VI
Lawrence and Storrs arrived at Jiddah, the port of Mecca on the Red Sea, in October 1916. (At this point Lawrence begins his public account of his adventures, the book Revolt in the Desert.)
The Sherif’s second son Abdulla came to meet the two Englishmen, riding on a white mare with a guard of richly armed slaves, on foot, about him. Abdulla had just come home victorious from a battle at the town of Taif, inland from Mecca, which he had won from the Turks in a sudden rush; he was in great good humour. Abdulla was reported to be the real leader of revolt, the brain behind Hussein, but Lawrence, summing him up, decided that he might be a good statesman and useful later to the Arabs if ever they succeeded in winning freedom (and his judgment of the present King of Transjordania was correct), but he did not seem somehow to be the prophet who was needed to make the revolt a success. He was too affable, too shrewd, too cheerful: prophets are men of a different stuff. Lawrence’s chief object in coming to Jiddah was to find the real prophet, if there was one, whose enthusiasm would set the desert on fire; so he decided at once to look elsewhere.
Meanwhile Abdulla talked to Lawrence about the campaign, and gave him a report to be repeated to headquarters in Egypt. He said that the English were largely responsible for the Arab lack of success. They had neglected to cut the pilgrims’ railway, and the Turks had therefore been able to collect transport and supplies to reinforce Medina. Feisal had been driven from Medina and the enemy there was now preparing a large force to advance on Rabegh, the Red Sea port. The Arabs with Feisal who were barring their road through the hills were too weak in supplies and arms to hold out long. Lawrence replied that Hussein had asked the British not to cut the railway because he would soon need it for his victorious advance into Syria, and that the dynamite which had been sent to him had been returned as too dangerous to be used by Arabs. Moreover, Feisal had not asked for more supplies or arms since the time when Egyptian gunners had been sent.
Abdulla answered that, if the Turks advanced, the Arab tribe called The Harb between them and Rabegh would join them and all would be lost. His father would then put himself at the head of his few troops and die fighting in defence of the city. At this point the telephone bell rang and the Sherif himself from Mecca spoke to Abdulla. Abdulla told him what was being said, and the Sherif answered, ‘Yes, that is so! The Turks will only enter over my dead body,’ and rang off. Abdulla smiled a little and asked whether in order to prevent such a disaster a British brigade, if possible composed of Mohammedan troops, might be sent to Suez, with ships waiting there to rush it to Rabegh as soon as the Turks began their march from Medina. To reach Mecca the Turks had to go through Rabegh because of the water supply, and if Rabegh could be held for a little while, he would himself soon lead up his victorious troops to Medina by the eastern road. When he was in position his brothers Feisal from the west and Ali from the south would close in and a grand attack would be made on Medina from three sides.
THE EMIR ABDULLA
from a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON
Lawrence did not like the idea of sending troops to Rabegh, and replied that there were difficulties about providing shipping for a whole brigade. There were no wholly Mohammedan regiments in the British Army, and a brigade was not large enough anyhow. Ships’ guns would defend the beach, which was all that the brigade could defend, just as well as men on the shore. Moreover, if Christian troops were sent to the assistance of the Holy City against the Turks, it would cause bad feeling in India, where the action would be misunderstood; already there had been great excitement in India when a small British Fleet had bombarded the Turks at Jiddah, the port of Mecca. Still, he would do his best and tell the British in Egypt what Abdulla’s views were. Meanwhile might he go to Rabegh, see what the country was like and also talk with Feisal? He could find out from Feisal whether the hills could be held against the Turks if more help in arms and stores were sent from Egypt.
Abdulla consented but had to get permission from his father; which after some difficulty (for Hussein was very suspicious) was given. Abdulla wrote to his brother Ali telling him to mount Lawrence well and convey him safely and speedily to Feisal’s camp. This was all that Lawrence wanted. That night a sad-looking brass band, in tattered Turkish uniforms, whom Abdulla had captured at Taif played them Turkish and German tunes, and Abdulla told Lawrence of the plans he had made some time before for winning freedom from the Turks by the simple method of detaining important pilgrims to Mecca and holding them as hostages: but Feisal had disagreed. Then Abdulla asked Lawrence how many generations back King George could trace his ancestry: Lawrence replied, ‘Twenty-six generations; to Cedric the Saxon.’ (Or however many it was: I have forgotten, but of course Lawrence knew.) Abdulla proudly remarked that this was not bad, but that he could go seventeen better. Clearly Abdulla was not the prophet. Next day Lawrence took boat to Rabegh and there gave the letter to Ali.
