Walking the Bible

by Bruce Feiler

  “So when you read the Bible, your god is there?”

  “Yes, because we believe that the creator of all this world is Allah. In the Koran it is mentioned that Allah created the world in seven days. It’s the same in the Bible. When I read the Bible I get a certain feeling toward Allah.”

  “And what is that feeling?”

  He thought for a second. “If you are stuck on an island, and you’ve lost everything, at the end you will feel that the only help will come to you from Allah. That’s the feeling I get.”

  After about an hour we turned east off the highway and ventured across the sand toward one of the most spectacular natural environments I’ve ever seen. Wadi Rum is one of three dry riverbeds that drip down from the central mountains of Jordan like braids. On a map, the twenty-five-mile-long, two-mile corridor looks similar to the countless wadis we had seen in the Sinai and Negev. What makes Rum so spectacular, “vast, echoing, and godlike,” in Lawrence’s words, are the granite and sandstone mountains—as high as 2,100 feet—that soar from the sand in endless strata of peanut-butter-colored stone, interrupted with layers of red, purple, and pink. The cliffs have been so softened and shaped by the wind that they look like wet gobs of clay about to be sculpted. They bulge in places, pucker in others, and generally loom so large over the ground, like chubby aunts peering over a crib, that any visitor looking up at them feels diminished, childlike in awe.

  As Lawrence, the laureate of Rum, wrote of a journey through the wadi with his bedouin brigade: “The crags were capped in nests of domes, less hotly red than the body of the hill; rather grey and shallow. They gave the finishing semblance of Byzantine architecture to this irresistible place: this processional way greater than imagination. The Arab armies would have been lost in the length and breadth of it, and within the walls a squadron of aeroplanes could have wheeled in formation. Our little caravan grew self-conscious, and fell dead quiet, afraid and ashamed to flaunt its smallness in the presence of the stupendous hills.”

  Even more than that of Moses, the ghost of Lawrence lingers over this part of Jordan. On our drive, Mahmoud pointed out places associated with Britain’s sand prince: here a spring that bore his name, there a nook where he camped his troops, here a place that David Lean filmed his 1962 biopic. In many ways, the image of Lawrence is more important than the reality. Thomas Edward Lawrence was the second of five illegitimate sons born to an Irish gentleman and the governess of his two (legitimate) daughters. Masquerading as “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence,” the couple fled Ireland and settled in Oxford, where T.E. (he preferred the initials) eventually went to university, specializing in medieval architecture. While still a student, Lawrence traveled throughout the Middle East, surveying Crusader castles like the one in Harran and dabbling in archaeology. During the war, Lawrence, one of the few British officers who spoke Arabic, was assigned to do intelligence work in Cairo, eventually tapping Faysal Hussein as the British government’s best hope against the Turks. Soon Lawrence joined Faysal’s army as a liaison, and led it on a spectacular, two-month march through the desert to capture Aqaba, a feat of myth-making proportions in the Arab world. By the time Faysal arrived in Damascus, Lawrence had inspired him to liberate the Arab world.

  Or so Lawrence would have us believe. Lawrence’s fame arises mostly from a 330,000-word account of his time with the Arabs, called The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, of which he published six private copies in 1922. The book contains self-conscious literary prose coupled with swashbuckling adventure. In 1923, following editing by George Bernard Shaw, Lawrence printed four hundred additional copies of the book. After the book was made available to the public in 1935, Seven Pillars went on to become one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential work written about the Middle East since the Koran. By the time David Lean turned it into a gripping, three-hour-and-twenty-six-minute epic, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the image of Lawrence as a heroic figure was already set in stone.

