West and East fraternize politely, if rather inharmoniously, in the more accessible towns of Arabia and Syria, for the West has money to spend and the East is avaricious. But away in the desert and wild places it is otherwise. The nomads, whose ancestors have roamed the country for four thousand years and more, resist the inquisitive eyes and hungry notebooks of foreigners who are not proved friends. They still regard stray Europeans with hostile suspicion and as fair subjects for loot. But Lawrence’s minute knowledge of their intricate customs, and his apparent complete mastery of the Koran and complex Mohammedan law, caused them to regard him with a tolerance and respect which are exceedingly rare among the fanatical peoples of the Near East. And of course his knowledge of their customs and laws was of incalculable importance in enabling him to settle disputes between antagonistic factions.
To gain his ends it was necessary for Lawrence to be a consummate actor. He was obliged completely to submerge his European mode of living, even at the risk of winning the criticism and ridicule of his own countrymen, by appearing in cities like Cairo, where East and West meet, garbed as an Oriental. His critics scoffed and said that he did this merely to gain notoriety. But there was a far deeper reason. Lawrence knew that he was being watched constantly by shereefs, sheiks, and tribesmen, and he knew that they would regard it as a very great compliment to them if he went about, even among his own people, dressed in the costume of the desert.
During those first days which I had spent with Lawrence in Jerusalem he wore nothing but Bedouin garb. Nor did he ever appear to be aware of the curiosity excited by his costume in the streets of the Holy City, for he always gave one the impression that he was engrossed in his own thoughts hundreds of miles or hundreds of centuries away. And usually on the occasion when he visited Palestine and Egypt in Arab kit, he was obliged to go direct to Ramleh or Cairo from one of his expeditions across the desert. He was therefore obliged to turn up at headquarters just as he happened to be dressed for his work, without wasting the valuable days which would have been required for him to return all the way south to the base-camp at Akaba for a uniform, just to satisfy his critics.
When in the desert he never wore anything but Arab garb, nor could he have succeeded in the amazing way that he did had he offended the Arabs by wearing European costume. When off “in the blue” on his she-dromedary, it was not feasible for Lawrence to take a wardrobe along in his camel-bags. The speed with which he trekked obliged him to travel light. In fact, he usually carried nothing but a lump of unleavened bread, a bit of chocolate, his canteen, chlorine tablets, a tooth-brush, a rifle, revolver and ammunition, and his little volume of the satires of Aristophanes in the original.
The rifle which he carried through the whole campaign had a colorful history. Just one of the ordinary British Army variety, the Turks had captured it at the Dardanelles, and Enver Pasha had adorned it with a metal plate worked with gold and carrying the inscription, “To Feisal, with Enver’s regards.” Enver had given it to Emir Feisal early in 1916, before the outbreak of the Shereefian Revolution, in order to prove to Feisal that the Turks had already won the war. Later the Emir gave it to Lawrence, and the latter carried it on all his raids. For every Turk he killed he cut a notch, a big one for an officer and a little one for a soldier. The rifle is now in the possession of King George.
Occasionally when he went to Cairo or to Jerusalem to make a report to General Allenby, he wore the uniform of a British officer, but even after he had attained the rank of colonel he preferred the uniform of a second lieutenant, usually without insignia of any kind. I have seen him in the streets of Cairo without a belt and with unpolished boots—negligence next to high treason in the British army! To my knowledge he was the only British officer in the war who so completely disregarded all the little precisions and military formalities for which Tommy Atkins and his “hofficers” are world famous. Lawrence rarely saluted, and when he did it was simply with a wave of the hand, as though he were saying, “Hulloa, old man,” to a pal. He rarely saluted any one senior to him, although he always made it a point to acknowledge salutes from men in the ranks. As for military titles, he abhorred them, and from general to private he was known as plain “Lawrence.” Several times in the desert he told me how thoroughly he disliked the red tape of the army and said that as soon as the war was over he intended to go back to archæology.