Lawrence took a fancy to Ali, who was the eldest of the four brothers, a man of thirty-seven: he was pleasant-mannered, well read in Arabic literature, pious, conscientious; but he was a consumptive and his weakness made him nervous and moody. If Feisal was not what Lawrence hoped him to be, Ali would perhaps lead the revolt very fairly well. With Ali was another brother, Zeid, a boy of nineteen. He was calm and flippant and not zealous for the Revolt. He had been brought up in the harem and had not yet found himself as a man of action; but Lawrence liked him and he was more pleasant than Ali who did not like the idea of a Christian, even with the permission of the Sherif, travelling in the Holy Province. Ali did not allow Lawrence to start until after sunset lest any of his followers, whom he could not trust, should see him leave the camp. He kept the journey a secret even from his slaves, gave Lawrence an Arab cloak and headcloth to wrap round his uniform and told the old guide who was to go with him to keep his charge from all questioning and curiosity by the way, and to avoid all camps. The Arabs in Rabegh and the district were of the Harb tribe whose chief was pro-Turkish and had fled to the hills when Ali came to Rabegh with his army. They owed this chief obedience, and if he heard of Lawrence’s journey to Feisal, a band of them might be sent to stop him.
Lawrence could count on his guide: a guide had to answer with his life for that of his charge. Some years before a Harb tribesman had promised to take the traveller Huber to Medina by this very road (which was the pilgrims’ road between Medina and Mecca), but finding that he was a Christian had killed him. The murderer relied on public opinion to excuse him, but it went against him in spite of Huber having been a Christian. He had ever since lived alone in the hills without any friends to visit him and had been refused permission to marry any woman of the tribe. It was a warning to Lawrence’s guide and the guide’s son who went with them.
Lawrence, out of training after two years of office work in Cairo, found the journey trying, though the experience of riding a first-class camel of the sort trained in its paces for Arab princes was new and delightful. There were no good camels in Egypt, or in the Sinai desert where the animals though hardy and strong had not been properly trained. The party rode all night except for a short rest and sleep between midnight and the grey dawn. The road was at first over soft flat sand, along the coast between the beach and the hills. After some hours they struck the bed of what in the short rainy season of Arabia is a broad flood-river, but now was merely a wide field of stones, with here and there clumps of thorn bushes and scrub. Here the going was better for the camels and in the early sunlight they made a steady trot towards Masturah, where was the next watering-place out from Rabegh on the pilgrims’ road. Here the guide’s son watered the camels, climbing twenty feet down the side of the stone well and drawing up water in a goatskin, which he poured into a shallow trough. The camels drank about five gallons each, while Lawrence rested in the shade of a ruined stone wall, and the son smoked a cigarette.
Presently some Harb tribesmen came up and watered their she-camels. The guide did not speak to them, for they belonged to a clan with whom his own people, their neighbours, had until recently been at war and even now had little friendship. As Lawrence watched the watering two more Arabs arrived from the direction in which he was bound. Both were young and well mounted; but one was dressed in rich silk robes and embroidered headcloth, the other more plainly in white cotton with a red cotton head-dress, evidently his servant. They halted beside the well and the more splendid one slipped gracefully to the ground without making his camel kneel and said to his companion: ‘Water the camels while I go over there and rest.’ He strolled over to the wall where Lawrence was sitting and pretended to be at his ease, offering a cigarette just rolled and licked. ‘Your presence is from Syria?’ he asked. Lawrence politely parried the question, not wishing to reveal himself, and asked in turn: ‘Your presence is from Mecca?’ The Arab also was unwilling to reveal himself.
Then there a comedy was played which Lawrence did not understand until the guide explained it later. The servant stood holding the camels’ halters waiting for the Harb herdsmen to finish their watering. ‘What is it, Mustafa?’ said his richly-dressed master, ‘Water them at once!’ ‘They will not let me,’ said the servant dismally. The master grew furious and struck his servant about the head and shoulders with his riding stick. The servant looked hurt, astonished and angry, and was about to hit back when he thought better of it and ran to the well. The herdsmen were shocked and out of pity made way for him. As his camels drank from their trough they whispered, ‘Who is he?’ The servant answered, ‘The Sherif’s cousin, from Mecca.’ The herdsmen at once untied bundles of green leaves and buds from the thorn trees and fed the camels of this honourable visitor. He watched them contentedly and called God’s blessing on them: soon he and his servant rode away south along the road to Mecca, while Lawrence and his guides went off in the opposite direction.
