Even so they had to sleep that night on the prospect of water, not on the fact. Not until eight o’clock next morning did they reach the wells of Arfaja. Here they spent a day’s rest in, relatively, luxurious ease. Yet that night they had a brusque reminder that the desert was not the only danger, nor the only barrier to Arab unity. For when drinking coffee round the camp-fire, a hail of bullets suddenly broke up their “coffee-housing.” One man lay mortally wounded. Others might have followed but for the instant action of Auda’s cousin in kicking sand over the fire. The sheltering darkness gave them a chance to find their rifles and beat off the raiders.
From this long desert journey Lawrence acquired the Arab habit of drinking—to drink to overflowing point when the chance came, and go sparingly on a few sips for several days on end between wells. He also gained further insight into the mind of the Syrian Arab. As they rode along the Sirhan from oasis to oasis, Nesib and Zeki entertained the party with pictures of how they would plant and reclaim all this country when they had established the Arab Government of their dreams. “Such vaulting imagination was typical of Syrians, who easily persuaded themselves of possibilities, and as quickly reached forward to lay their present responsibilities on others.” Lawrence’s reflection gained point from the fact that when he pointed out that Zeki’s camel was full of mange, Zeki launched forth into a long discourse on the “Veterinary Department of State,” minutely organized and scientifically equipped, that would be established when Syria was freed. He and Nesib became so absorbed in planning its organization during the next few days that they ignored all reminders about dressing the camel’s itching skin—until, at last, it died.
Lawrence also lifts a corner of the veil over his own mind when he tells of his reply to their complaint that he had the English fault of snatching at the merely opportune, whereas their nature was to be content with nothing short of perfection. “O Nesib, and O Zeki, will not perfection, even in the least of things, entail the ending of this world? Are we ripe for that? When I am angry I pray God to swing our globe into the fiery sun, and to prevent the sorrows of the not-yet-born: but when I am content, I want to lie for ever in the shade, till I become a shade myself.”
It was their nineteenth day since leaving Wejh when they reached one of the encampments of the Howeitat. After feasting that evening, a solemn council of action followed in the morning. The first resolve was to send a present of six bags of gold, a thousand pounds in each, to the Emir Nuri Shaalan. This it was hoped would encourage him to turn a blind eye to their mustering of force, and a kind eye to the families and herds while the fighting men were away. Auda was to be the envoy.
The rest of the party, and Lawrence with them, were meantime made the guests of the Howeitat, and feasted twice daily. Each morning they went in solemn procession, on led horses, to a different family’s tent.
Each time, without variation, a similar pyramid of mutton in an encircling wall of rice was borne into their midst in the same huge tribal food-bowl. The centre-pieces were the boiled sheep’s heads, “propped on their several stumps of necks, so that the ears, brown like old leaves, flapped out on the rice surface.” Then, over all, cauldrons of boiling fat were poured over the pyramid. Then the guests would be called to eat, would feign a polite preliminary deafness, each urging the other forward, would finally kneel around the bowl, and, after turning back their sleeves, would all dip their hands simultaneously into the fiery mass. Urged on by their standing host, they would eat at a speed increased by the silence that was a conventional tribute to the excellence of the fare. When the greediest eater was finally satiated, a discreet signal to rise would come from Nasir, the chief guest.
The imp in Lawrence could not be wholly restrained from relieving the solemnity of the feast by passing “some hideous, impossible lump of guts” in place of the choice tit-bit which custom demanded that guests should occasionally hand to each other. But he adapted himself better to the strain than Nesib and Zeki, who broke down internally under this round of hospitality.
On May 30th it was happily ended through the tribe moving on to fresh pastures, accompanied by their guests. This chance of sharing in a Bedouin trek was an interesting experience, and would have been restful but for the plague of deadly snakes which infested the Sirhan that summer.
