With Lawrence in Arabia

by Lowell Thomas

Nearly all Arabs carry some sort of good luck charm, and the belief in jinn or genii is still common. The talisman which Auda wore round his neck was probably one of the most extraordinary to be found in all Arabia. The amulet was a diminutive copy of the Koran about one inch square, for which he paid more than two hundred pounds. One day he displayed it with great pride, and Lawrence discovered it had been printed in Glasgow and, according to the price marked inside the cover, had been issued at eighteenpence. So far as we could make out, the only things the Bedouins are afraid of are snakes, and they believe that the sole protection against them is such a charm worn round the neck.

There are thousands of reptiles in certain parts of the desert. The worst snake belt in the Near East extends from Jauf to Azrak along a chain of shallow wells in the North Arabian Desert, where one finds, usually near the water, Indian cobras, puff-adders, black whip-snakes, and hosts of others—nearly all deadly. Lawrence once started out on an expedition with eighteen men five of whom died on the way from snake-bite. Instead of relying on the usual alcoholic antidote, he, like his nomad companions, put his faith in Allah. In Arabia a snake will often snuggle up to a sleeping Bedouin at night for warmth, but it will not bite—unless the sleeper is unlucky enough to roll over and frighten it. Although their consciences are by no means clear, nearly all Bedouins, fortunately, are sound sleepers!

Whenever Lawrence and his men reconnoitered in the snake belt at night they put on boots and were careful to beat every foot of ground and every bush in front of them. When an Arab is bitten, his friends read certain chapters of the Koran over him. If they happen to choose correct passages, he lives; but if they have no Koran, the unfortunate one in all likelihood dies. ’T is the will of Allah!

Although the Arabs knew Lawrence was a Christian, once he had gained their confidence, they often invited him to pray with them. This he did only when he felt inclined to humor them, but he had completely memorized all the important Mohammedan prayers so as to be prepared for any unforeseen emergency when his declining to pray might cause embarrassment to Emir Feisal and King Hussein in the presence of members of strange tribes. Fortunately, no such emergency ever arose.

But when he did pray with his Bedouins on several occasions, just to please them, the procedure was as follows: Lawrence and his body-guard would kneel on their prayer-rugs with their faces toward Mecca. Then with one of the sheiks acting as leader they would go through a ceremony consisting of rhythmic prostrations and the repetition, in unison, of passages from the Koran. A certain number of bows are made in the morning, so many at noon, and still a different number at sunset, although the words repeated each time are much the same. At the end of all prayers Lawrence and his men would turn their heads to the right and then to the left before rising. Lawrence explained to me that two angels were supposed to be standing beside each person while praying. One angel records good deeds and the other bad deeds, and it is customary to salute them both. All good Moslems have five prayer services daily, but Lawrence and his men usually cut them down to three by telescoping two in the morning and two in the afternoon; otherwise the Arab army would have spent more time praying than fighting.

Lawrence overcame the two greatest prejudices of the Bedouins; namely, that he was a foreigner and a Christian. Most of the foreigners these nomads had met were Turks whom they despised as barbarians, for the Arabs are intellectual snobs. The only Christians they know are the native Christians of the Syrian coast and the Armenians, who are more accustomed to show the other cheek than to show courage; the Arabs loathe them. It suited them for the most part to ignore the fact that Lawrence was a Christian, because they consider it a disgrace that any Christian should outdo them at the very things at which they ordinarily excel. Occasionally, however, they actually invited him to recite his Christian prayers aloud, which he did most eloquently. Charles M. Doughty, the traveler and poet, so far as I know, was the only man other than Lawrence who ever wandered openly up and down Holy Arabia as a Christian. All other explorers in the forbidden country of the Prophet have disguised themselves as Moslems. Doughty had at least a score of narrow escapes from death, and that he escaped at all was due to the fact that he always went unarmed and did nothing covertly. He took no money with him and made his way about by healing the sick with simple remedies and by vaccinating Arabs. An old man and a great scholar, he now lives at a watering-place on the south coast of England. He and Lawrence are close friends, and the younger man gives his predecessor full credit for “breaking the ice” and making it possible for him and his associates to work with the Bedouins during the war. In fact Doughty’s “Arabia Deserta” was both Lawrence’s Bible and military text-book during the campaign.

The magnificent Bedouin clothes that Lawrence wore were not theatrical garb. They were a part of his carefully worked-out plan to gain complete mastery over the Arabs. Although he did not attempt to disguise either his religion or nationality, outwardly he was an Arab. Except in certain areas, he found that being known as a British officer and a Christian was less of a hindrance than full disguise. Had he desired to pass himself off as a Bedouin, he would have had to grow a beard, a feat he could not have achieved even if the fate of the British Empire had depended on it. However, on a few occasions he did disguise himself as a Bedouin woman and made his way through the Turkish lines. But to other British officers who desired to visit a tribe he recommended simply the Arab head-cloth, to be worn out of courtesy and not as a disguise.

Bedouins have a malignant prejudice against the hat and believe our persistence in wearing it is founded on some irreligious principle. If you were to wear this season’s smartest Piccadilly derby or Austrian velours in Mecca, your friends and relatives would disown you.