  But in more subtle ways, Lawrence is part of a long tradition of Westerners fascinated by Arabs. These Arabists include a long line of authors, adventurers, and rabble-rousers—“sand-mad Britons,” as one writer called them. For them, Islam was a dangerous and voluptuous provocation and surviving it was a triumph of virility. Lawrence, an effeminate, five-foot-five intellectual, encapsulated his experience as a sort of sexual conquest, and ultimately turned it into a drama only slightly less grand than the Exodus itself. As a result, just as it is impossible to set foot in the Middle East and not think of Moses, so it is impossible to set foot in the region and not think of Lawrence. If nothing else, he defined a certain romanticism toward the region. In his world-view, the desert is full of mystical, almost frightening aliens—the dark side of civilization—that have to be liberated and integrated into our world before we can become whole ourselves. It’s as if we’re all split by the division between Abraham’s sons, and as the children of Isaac we have a psychological need to confront, unleash, and ultimately make peace with the children of Ishmael.

  The parallels between Lawrence’s tale and the Exodus are not small. Both involve a pastoral people rising up behind a charismatic leader and conquering the settled world in a sweeping bid for independent nationhood. The differences, though, are important. Lawrence was not dealing with slaves, he was dealing with bedouin. Also, Lawrence was not leading these bedouin on a mission based on the superiority of their god; he was leading them on an anticolonial conquest. Finally, for Lawrence at least, there was an erotic element to his effort. As he wrote in the dedication to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: “I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.” Its echo of the covenant of Abraham (“I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars”) is unmistakable; yet in Lawrence’s instance, the “you” is not God, not even the Arab people, but his young male lover.

  All of this self-aggrandizement—as well as the homosexuality, and just the fact that he was a Westerner—has made Lawrence a controversial figure in the Arab world. Near the northern entrance of Wadi Rum, Mahmoud took us to an isolated boulder, about the size of a mobile home, which contained two carved figures about eighteen inches tall. One was clearly an Arab and was inscribed “Prince Abdullah ibn Hussein, 1918,” the future king. The other had the familiar square nose of Lawrence. It was inscribed “L the Arab.” I asked Mahmoud what he thought of the man.

  “Lawrence may have been a good soldier,” he said, “but he was not a great man. He was crazy mad for explosives. If you gave him explosives he would blow up any mountain.”

  “But didn’t he help the Arabs?” I said.

  “If the British wanted to help the Arabs they would have. They just wanted to help themselves.”

  “Didn’t Lawrence help start Arab nationalism?”

  “No. It started with the Nabateans.”

  Our final stop on our mini-Lawrence tour was a desert mountain at the end of a small ridge. The mountain was divided into a series of vertical strata that look like lady fingers squeezed together around a Bundt cake. Because these colonnades look remarkably like pillars, local bedouin call the mountain “Lawrence,” even though there are only five such pillars (and even though the title is never explained in the book). We stopped the car, and I decided to walk across the desert floor to get a closer view. The afternoon was hot, and a small herd of camels grazed nearby. The ground was covered with chips of granite—gray, black, purple, brown. I picked up one and slipped it into my pocket, the first time I had done that since Jebel Musa. As I did, I thought again about Lawrence’s legacy and what it said about my own experience in the desert.

  For all the lingering fascination with him, few people today hold Lawrence up as a hero worth emulating. One reason may be a largely forgotten part of his story. Lawrence is remembered for his romanticism, for shucking his English khakis and taking up the warrior tradition of his adopted tribe. But by the end of his three-year tenure, La
wrence himself rejects that ideal. As he writes in Seven Pillars, “The effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundations, quitted me of my English self.” But, he continues, “I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith.” This coldhearted reality, not his warm-fuzzy idealism, is Lawrence’s true legacy: Not only can you go home again; you must.

  In this way, I was as much a disciple of Lawrence as of Moses. Few who enter the desert today do so with the notion of leaving themselves behind and becoming somehow bedouin. Though my journey was certainly romantic in its own way, I never suffered delusions nor seriously considered fantasies of “leaving myself behind” and becoming something else entirely. I had traveled too widely and seen too many shallow transformations to put much credence in that. Instead, what I think I was trying to do—and, to an extent, what I think I was doing—was becoming something that I already was: namely, a person with these places living inside me. The desert, as I was discovering, was part of my own geography just as much as my own hometown. And the best way I could explain this feeling to myself was to believe that the desert wasn’t a new place for me; it was an old place, a familiar place, that I never quite knew. This was a major revelation: I didn’t need to stay here forever to reach some kind of transformation. I was carrying around this place—and perhaps even that transformation—already within me.

