Feisal looked at Lawrence, now painfully aware of his youth, all the more distinct beside the grizzled Auda. The prince said almost inaudibly, “Then you must succeed.”
Just then Auda suddenly leapt to his feet, crying out: “God forbid!” and quickly ran from the tent. Lawrence and the rest stared at one another in disbelief. Had Auda finally gone mad? They soon heard a pounding sound from outside; at that they all rushed out to investigate the clamor and Auda’s odd behavior. Once outside, they saw him hammering his false teeth into smithereens with a large rock. Halting his demolition, Auda looked up at the puzzled group and said casually, “Oh, I had forgotten; Jemal Pasha gave me these. I was eating my lord Feisal’s bread with Turkish teeth!” After a moment of stunned silence, the onlookers erupted in laughter, dancing around Auda and clapping him on the back.
Off to one side, Lawrence was enjoying the spectacle, taking everything in. Clearly Auda was like a knight-errant—like the ones he had studied and read about at Oxford. Indeed, he thought, this man Auda abu Tayi is the Prophet’s sword. He must now be unsheathed.
BY MAY 9, all was ready. Lawrence and his small band rode out from Feisal’s camp with his blessing—and four hundred pounds of gold. They were also joined by Sherif Nasir, a veteran raider like Auda and proven leader of forlorn hopes. He was a leading emir in his own right, from Medina; a trusted confidant of Feisal and one of the few leaders who understood fully the Arab cause and the idea of national freedom. Now the strain of the struggle was beginning to weigh upon Nasir. For months, he had led the advance guard of Feisal’s rebel army and been at the forefront of every skirmish and battle. The dangerous mission clearly was grinding down on his nerves. As with Lawrence, his relative youth was starting to slip ever faster through his life’s fingers, and it seemed as if his spirit were dying quicker than his mortal body. If only both would last long enough to complete the revolt.
The first leg of the journey was to the northeast, to the old fort at Sebeil where Egyptian pilgrims used to rest and water by a great brick cistern set in the shade of the dusty fortress. The first leg was a shakeout march, as more warriors joined the caravan. Auda, the tactical leader of the group, led with his retainers; Feisal’s political emissary to the Syrians, Nesib el Bekri from Damascus, rode with Lawrence. Nesib’s political acumen was unique among the Arabs: a desert cosmopolitan who wore his urban sophistication with ease, not as a badge. He was also good-natured, fond of risk, tough, and a true patriot of a promised nation. His eloquence and persuasion would be crucial in the weeks to come. Along with Nesib rode Zeki, a former Syrian officer and trusted aide.
Thirty-five Ageyli tribesmen under the watchful and brooding ibn Dgheithir commanded the escort. Sheikh Yussuf was the expedition’s stingy quartermaster, doling out half a bag of flour to each rider. The forty-five-pound sack was expected to last each man six weeks and represented a prisoner’s ration of soft bread and water: perhaps a boon to the unfortunate Auda, whose lingering snaggleteeth would have to await replacement by an Allied dentist.
The gold was distributed among the riders for safekeeping and to reduce its risk of catastrophic loss or capture. At present, the baggage camels were overloaded, but two weeks of eating would soon ease their burden. There was little room for spare ammo. Extra rifles were carried as special blandishments during Nesib’s negotiations with the tribes. Six of the camels bore a load of special dynamite packs for the anticipated encounters with rails, trains, and bridges. Nasir brought an elaborate tent in which to host Nesib’s visitors and a camel load of rice for their gratitude. In the end, however, the desert riders, in moments of hungered weakness, would eat it themselves and express immense gratitude.
Lawrence’s personal bodyguard had increased as well. The dour Merjan, the hapless Ali, and the jocular Murkheymer were joined by the paunchy Mohammed. The renegade Gasim also enrolled. He was on the run for killing a Turkish bureaucrat over a cattle-tax dispute. The crime gave Gasim a certain cachet among the men since they all hated the taxman.
After a long repast at Sebeil, Lawrence and the men mounted up and rode into the midnight desert toward the oasis of El Kurr. During the ride, Auda continually rode up and down the column of riders like a sheepdog, keeping the formation close and tight. His concern was in losing men in the night march, but there was also another fear: the riders might overtake the mange-ridden pack animals and lose the sorry beasts in the dark. The riders groused at the slow pace, but Auda merely raised his whip hand and the bitching ceased.