Walking about at night in bare feet was perilous, but resting was hardly less so, for the snakes were keen to share the warmth of blankets with their owners. Seven of Lawrence’s party were bitten. “The Howeitat treatment was to bind up the bite with snake-skin plaster and read chapters of the Koran to the patient until he died.” Four of the seven, however, recovered under this treatment. But to Lawrence, who had an acute horror of all reptiles, these days were a strain, as they were to most others except the mischievous pair, Farraj and Baud, who delighted in alarming their seniors by the cry of “Snake!” This playful habit had a sequel akin to the nursery-tale cry of “Wolf!” For one day Lawrence sharply ordered them not to cry it again; an hour or so later he noticed them smiling and nudging each other, and following their glance saw a brown snake coiled under a nearby bush ready to strike at him. He instantly heaved himself out of the way while one of his men leapt in to kill the snake with his riding-cane. “I told him to give the two boys a swinging half-dozen each, to teach them not again to be literal at my expense.” Lawrence’s order was taken up in chorus by other long-suffering men, each claiming his six of revenge, until the tally was so large that the punishment was exchanged for a sentence of drawing water under the women’s orders, more humiliating if less physically painful.
A few days later they met Auda, returning with an escort of Ruwalla horsemen that was an instantly visible sign of the success of his mission. These now took the oath of allegiance to Nasir, as Feisal’s representative. “Besides their formal presents, each new party deposited on our carpet their privy, accidental gift of lice; and long before sunset Nasir and I were in a fever with relay after relay of irritation.” Lawrence’s sense of humour is, also, rather like the lice in the carpet, deposited wherever he goes and taking others unawares. He even dared to parody Auda’s epic style in telling lurid stories, to the huge delight of Auda himself.
Since their arrival in the Sirhan they had been gradually moving along it north-westwards towards Azrak. And at Nebk, about midway between Arfaja and Azrak, they decided to make their preparations for the swoop on Aqaba, which lay almost due westward, and about two hundred miles distant by the route through Bair.
While Nasir and Auda were discussing plans, Nesib formed a new, and entirely different, picture of a triumphal march on Damascus, in which the Howeitat would be joined by the Druse and the Syrian Arabs. Lawrence alone seems to have grasped the dangers of this premature step, this imaginary conquest of Syria which would in reality have been a rush into the Turk’s jaws while the adventurers were isolated both from Feisal and from the British forces. It was all the more rash because of the fact, which they knew before leaving Wejh, that the British advance had been held up in front of Gaza, after two costly assaults.
In Lawrence’s view Aqaba was essential to prop open the door to Syria; if they tried to go straight through to Damascus the dooi would slam back on its hinges, and would be difficult to open again. Nor was that all. So long as the Turks held Aqaba they might use it to threaten the rear of the British advance into Palestine. Lawrence was not forgetful of the duty of helping the British Army, nor did he overlook the fact that if the Arabs performed this service, they were likely to receive more help, in material, from the British. As the mobile right wing of Murray’s force they would be valued more highly than as a remote distraction. And at the same time they would be fulfilling Lawrence’s tactical principle of extension of depth.
The possibility of Nesib’s plan being accepted instead led Lawrence to take a devious way of frustrating it, by playing on the latent jealousies among the Arab leaders, suggesting to Auda that Nesib wanted to supplant him in the leading role, and to Nasir that a man of his pedigree
should not suffer himself to be dominated by an inferior. There is a certain irony in the way that Lawrence, the prophet of Arab unity, practised the ancient Roman maxim—“Divide and rule.”
To the possibilities of such personal hegemony he now seems, consciously or unconsciously, to have awakened. Perhaps to it may be traced the astonishing episode that followed, his four hundred mile ride through Syria and back to Nebk.
Although their airy design of an immediate advance on Damascus, to the neglect of the concrete Aqaba plan, had been frustrated, Nesib and Zeki proceeded with a more limited mission of sowing the seeds for a future rising in Syria. To this end they now went north to the Jebel Druse to open propagandist operations.
Lawrence decided to go north also, to explore the strategic possibilities of his intended post-Aqaba step and to take soundings, among the Syrian tribes, feeling that he was likely to gauge the depth of their assurance with more realism than Nesib. Moreover, his appearance among them would be an encouraging sign of Britain’s prospective power to intervene, while by his own intervention he might help to allay their mistrust of Britain’s ultimate intentions. Yet he himself was by no means happy as to these. He had just gained an inkling of the Sykes-Picot agreement which left him profoundly uneasy, although when confronted by Arab suspicions he blandly dismissed them.