He was no parlor conversationalist. Lawrence rarely said anything to any one unless it was necessary to give instructions or ask advice or answer a direct question. Even in the heat of the Arabian campaign he sought solitude. Frequently I found him in his tent reading an archæological quarterly when the rest of the camp was worked up to feverpitch over a plan of attack. He was so shy that when General Sir Gilbert Clayton, the distinguished commander of the Secret Corps, or some other officer sought to compliment him on one of his exploits, he would get red as a school-girl and look down at his feet.
Several years ago, in Calcutta, Colonel Robert Lorraine, the eminent actor-airman, said to me, “But if Lawrence is so extremely modest and shy, why did he pose for so many photographs for you?” A keen question and a natural one. And out of justice to Lawrence I think I ought to answer it, even at the expense of disclosing a professional secret. My cameraman, Mr. Chase, uses a high-speed camera. We saw considerable of Colonel Lawrence in Arabia, and although he arranged for us to get both “still” and motion pictures of Emir Feisal, Auda Abu Tayi, and the other Arab leaders, he would turn away when he saw the lens pointing in his direction. We got more pictures of the back of his kuffieh than of his face. But after much strategy and after using all the artifices that I had learned as a reporter on a Chicago newspaper, where it was worth one’s job to fail to bring back a photograph of the fair lady involved in the latest scandal, I finally manœuvered Lawrence into allowing Chase to take a “sitting shot” on two different occasions. Then while I kept Colonel Lawrence’s attention away from Mr. Chase by keeping up a rapid fire of questions regarding our projected trip to the “lost city” of Petra, which he believed to be the primary object of our visit to Arabia, Mr. Chase hurriedly took a dozen pictures from as many different angles, and in less time than it usually requires for a fussy studio photogragher to set up and expose two plates. Any one familiar with the methods of newspaper photographers will appreciate the simplicity of this where you are working out of doors in good light. If you’ve got a graphlex and don’t get stricken with buck-fever at the critical moment, you can get photographs of St. Vitus himself. I realized that Lawrence was one of the most romantic figures of the war. I knew that we had a great scoop. And I had made up my mind that we would not leave Arabia until we had the photographs we wanted. Frequently Chase snapped pictures of the colonel without his knowledge, or just at the instant that he turned and found himself facing the lens and discovered our perfidy. When two experienced hunters start out for game, one to act as decoy and the other to do the shooting, the poor victim has about as much chance as the Bengal tiger who has been selected as the target for visiting royalty.
But to get back to the topic of how Lawrence succeeded in obtaining such a wonderful hold over the Arabs by dressing like them and mastering the smallest details of their daily life, by his courage, his modesty, his physical prowess and his mature wisdom, there can hardly be any question that the way in which this youth gained the confidence, not only of the more cosmopolitan descendants of the Prophet who rule over the cities of Holy Arabia, but also of the Bedouin tribes of the desert, will be regarded by historians of the future as one of the most amazing personal achievements of this age.
The phenomenal character of his accomplishment can be more accurately appraised if we keep in mind that for thirteen hundred years, since the days of Mohammed, fewer Europeans have explored Holy Arabia than have penetrated mysterious Tibet or Central Africa. The zealous Mohammedans who live around the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina prevent Christians, Jews, and other non-Mohammedans from profaning holy soil, and the unbeliever who ventur
es into this part of Arabia is indeed lucky if he returns alive. So Lawrence’s achievements seem all the more extraordinary when we remember that he admitted openly that he was a Christian. For even though he did wear the robes and accoutrements of a shereef of Mecca, he only actually posed as an Oriental when he slipped through the Turkish lines wearing the veil of a native woman.
Of course the vast wealth which he had at his disposal, the seemingly inexhaustible supply of gold sovereigns with which he paid his army, was of vast importance. But though the Germans and Turks also tried using gold, their weakness lay in the fact that they “had no Lawrence,” declares H. St. John Philby, the Arabian authority, who represented Britain in the Central Arabian Desert ruled over by Ibn Sa’ud.