Nasir was out in the lead, guiding the caravan under a bright desert moon. After a while, Lawrence sidled up to the desert ranger. They rode in silence for a long time. “I was thinking,” Nasir said at length, rocking easy in the saddle. “I was thinking about my home in Medina: the stone-paved house with sunken walls and vaulted ceilings standing against the summer sun. The gardens are beautiful, like Eden with every imaginable fruit tree offering shade from the sun and easy paths through their verdant depths. The well is quite large and serves a huge reservoir where my brother and I used to swim after lunch. I ask myself now why I gave this all up to become a rebel chasing about in the desert. The Turks came and seized my home, demolished my garden and chopped down my palm trees. Even the well, driven by oxen for over six hundred years, has become silent. The whole place is now cracked by the sun. I am wondering: for what?”
Lawrence was quiet, for he had no answer, though the question always lingered, lurking in the minds of all the riders, just at the edge of awareness, waiting to rush in at moments of weakness and fatigue.
AFTER SEVERAL HOURS of night riding, the men had two hours of rest and were awakened by the sun. Auda rousted the raiders and drove them for six hours into the morning heat. The sun reflected off the white glittering sand and cast dazzling razor blades into the eyes of Lawrence and the others. The shimmering heat rose from the parched sand about them like ancient apparitions, clouding their aching minds. From a distance, the caravan appeared as insubstantial as the heat, like ghost raiders.
By eleven o’clock the men were wasted, and despite Auda’s urgings, they rested until midafternoon. The ride resumed for several more hours over gentle terrain toward the face of a great valley that clutched the oasis of El Kurr with its pleasant gardens of dates and palms. After he arrived, Lawrence learned that the reinforcements led by Sherif Sharraf would not be at hand as planned. Sharraf was still off raiding and was not expected to return for a few more days. The news was greeted with elation by all, since it meant that Auda’s furious pace would halt for the time being. This was especially beneficial to Lawrence, whose bout with boils and fever returned. The green oasis would soon work its soothing magic on all.
By the second night at El Kurr, the men were in much better fettle. From inside Abdullah’s tent, Lawrence could hear the riders as they feasted on Nasir’s rice and celebrated around the cooking fires. Nesib el Bekri had taken a manuscript of songs of the Turkish revolutionary Selim el Jezairi. Nesib had gathered the men around and they sang the songs in a fervent emotional chant, the words conjuring up the hope and passion that began to renew the moral strength of the riders. For a time, it seemed to Lawrence, Emir Nasir’s question of personal doubt had been answered.
THANKS TO AUDA’S impatience, the idyll was shattered: the men mounted up and at two in the morning left the oasis. Auda took the lead, this time singing an old Howeitat marching song that seemed to Lawrence to consist of nothing more than an interminable “ho, ho, ho” chanted in bass notes up and down the musical scale and sometimes even sideways. The purpose of the melody was to maintain coherence and direction of the advance by riding to the sound of Auda’s booming voice. At times the chant ricocheted off the flanking black cliffs, adding yet more monotony to the sound—a sound that could have been sung in any language.
On the ride, Lawrence was able to use the time to help perfect his Arabic, a crucial capability for a leader operating in another culture. Without a common language, military or any other kind of social
action is impossible. During the long journey, Lawrence spent the saddle time improving his Arabic, thanks to the patience of Nasir and Auda’s sour-pussed cousin Mohammed el Dheilan. They drilled Lawrence in the classical Medina dialect and variants of the desert Arab slang. The education broadened Lawrence’s Middle Euphrates brogue, which he had picked up while digging at Carchemish, though at a short-term price: initially every conversation became an adventure in the vernacular. For a time Lawrence seemed illiterate or sun-addled, even retarded. The constant practice, however, soon led to improvement and broadened the scope of Lawrence’s leadership.