He undertook the ride through Syria in a mood of recklessness, seeking to drown in a deep draught of danger the memory of the way he had pledged himself to the Arabs as surety for Britain’s good faith. Disgust at his own countrymen’s double-dealing was heightened by the exasperation aroused in listening day after day to the endless scheming of Nesib and Zeki. “To hell with them all,” seems to have been his inward comment, “they’re going to make an awful mess of it, but at any rate I’ll go up and test diem myself.”
He left Nebk on June 3rd and returned on the 16th. Even in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom he tells nothing of his experiences. Legend has woven a fanciful pattern round them, and it may have amused him to leave this untouched. Another reason for reticence was that during this journey he kept no notes, both because he rode so far and fast, and because of the risk of their falling into the Turks’ hands. But on his return to Egypt after the capture of Aqaba he wrote a report of the journey for Clayton.
When a friend asked to see this report a few weeks later, he wrote back:
“I handed it to Clayton whose eyebrows went high (some of it was comic, some scurrilous, some betrayed horrible secrets) and who sat on it. I don’t think anyone in the Savoy ever saw it, whole. It certainly never went to H.C. or W.O. or F.O., and I am too tenderhearted to ask after it now. It was an MS. document of three pages, and compressed two months’ march into it: rather dull, except to one who knew Syrian politics. . . . It’s all ancient history now.”
Here is the partial outline of this amazing ride. He was unaccompanied by any of his party, and escorted instead by successive local guides, among them an old sheikh whom he had known before the war. He passed by Burga, which lies in the desert east of the Jebel Druse, and subsequently turned north-west to a spring which lies between Tadmor, ancient Palmyra, and Damascus. Eventually he reached the Aleppo-Damascus railway near Ras Baalbek. Here he blew up a small bridge—as reported in an enemy signal which was intercepted by our forces at the time. Then he bore south, travelling under the auspices of the Syrian revolutionaries; he visited many of their leaders and discussed with them plans for a rising when the moment was ripe—he took care to dissuade them from a premature move.
Out of this purpose arose the most amusing incident of his trip. One of his hosts sent a message to Ali Riza Pasha, the Turkish Base Commandant at Damascus who, like so many of his fellows, was privy to these underground movements. Ali Riza came out to see Lawrence on the outskirts of Damascus and in their interview Lawrence asked him to keep Damascus quiet, telling him that Aqaba was for the time their real objective.
He did not actually enter Damascus, nor did he see, as alleged, posters that put a price on his head and displayed a portrait of him. On his way back to Nebk, however, he stopped at Ziza to see the Sheikh of the Beni Sakhr. And there while he was sleeping a relative of the Sheikh crept into the tent and whispered, “They’ve sent to the Turks to say you are here.” Lawrence deemed it wise not to give the Sheikh the benefit of the doubt. Crawling out through the back of the tent, he mounted and rode away.
The most important incident of the whole trip was a meeting with Nuri Shaalan, whom Lawrence saw in his tent near Azrak while on his own way towards Nebk. For the time, Lawrence desired of Nuri Shaalan no more than his benevolent neutrality. Nuri Shaalan, however, was perceptibly nervous lest his relations with the Turks might be compromised by the presence of Nasir’s gathering force in the Sirhan. To his surprise, Lawrence suggested to him to “Send in to the Turks and say we are here.” This astonishing candour veiled a strategic subtlety—calculated to serve a double purpose. For in easing Nuri Shaalan’s position it might smooth the Arabs’ path to their goal. Knowing that the expedition was now ready to move, Lawrence wanted the Turks to think it was an imminent menace to Damascus while it would be actually moving south to capture Aqaba.