  That evening we camped on the edge of Wadi Rum before starting the following morning toward Jordan’s western border, the Arava Valley, which leads from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea along the African rift. It was here, after leaving the Sinai, that the Israelites began their final trek north. We visited several sites associated with the Bible, including Lot’s Cave, a grotto that Byzantine travelers identified as the place where Lot convened with his daughters. Today it has the ruins of a church and several mosaics dating from the seventh century C.E. We gave the attendant some baksheesh and hopped over the fence to look around. Later we found him asleep in his shack, cradling a bottle of booze. Given the role of liquor in the place, the scene brought a smile.

  After lunch we drove up the sheer face of the rift to the start of the mountains that run along the central spine of Jordan. The terrain shifted rapidly from the melting heat of the valley floor, through a series of jagged mountain teeth along the fault line, to pockets of green along the mountain ridge where olives and figs are joined by oaks, junipers, and cypresses. Because of these stark conditions, few people in history have been brave enough to live here. But many have passed through. This is the start of what Numbers calls the King’s Highway, which stretched from the Gulf of Aqaba near Eilat, through the mountain kingdoms of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, before reaching Damascus, where it joined the Via Maris and advanced into Mesopotamia. This is the road Abraham likely took on his way from Harran (though he was farther north); it’s also the road Jacob took on his way to and from his grandfather’s homeland. Four thousand years later, it’s also the road Lawrence and Faysal took on their final run to Damascus. More important for us, it’s also the road Moses wanted to take on his trip up from Sinai.

  We stopped in a small, mostly abandoned town and took a short hike to a shaded area overlooking the Dead Sea. The sky was pale blue now, and we could see a small herd of goats on a plateau. Some teenage boys crouched behind a rock, looking at the shepherd girls. We watched the scene unfold for a few minutes, then pulled out our Bibles and returned to the story.

  After recounting in exacting detail the rebellions that dominate the Israelites’ second year in the desert, the Bible is silent on the next thirty-eight years. During this time, members of the first generation presumably are dying, as God had willed following the episode with the spies. New children are born. Miriam dies and is buried. Then, because Moses has concluded that the Israelites will not conquer the Promised Land from the south, he rouses his people and prepares to cross the Jordan and move north. The exact itinerary of the Israelites during this period is almost impossible to decipher; the text appears to repeat itself on some occasions and to contradict itself on others. Kings from one place pop up in another place; nations long since passed suddenly reappear.

  But generally speaking, the Israelites proceed as follows. Before setting out, Moses sends messengers to the king of Edom, the southernmost kingdom of Transjordan, which is made up of descendants of Esau. “Thus says your brother Israel,” the messengers say. “You know all the hardships that have befallen us; that our ancestors went down to Egypt, that we dwelt in Egypt a long time, and that the Egyptians dealt harshly with us and our ancestors.” Allow us, then, to cross your country, the messengers say. “We will not pass through fields or vineyards, and we will not drink water from wells. We will follow the King’s Highway, turning off neither to the right nor to the left until we have crossed your territory.” Edom flatly rejects the request. “You shall not pass through us, else we will go out against you with the sword.”

  With Edom closed off, the Israelites choose an alternate route. First they move eastward across the Negev, where they are threatened by the Canaanite king of Arad, whom they quickly destroy. Next they pass into Jordan just north of the Gulf of Aqaba, near present-day Eilat, at which point they turn north again, skirting Edom to its eastern side. In no time, the Israelites grow ornery again, complaining about the miserable food. God sends fiery serpents to bite them, killing some and wounding others. Moses intercedes, and God instructs him to take a copper serpent and mount it on a pole. The wounded are told they can look at the serpent and recover.