The ride continued until dawn with an unmemorable break till late afternoon with the men dozing beneath stinging flies and under makeshift blanket lean-tos. After supper, Nasir replaced Auda in the lead of the formation. During the ride, Lawrence pondered the seemingly dysfunctional style of Arab leadership. Nasir, Auda, and Nesib were leaders in their own right, yet it was apparent the competition over the right to lead was growing. At the moment, Nasir held the hand of command by virtue of the fact that Lawrence was his guest. All three had to consult together on even the minutest and most trivial detail, lest one of the others be slighted. The competition wore especially heavily on Auda, who had never followed anyone in his entire life. Yet the key to success at Aqaba would be the utmost cooperation, something the Arabs had yet fully to master.
As Lawrence reflected on the matter, he thought, “Such people demand a war-cry and banner outside to combine them, and a stranger to lead them, one whose supremacy should be based on an idea: illogical, undeniable, discriminate: which instinct might accept and reason find no rational basis to reject or oppose.” Lawrence imagined Auda as the “war-cry” and Feisal as the “banner.” If Lawrence was the “stranger,” did that make him the leader? At least as far as this move on Aqaba, it did. Out of necessity, then, Lawrence began to slowly, almost imperceptibly, impose a unity of command and control on the expedition.
THE RIDERS CONTINUED over ever-changing terrain. The track soon became little better than a goat path: crooked and steep, little more than a seam edging near a precipice. Halfway up the climb, it became impossible to urge the camels forward as they slipped dangerously over loose rocks. Auda then decided that the animals had to be repacked to better distribute the loads of food and dynamite. This eased the climb a bit, but two of the mangy beasts broke down in the pass. Here, the Howeitat killed them with swift precision where they fell, striking an artery deep in the camels’ necks. Under their last, selfless exertions, blood spewed forth in a mist, seemingly turning to rust in the desiccating air. They were then quickly sliced up in silence and shared out among the raiders as the creatures’ final bequest.
At last the pass was traversed, and the riders came upon a broad plateau known as the Shefa crest, sloping more easily to the east and becoming a white-shingled valley that held the water hole of Abu Saad. Vegetation grew around the well that promised shade, comfort, and rest. The air in this high desert was cooler as it wafted across a great black lava field, hemmed in by red and striped sandstone pillars and precipices. Here Nasir ordered a halt, to the relief of Lawrence, whose boil-induced fever continued to burn.
The following morning, the men breakfasted on the fresh camel meat; then, refreshed, they marched out and down into a deep gorge called the Wadi Jizil. The gouge in the earth was at least two hundred feet wide. The dank, musty smell evoked a memory of water that had recently coursed through this gutter. The cliffs soaring above them cast fantastic silhouettes in the dancing light. The high-walled gorge was filled with sweet tamarisk and sand dunes, some twenty feet high. The walls bore the same multicolored striations as the high desert cliffs. Here the pinks and vermilions seemed more subdued out of direct sunlight. By evening, the sun had crept into the full length of the wadi, flashing an intense and vibrant red. Slowly the sun moved along, leaving a purple pall in its wake through the gorge and alerting Nasir that it was time to stop.
The camp was set up in a cleft of the wadi out of the sun’s reach, where sand and other detritus had gathered from the earlier rains. The camels seemed to enjoy the novelty of weeds and brackish water. Off in the distance, Sharraf’s raiding contingent could be seen encamped near a large thicket of oleander. Still, Sharraf had not completed his mission, so Lawrence’s men lounged about in grateful leisure. Lawrence’s fever had finally broken, and he wandered about the camp taking stock of the morale of the riders.
On the second morning, as the caravan continued to wait for Sharraf, two outcasts straggled in from his camp seeking refuge from Sharraf’s wrath. Daud and Farraj had burned down one of the tents in a prank that had gone awry. The two pleaded their case throughout Lawrence’s encampment and found no mercy until they came to the Englishman himself. He took pity on them and with Nasir’s blessing allowed them to stay. The rest of the day witnessed a bored Nasir, flicking flickering matches at a dozing Lawrence.
SHARRAF FINALLY ARRIVED in camp on the third day, his entrance heralded with a rattle of rifle fire. He and his raiders had captured several prisoners, destroyed a portion of the rail line, and blown up an important culvert. He also brought the good news that the Wadi Diraa was full of fresh rainwater and would shorten the waterless march to Fejr by fifty miles. The news brought special relief to Auda and Nasir. It meant the ration of twenty gallons of water for fifty men could be increased to a more tolerable margin of risk.