CHAPTER XI
STRATEGY FULFILLED
June–July, 1917
From the Sirhan Lawrence moves down on Aqaba—approaching from the rear—As a preliminary distraction, he cuts the railway in the north, near Deraa—On July 1, 1917, the Arabs cross the line south of Ma‘an—A Turkish fora accidentally forestalls them at Abu el Lissal—After a day-long fight the Turks are routed by a sudden charge at dusk—The path thus cleared, Lawrence descends the Wadi Ithm, frontally impregnable, reaching Aqaba and the Red Sea on July 6—This almost bloodless success has far-reaching strategic effects
WHEN Lawrence arrived back at Nebk, he found that Auda had been quarrelling with. Nasir. But the trouble was easily smoothed out and just before noon on June 19th the expedition set out on the march to Aqaba that was to change, for a second time, the face of the Arab war. The size of the expeditionary force, only five hundred strong, gave it an air of Gideon that was both symbolically and geographically apt in the circumstances. The first bound was westwards to Bair, a group of wells and historic ruins some sixty miles distant, and about forty miles short of the Hejaz railway.
On the second day, as they approached Bair, Auda asked Lawrence to ride ahead with him. His son, slain in a blood feud, had been burled there, and Auda, Intending to pay the tribute of a lament over the grave, was paying Lawrence the tribute of companionship in his grief. But when they drew near Bair, they saw smoke rising from the wells and found that three had been dynamited. Luckily they discovered that the smallest was Intact and, managing to repair one of the others, staved off the peril of being without water. The discovery, however, aroused uneasiness lest the Turks might have destroyed the wells at El Jefer, their Intended next bound, just east of Ma‘an. So they decided to pause a week at Bair while they sent a reconnaissance to El Jefer, and also took soundings among the local tribes whose support they needed.
The plan they had formed was to debouch suddenly from El Jefer, cross the railway south of Ma‘an and capture Abu el Lissal, a large spring at the head of the pass that ran down from the Ma‘an plateau towards Aqaba. The capture of Abu el Lissal was thus the key to the gate; it would enable them to shut off from Ma‘an the Turkish posts on the Aqaba road, which would then be likely to collapse from hunger even if they were not overthrown by a tribal rising.
MAP 6 ‘AQABA-MA‘AN ZONE
In preparation for the coup it was necessary to lull the Turks’ suspicions. This seemed difficult, not only because the desert was a place of echoes and every unfriendly Arab a potential Turkish informer, but because Aqaba was such an obvious objective. Lawrence pinned his faith to the Turks’ long-proved stupidity, and planned to play on their fumbling suspicions by measures of distraction. He certainly wove a fine web.
When himself in the Jebel Druse he had dropped hints of a move towards Damascu
s. Nuri Shaalan had helped by passing a warning to the Turks, and Lawrence counted on Nesib’s incautious and unconscious aid towards the same end. Newcombe had also unintentionally let papers fall into the enemy’s hands which outlined the scheme of a far-flung move by Tadmor against Aleppo.
Lawrence crowned the edifice of deception by a northward raid with a hundred Arabs against the railway between Amman and Deraa. It meant a long and hard ride if they were to be back in time, for the spot chosen was over a hundred miles north of Bair. On the second evening they approached the Dhuleil bridge, but found it unexpectedly well guarded and repairs in progress. So they decided to go a little farther north in search of a good spot for laying a mine. To catch a train would be even more effective than to blow up a bridge, for Lawrence wanted to give the Turks the idea that the Arabs’ main force was in the neighbourhood. They found a site of excellent promise and took up a waiting position in a rocky amphitheatre high on the rear face of a nearby hill.
During the morning there was an alarm, when they sighted a body of Turks mounted on mules, heading towards them. But they slipped out of a position that might have become a trap without the Turks seeing them, and moved to another hill at Minifir. From here when darkness descended Lawrence went down to the line and buried a large automatic mine in a drainage culvert below the track. The next day was spent in tedious waiting for the expected train to come, but the afternoon was enlivened by the reappearance of the Turkish detachment. Although the enemy were twice their strength, the Arabs were eager to attack them, trusting in surprise and the superior weight of a camel-charge against mules for the advantage. The Arabs claimed that in a mounted fight they could always beat the Turks, and estimated that their own loss was not likely to be more than half a dozen men. But Lawrence refused to sanction the attempt, counting this too large a price to pay for a success that was superfluous to their mission of pure distraction.
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