The old guide began to chuckle and explain the joke. The two men were both of noble birth. The one who played the part of master was Ali ibn el Hussein, a sherif, the other was his cousin. They were nobles of the Harith tribe and blood enemies of the Harb clan to which these herdsmen belonged. Fearing that they would be delayed or driven off the water if they were recognized, they pretended to be master and servant from Mecca. Ali ibn el Hussein afterwards became Lawrence’s best friend among the Arab fighting men and at one time saved his life: he had already made a name for himself in the fighting at Medina and had been the leader of the Ateiba tribesmen in much camel-fighting with the Turks. Ali had run away from home at the age of eleven to his uncle, a famous robber chieftain, and lived by his hands for months until his father caught him. The old guide grew enthusiastic in his account of Ali, ending with the local proverb, ‘The children of Harith are children of battle.’
The day’s ride which began over shingle continued over pure white sand. The glare dazzled the eyes, so that Lawrence had to frown hard and pull his headcloth forward as a peak over his eyes and beneath them too. The heat beat up in waves from the ground. After awhile the pilgrims’ road was left and a short cut was taken inland over a gradually rising ground of rock ridges covered with drift sand. Here grew patches of hard wiry grass and shrubs, on which a few sheep and goats were pasturing. The guide then showed Lawrence a boundary stone and said with some relief that he was now at home in his own tribal ground and might come off his guard.
By sunset they reached a hamlet of twenty huts where the guide bought flour and kneaded a dough cake with water, two inches thick and eight across. He cooked it in a brush-wood fire that a woman provided for him and, shaking off the ashes, shared it with Lawrence. They had come sixty miles from Rabegh since the evening before and still had as far again to go before they reached Feisal’s camp. Lawrence was stiff and aching, his skin blistered and his eyes weary. They stopped at the hamlet for two hours and rode on in pitch darkness up valleys and down valleys. Underfoot it seemed to be sand, for there was no noise, and the only change came from the heat of the air in the hollows and the comparative coolness of the open places. Lawrence kept on falling asleep in the saddle and being woken up again suddenly and sickeningly as he made a clutch by instinct at the saddle-post to recover his balance. Long after midnight they halted, slept for three hours and went on again under a moon. The road was among trees along another water-course with sharp pointed hills on either side, black and white in the moonlight: the air was stifling. Day came as they entered a broader part of the valley with dust spinning round here and there in the dawn wind. On the right lay another hamlet of brown and white houses looking like a dolls’ village in the shadow of a huge precipice thousands of feet high.
From the houses after a while came out a talkative old man on a camel and joined the party. The guide gave him short answers and showed that he was unwelcome, and the old man to make things easier burrowed in his saddle pouch and offered the party food. It was yesterday’s dough cake moistened with liquid butter and dusted with sugar. One made pellets of it with the fingers and ate it that way. Lawrence accepted little, but the guide and his son ate greedily, so that the old man went short: and this was as it should be, for it was considered effeminate for an Arab to carry so much food on a journey of a mere hundred miles. The old man gave news of Feisal; the day before he had been repulsed in an attack and had had a few men wounded: he gave the names of the men and details of their wounds.
They were riding over a firm pebbly ground among acacia and tamarisk trees and their long morning shadows. The valley was like a park; a quarter of a mile broad. It was walled in by precipices, a thousand feet high, of brown and dark-red with pink stains, at the base were long streaks of dark green stone. After seven miles they came to a tumbledown barrier which ran across the valley and right up the hill-sides wherever the slope was not too steep to take the wall: in the middle were two walled-in enclosures. Lawrence asked the old man what the wall meant. He answered instead that he had been in Damascus, Constantinople and Cairo and had friends among the great men of Egypt, and asked whether Lawrence knew any of the English there? He was very inquisitive about Lawrence’s intentions and tried to trip him in Egyptian phrases. Lawrence answered in the Syrian dialect of Aleppo, whereupon the old man told him of prominent Syrians whom he knew. Lawrence knew them too. The man then began to talk local politics, of the Sherif and his sons, and asked Lawrence what Feisal would do next. Lawrence as usual avoided answering, and indeed he knew nothing of Feisal’s plans. The guide came to the rescue and changed the subject. Later Lawrence found that the old man was a spy in Turkish pay who used to send frequent reports to Medina of what came past his village for Feisal’s army.
