The general food-supply; there were no food-stocks in Damascus and starvation would follow in two days if steps were not taken at once. It would be easy to get temporary supplies from the near villages if confidence were restored, the roads safeguarded and the transport animals (carried off by the Turks) replaced by others from the general pool of captures. The British refused to share out, so the Arab army had to give the city all its own transport animals. The railway; for the future food-supply. Pointsmen, drivers, firemen, shopmen, traffic-staff had to be found and re-engaged immediately. The telegraph-system; the lines had to be repaired and directors appointed. Finance; the Australians had looted millions of pounds in Turkish notes, the only currency in use, and reduced it to no value by throwing it about. One trooper had given a boy a five-hundred pound note for holding his horse for three minutes. What was left of the British gold from Akaba was used to stabilize the currency at a low rate of exchange; but new prices then had to be fixed and this meant setting up a printing press.
Then a newspaper was demanded, to restore public confidence. Then Chauvel demanded forage for his forty thousand horses. He had to be given it, for otherwise he would be compelled to seize what he needed by main force. The Arabs could expect little mercy from Chauvel and the fate of Syria’s freedom depended on his being satisfied. Three Arabic-speaking British officers who had been on the Akaba expedition with Lawrence helped him and Shukri and the rest with all this hasty organization. Lawrence’s aim had been to run up a façade rather than a whole well-fitted building, but so furiously well had the work of that evening been done that when he left Damascus three days later the Syrians had a government which endured for two years without foreign advice, in an occupied country wasted by war, and against the will of at least one of the occupying Allies.
Lawrence writes then:
‘Later I was sitting alone in my room working and thinking out as firm a way as the turbulent memories of the day allowed, when the muezzins began to send their call of last prayer through the moist night over the illuminations of the feasting city. One, with a ringing voice of special sweetness, cried into my window from a near mosque. I found myself involuntarily distinguishing his words: “God alone is great: I testify that there are no gods but God: and Mohammed is his Prophet. Come to prayer: come to security. God alone is great: there is no god—but God.”
‘At the close he dropped his voice two tones, almost to speaking level, and softly added: “And He is very good to us this day, O people of Damascus.” The clamour hushed, as every one seemed to obey the call to prayer on this their first night of perfect freedom.’
It is with this passage that Lawrence closes the popular abridged version of his great Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But almost dishonestly, for there followed this further sentence:
‘While my fancy, in the overwhelming pause, showed me my loneliness and lack of reason in their movement: since only for me, of all the hearers, was the event sorrowful and the phrase meaningless.’
He is referring, I think, both to the extinction of that strong personal motive that kept him alive through the almost incredible hardships of his task, and to the shame he felt for deceiving the Arabs with what still seemed the hollowest of frauds.
XXVIII
He went to sleep, for the first time for days, but was almost immediately aroused by news that Abd el Kader was making rebellion. He sent word across to Nuri Said, glad that the mad fellow was digging his own grave. Abd el Kader had summoned his retainers, told them that the members of the new government were merely the tools of the English and called on them to strike a blow for religion while there was yet time. The simple Algerians had taken his word that it was so and run to arms. They were joined by the Druses, who were angry that Lawrence had sharply refused to reward them for their services; they had joined the Revolt too late to be of any real use. Algerians and Druses together began to burst open shops and to riot.