The next day, the riders left the dank Abu Raga campsite. Auda led the caravan up a branch valley, which soon opened up into the sandy flat plain of the windy Shegg. The valley transformed into a maze of ice-cream-cone pinnacles of red limestone that seemed impossible to navigate without getting lost. The dry wind blew through the formations with an eerie, whistling cry. Only the veteran Auda seemed unfazed as he swept through the tangle of blind alleys without any hesitation: all the more remarkable since there were no footprints left on the ground to follow. The sandblasting wind had brushed everything over with its stippling breath. All that remained were a few camel droppings, blown about like tan golf balls. But the remnants provided Auda with the thread of his assurance and confidence through the labyrinth. The riders marveled at Auda’s path-finding skills, as much as they were astonished by the wind-chiseled terrain.
By May 19, every one of the raiders’ camels was sick with mange. Nasir began to worry that the whole expedition might collapse in the long ride ahead and leave them all ditched in the desert. None of the riders had medicine for the crippling disease. But then Auda hit on the field expedient of dressing the sickest animals with butter. The trick seemed to work, but Lawrence wondered how long the butter would last. The concern seemed irrelevant, however, for now the horizon of worry had shrunk to the next ridgeline.
THE RIDE TOWARD Fejr took them across the main rail line and offered an opportunity to strike at the Turks that could not be lost. Lawrence and three or four others crawled up a high dune to observe the line and found this stretch abandoned, save for a weed-ridden blockhouse. All seemed quiet: Lawrence urged the raiders to move across to the far side of the track. While the move was in motion, he and several Ageyli set dynamite charges at various places along the line. The men set off the explosives in a special set progression to get maximum effect from the blasts. Auda had never before seen the power of dynamite and took a childlike pleasure in its force. As an afterthought, some of the Ageyli cut three telegraph lines. For no discernible purpose, they attached the lengthy wire to the saddles of six of the riding camels and twanged across the rails into the dusk, sounding like a badly tuned guitar. After some hours of riding and much laughter, they released the wires from the nervous camels.
Auda had the riders up at four the next morning, moving uphill until a broad plain opened wide to the east. The Bedouin called the place El Houl, which meant “Desolation.” It was aptly named, for the party now saw no signs of life. As Lawrence rode, he thought about the place in its growing vastness: “How tiny we must all feel in it: our urgent progress across
its immensity is a stillness or immobility of futile effort. The only sounds we hear are the hollow echoes, like a shutting down of pavements over vaulted places, of rotten stone slab on stone slab tilting under our camels’ feet.”1
A breathless wind began to blow; it had the metallic taste of an open furnace, harbinger of a sandstorm—the deadly khamsin. As the day wore on, the sun fueled the wind, which blew great gulps of dust down from the anvil of the great Nefud desert, just beyond the khaki clouds rising to the east. At noon, the desiccating dust was blowing with a thirty-knot wind, sucking moisture from the mouths and eyes of the riders. The men rode on, bending into the thirsty wind, covering their faces as best they could from the invasive dust. The column was now virtually invisible amid the blowing powder. A choking talcum made breathing a gasping effort for both men and beasts as the grinding grit chafed mind as well as body.
The raiders plodded on through the blasting storm for almost fifty miles until encroaching dusk finally tamed the storm. The men rallied in camp and were as dry as the deadwood they gathered for the night fire. When it was time to torch the pile, no match could be found, save for the fiery glances cast at the match-flinging Nasir.
AT NOON ON the following day, they finally reached the large well at Fejr. It was thirty feet deep, full of brackish but refreshing water. And around the well persisted a ragged but sufficient pasturage for the camels. Auda sent out hunters who returned with gazelle to replenish the party’s meat stocks. The attentive Nasir and Nesib had carefully managed the endurance of the party by doling out meat, water, and rice when they sensed man and animal were breaking. This keen intuition, based on long experience, was one of the key lessons Lawrence learned since the long trek began exactly two weeks earlier. He would take the teaching to heart and to practice.
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