Colonel Lawrence played the part of a man of mystery endowed with the ability to do everything superlatively well, outvying the Arabs at everything from statecraft to camel-riding, and even to using delicate shadings of their own language. In fact, language seems easy for him. In addition to his mother-tongue, he speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and German, some Dutch, Norwegian, and Hindustani, is a master of ancient Latin and Greek, and can manipulate many of the Arabic dialects of the Near East.
Lawrence was exceedingly careful never to enter, into competition with the Bedouins unless he war quite certain of excelling them. He also gained a reputation as a man of deeds rather than words, which greatly impressed the desert-dwellers, who for the most part chatter as incessantly as the crows of India. When he did speak he had something of importance to say and knew whereof he spoke. He seldom made errors, and when he did he took care that the Arabs should ultimately regard it as a success. He was an indefatigable worker even under conditions of ever-insistent hospitality, and he would work far into the night when his Arab colleagues were asleep. It was late at night, or while trekking across the desert swaying in the camel-saddle, that he would plan his far-reaching policies of diplomacy and strategy. Small and wiry, he seemed made of steel. But the desert war left its indelible mark on him in more ways than one, for one of his brothers confided to me that ever since his return from Arabia he has suffered from severe heart-strain.
Auda Abu Tayi, always sincere in his judgment of people, once said to me: “I have never seen any one with such a capacity for work, and he is one of the finest camel-riders that ever trekked across the desert.” A Bedouin can pay no finer compliment. Then added Auda, “By the beard of the Prophet, he seems more than a man!”
CHAPTER XXXII
THE ART OF HANDLING ARABS
COLONEL LAWRENCE believed in the Arabs, and the Arabs believed in him, but they would never have trusted him so implicitly had he not been such a complete master of their customs and all the superficial external features of Arabian life. I once asked him, when we were trekking across the desert, what he considered the best way of dealing with the wild nomad peoples of this part of the world. My motive was to try to get him to tell in his own words something about the methods that had enabled him to accomplish what no other man could. I am confident that he thought I wanted the information merely for my own immediate use in dealing with the Bedouins with whom we were living. Had he suspected that I was attempting to make him talk about himself, he would have turned the conversation into other channels.
“The handling of Arabs might be termed an art, not a science, with many exceptions and no obvious rules,” was his answer. “The Arab forms his judgment on externals that we ignore, and so it is vitally important that a stranger should watch every movement he makes and every word he says during his first weeks of association with a tribe. Nowhere in the world is it so difficult to atone for a bad start as with the Bedouins. However, if you once succeed in reaching the inner circle of a tribe and actually gain their confidence, you can do pretty much as you please with them and at the same time do many things yourself that would have caused them to regard you as an outcast had you been too forward at the start. The beginning and end of the secret of handling Arabs is an unremitting study of them. Always keep on your guard; never speak an unnecessary word; watch yourself and your companions constantly; hear all that passes; search out what is going on beneath the surface; read the characters of Arabs; discover their tastes and weaknesses, and keep everything you find out to yourself. Bury yourself in Arab circles; have no ideas and no interests except the work in hand, so that you master your part thoroughly enough to avoid any of the little slips that would counteract the painful work of weeks. Your success will be in proportion to your mental effort.”
To illustrate the importance the Bedouins place on externals, Lawrence told me that on one occasion a British officer went up country; and the first night, as the guest of a Howeitat sheik, he sat down on the guest rug of honor with his feet stretched out in front of him instead of tucked under him in Arab fashion. That officer was never popular with the Howeitat. To the Bedouin it is as offensive to display the pedal extremities ostentatiously as it would be for us to put our feet on the table at a dinner-party. A short distance behind us in the caravan rode a chief of the Shammar Arabs who had a great scar across his face. Lawrence related this story:
“While that fellow was dining with Ibn Rashid, the ruler of North Central Arabia, he happened to choke. He felt so much humiliated that he jerked out his knife and slit his mouth right up to the carotid artery in his cheek, merely to show his host that a bit of meat had actually stuck in his back teeth.”