After a long morning’s travel, through two more valleys and across a saddle of hills, the party found itself in a third valley, where the old spy had told them that they would soon find Feisal. In this valley they stopped at a large village where there was a strip of clear water two hundred yards long and twelve wide, bordered with grass and flowers. Here they were given bread and dates by negro slaves—the best dates Lawrence had ever tasted—at the house of a principal man. The owner was, however, away with Feisal, and his wife and children were in tents in the hills, looking after the camels. The climate was feverish in these valleys and the Arabs only spent five months in the year in their houses: in their absence the negroes did the work for them. The black men did not mind the climate and prospered with their gardening, growing melons, marrows, cucumber, grapes, tobacco, which gave them pocket-money. They married among themselves, built their own houses and were well treated by the Arabs. Indeed so many of them had been given their freedom that there were thirteen purely negro villages in this valley alone.
After their bread and dates, the party went on farther up the valley, which was about four hundred yards broad and enclosed by bare red and black rocks with sharp edges and ridges, and soon came upon parties of Feisal’s soldiers and grazing herds of camels. The guide exchanged greetings with them and hurried his pace; they pressed towards the hamlet where Feisal was encamped. Here there were about a hundred mud houses with luxurious gardens. They were all built upon mounds of earth twenty feet high, which had been carefully piled up, basket-full by basket-full, in the course of generations. These mounds became islands in the rainy season, with the flood-water rushing between them. At the village where they had just been there were scores of similar islands, but hundreds more had been washed away and their occupants drowned in a cloudburst some years before; an eight-foot wall of water had raced down the valley and carried everything before it. The guide led on to the top of one of these mounds where they made their camels kneel by the yard-gate of a long low house. A slave with a silver-hilted sword in his hand took Lawrence to an inner court. The account of Lawrence’s meeting there with Feisal can best be given in Lawrence’s own words:
‘On the farther side of the inner court, framed between the uprights of a black doorway, stood a white figure waiting tensely for me. I felt at first glance that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek—the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory. Feisal looked very tall and pillar-like, very slender, in his long white silk robes and his brown headcloth bound with a brilliant scarlet and gold cord. His eyelids were dropped; and his black beard and colourless face were like a mask against the strange still watchfulness of his body. His hands were crossed in front of him on his dagger.
‘I greeted him. He made way for me into the room and sat down on his carpet near the door. As my eyes grew accustomed to the shade, they saw that the little room held many silent figures, looking at me or at Feisal steadily. He remained staring down at his hands, which were twisting slowly about his dagger. At last he enquired softly how I had found the journey. I spoke of the heat and he asked how long from Rabegh, commenting that I had ridden fast for the season.
‘“And do you like our place here in Wadi Safra?”
‘“Well; but it is far from Damascus.”
‘The word had fallen like a sword into their midst. There was a quiver. Then everybody present stiffened where he sat, and held his breath for a silent minute. Some, perhaps, were dreaming of far-off success: others may have thought it a reflection on their late defeat. Feisal at length lifted his eyes, smiling at me, and said, “Praise be to God, there are Turks nearer us than that.” We all smiled with him, and I rose and excused myself for the moment.’
Any reader, by the way, who prefers Mr. Lowell Thomas’s version of these incidents is welcome to his choice:
‘On arrival at Jiddah, Lawrence succeeded in getting permission from Grand Shereef Hussein to make a short camel journey inland to the camp of Emir Feisal, third son of the Grand Shereef who was attempting to keep the fires of revolution alive. The Arab cause looked hopeless. There were not enough bullets left to keep the army in gazelle meat and the troops were reduced to John the Baptist’s melancholy desert fare of locusts and wild honey.
‘After exchanging the usual Oriental compliments over many sweetened cups of Arabian coffee, the first question Lawrence asked Feisal was, “When will your army reach Damascus?” The question evidently nonplussed the Emir, who gazed gloomily through the tent-flap at the bedraggled remnants of his father’s army. “In sh’ Allah,” replied Feisal, stroking his beard. “There is neither power nor might save in Allah, the high, the tremendous! May He look with favour upon our cause. But I fear the gates of Damascus are farther beyond our reach at present than the gates of Paradise. Allah willing, our next step will be an attack on the Turkish garrison at Medina where we hope to deliver the tomb of the Prophet from our enemies.”’