  The Israelites then continue north, passing the land of Moab to the land of the Amorites, near modern Amman. The Bible notes in passing that this story is mentioned in the Book of the Wars of the Lord, which scholars presume is a lost text describing this part of the journey in more detail. Moses then asks the Amorites for permission to pass through their land, but the Amorites respond by engaging the Israelites in battle. The Israelites win handily and settle the land all the way north to Jabbok. Two and a half tribes will stay here when the rest cross the Jordan and attack Canaan.

  What follows is one of the more curious incidents of the Bible, the story of Balaam. Now that the Israelites are camped in the area of modern Jordan, the Moabites, just to the south, grow concerned. The king declares, “Now this horde will lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass in the field.” The king summons a soothsayer named Bal-aam from along the Euphrates to put a hex on the Israelites. “There is a people that came out of Egypt,” the king tells Balaam. “It hides the earth from view, and it is settled next to me. Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land.” Balaam asks God for permission to travel to Moab, but God tells him not to go, saying, “You must not curse that people, for they are blessed.” The king of Moab sends even more emissaries, and God gives Balaam permission to go, but only if he agrees to follow God’s orders.

  Once he arrives in Moab, Balaam asks the king to prepare seven altars, with seven bulls and seven rams. Balaam sacrifices the animals and then turns to the Israelites. Instead of a curse, though, Balaam issues a blessing, which he delivers in the form of a poem. “How can I damn whom God has not damned. /How doom when the Lord has not doomed? /As I see them from the mountain tops, /Gaze on them from the heights, /There is a people that dwells apart.” The king of Moab is horrified, but, instead of sending Balaam home, the king takes him to another spot to issue his curse. Once again Balaam issues a blessing. Four times the king tries, four times Balaam responds with a message of favor. “God is not mortal to change his mind,” Balaam explains. Before leaving, Balaam informs the king that his people will be Israel’s next victims.

  The story of Balaam is one of the defining events of the Israelites’ final years in the desert. Reviewing the event later in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Micah suggests the episode is
a bookend to the liberation from Egypt. At the start of the Exodus, God expresses his devotion to his chosen people by thwarting the king of Egypt; at the end he reinforces his commitment by thwarting the king of Moab. Though the story of Balaam takes up only three chapters in Numbers, some Talmudic scholars thought it should stand on its own, meaning there would be Seven Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers 1–21, Bal-aam (Numbers 22–24), Numbers 25–36, and Deuteronomy. Either way, by the end of the story, Balaam emerges less as a sorcerer, as he is originally portrayed, and more as a prophet. “A star rises from Jacob,” Balaam says, “a meteor comes forth from Israel.”

  For Avner, the lesson of the story was that God’s power is not limited to Israel. “He also controls the destiny of the Amorites, the Moabites, even the Edomites. Balaam foretells their fate as well.”

  “But Balaam is not an Israelite,” I said. “How does he hear the voice of God?”

  “The text suggests anyone can hear God. Anyone can follow his commandments. It’s the same with the Exodus. Other people join in the Exodus who are not part of the twelve tribes. By accepting the laws, they, too, become part of Israel.”

  As we were leaving, we noticed a brand-new Toyota Land Rover parked nearby with a family of four enjoying a picnic. Since we had seen few expensive vehicles the entire time we were in Jordan, we were looking curiously at the car, when the father of the family beckoned us over. He was neatly dressed in gray trousers and an Adidas windbreaker. He was from Qatar, he said, and was living in Jordan on a military study program. He asked us where we were from.

  Israel and America, we said.

  “Ah, you two are always good allies,” he said. “Not just military allies, but friends, too.”

  He asked what we were doing in Jordan and I explained the nature of our project. “But nothing in the Bible takes place here,” he said. Sure it does, I said, and showed him various passages in the text. He looked through the book curiously and asked a few questions. After a while he handed it back. “Good luck with your travels,” he said. “I hope that we meet again.”