The Arabs consider it a sign of very bad breeding for a man to choke over his food. Not only does it show that he is greedy, but it is believed that the devil has caught him. Other fine points of etiquette are bound up in the fact that the Bedouins never use forks and knives, but simply reach into the various dishes on the table with their hands. For instance, it is extremely bad form for any one to eat with his left hand.
The dyed-in-the-wool nomad of Arabia never makes allowances for any ignorance of desert customs in forming his judgment of a stranger. If you have not mastered desert etiquette, you are regarded as an alien and perhaps hostile outsider. Lawrence’s understanding of the Arabs and his unfailing ability to do the right thing at the right moment was uncanny. Of course, he could not have lived as an Arab in Arabia if he had not learned the family history of all the prominent peoples of the desert, including the complete list of their friends and enemies. He was expected to know that a certain man’s father had been hanged or that his mother was the divorced wife of some famous chieftain. It would be as awkward to inquire about an Arab’s father if he had been a famous fighter as it would be to introduce a divorced woman to her former husband. If Lawrence desired any information he gained it by indirect means and by cleverly leading the conversation around to the subject in which he was interested; he never asked questions. Fortunately for the Arab Nationalist movement and for the Allies, Lawrence had got beyond the stage of making mistakes before the war and at one time was actually a sheik of a tribe in Mesopotamia.
“It is vitally important for any one dealing with the desert peoples to speak their local dialects, not the Arabic current in some other part of the East,” declared Lawrence. “The safest plan is to be rather formal at first, to avoid getting too deeply involved in conversation.” Nearly all the officers sent to cooperate with the Arabs in the revolt spoke the Egyptian-Arabic dialect. The Arabs despise the Egyptians, whom they regard as poor relations Therefore, most of the Europeans sent by the Allies to cooperate with the Hedjaz people found themselves coldly treated. The Allies succeeded in winning the Arabs to their cause because Lawrence was able to crystallize the Arabian idea of winning independence from the Turks into a definite form and because he had attained the unusual distinction of being taken into the bosom of most of their tribes.
It was Colonel Lawrence who was mainly responsible for the permanent elevation of Hussein, Feisal, and Abdullah to their respective thrones. Lawrence believed that the best way to consolidate the desert peoples and wipe out their terrible blood-feuds would be to create an Arabian aristocracy. Nothing of this
kind had ever existed in Arabia before, because the nomads of the Near East are the freest people on earth and refuse to recognize any authority higher than themselves. But all Arabs have for centuries accorded a little extra respect to the direct descendants of the founder of their religion. Lawrence, in his attempt to persuade the Arabs to recognize shereefs as specially chosen people, cleverly took advantage of the fact that the family tree of Hussein towered higher, in fact, than a eucalyptus—right up to the Prophet himself. But I am sure he would never have been able to accomplish this if he had not received the unlimited financial support of the British Government. A stream of several hundred thousand pounds in glittering golden sovereigns was poured into Arabia each month to enable the young archaeologist to pay King Hussein’s Arabian army. Lawrence had practically unlimited credit. He could draw any amount he desired up to a million pounds or so. But gold alone would not have sufficed, for the Turks and Germans had tried its lure and failed. The Arabs hated the Turks even more than they loved gold.
Since the beginning of time the sheiks or patriarchs of one tribe have had absolutely no influence with members of other tribes. Shereefs, who really do not belong to any tribe, were recognized as superior leaders only by the people of Mecca, Medina, and the larger towns. The word “shereef” or “shrf,” as it is spelled in Arabic (a language without vowels), signified “honor.” A shereef is supposed to be a man who displays honor. In the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Shereef Hussein and Shereef Feisal had long stood high in the esteem of the inhabitants, who were accustomed to refer to them as “Sidi” or “Lord.” The care-free Bedouins, unlike their city cousins, merely addressed them as “Hussein” and “Feisal” without bothering about titles. But Lawrence, with his usual powers of persuasion, convinced even the Bedouins that they should adopt the term “Sidi” in referring to all shereefs. So successful was he that within a few months, in spite of the fact that he was a foreigner and a Christian, they honored even Lawrence with this title because of their deep and genuine admiration for him.
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