‘Yes, but you can’t send your head along to Ismailia every time.’ (Ismailia was a long way from Cairo.)
‘I wish to goodness I could,’ said Lawrence, and rang off.
This had the desired effect; it was decided to get rid of Lawrence somehow. He took the opportunity to ask for ten days’ leave to go for a holiday on the Red Sea in company with a Foreign Office official, Storrs (afterwards the first Christian Governor of Jerusalem since the Crusades), who was visiting the Sherif on important business. He got his leave, and at the same time made arrangements to be transferred from the Military Intelligence Service to the ‘Arab Bureau,’ which was under the direct orders of the British Foreign Office. The Arab bureau was a department that had just been formed for helping the Arab Revolt and was run by a small group of men, some of them, like Lloyd and Hogarth, old friends of Lawrence’s, who really knew something about the Arabs—and about the Turks. Lawrence’s transfer was arranged directly between the War Office and the Foreign Office in London, so that gave him time. He intended to do much in his ten days’ leave.
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