rewarded with a clear view of the station, which lay about 6,000 yards away: three large buildings, and the twenty-arched bridge which Dakhilallah had blown previously – now repaired. The original plan had been to send a force of tribesmen to occupy the hill behind the station – Jabal Unsayl – and attack it from the rear. When Sharif Shakir arrived with the main body the following afternoon, though, Lawrence discovered that he had brought with him only 300 men – a third of the number promised. He judged this force inadequate for an infantry assault, and instead he and the Sharif decided to bombard the station with their artillery, while mining the railway on both sides. One party was dispatched to the north to dynamite the rails and cut the telegraph line at dawn, while Lawrence led another – a group of ‘Utayba – to mine the track between Aba an-Na’am and Istabl ‘Antar – the next station to the south. There was no talking, and the camels loped along in silence, until, at about 11.15, they arrived at a deserted stretch of line. This was the first time Lawrence had seen the railway close up, and he found the touch of the rails thrilling. He placed the mine – a twenty-pound Garland-Martini, designed by Herbert Garland himself – under the rails, and set up a pressure switch which would detonate when the metals were depressed by the weight of a train. Then he sited a machine-gun and its crew in a water-course about 500 yards away, behind some thick bushes. Leaving the gun crew, Lawrence and the rest of the ‘Utayba mounted up and rode a little farther south, to cut the telegraph wires. As none of the Arabs could climb a telegraph pole, Lawrence had to shin up himself, and, having severed the wires, lost his grip and plummeted sixteen feet to the ground, only to be saved by his guide, Mohammad al-Qadi. At last, though, everything was in place: the plan was for Shakir’s artillery to open up on the station at first light next morning. The Turks would immediately try to telegraph for reinforcements, but, finding the lines cut, would be forced to send off a train towards Medina, which would run straight into Lawrence’s mine and be derailed or destroyed. When the crew jumped out to salvage it, the machine-gun would cut them down.