CHAPTER XIII

DRINKERS OF THE MILK OF WAR

While Lawrence was traveling from sheik to sheik and from shereef to shereef, urging them, with the eloquence of all the desert dialects at his command, to join in the campaign against the Turks, squadrons of German aëroplanes were swarming down from Constantinople in a winged attempt to frighten the Arabian army with their strange devil-birds. But the Arabs refused to be intimidated. Instead, they insisted that their resourceful British leader should get them some “fighting swallows” too.

Not long after a particularly obnoxious German air raid over Akaba, a royal courier galloped up to Lawrence’s tent on his racing dromedary. Without even waiting for his mount to kneel, he slid off the camel’s hump and delivered a scroll on which was inscribed the following:

O faithful one! Thy Government hath aëroplanes as the locusts. By the Grace of Allah I implore thee to ask thy King to despatch us a dozen or so.Hussein.

O faithful one! Thy Government hath aëroplanes as the locusts. By the Grace of Allah I implore thee to ask thy King to despatch us a dozen or so.

Hussein.

The people of Arabia are exceedingly ornate and poetical in expressing themselves. They swear by the splendor of light and the silence of night and love to talk in imagery as rich as the colors in their Turkoman prayer-rugs.

An American typewriting concern startled some people by advertising that more people use the Arabic alphabet than use either Roman or Chinese characters. They are very proud of their language and call it the language of the angels; they believe it is spoken in heaven. It is one of the most difficult languages in the world to master. According to our way of thinking the Arabs begin at the end of a sentence and write backward. They have 450 words meaning “line,” 822 words meaning “camel,” and 1037 words meaning “sword.” Their language is full of color. They call a hobo “a son of the road,” and a jackal “a son of howling.” Arab despatch writers penned their accounts in picturesque vein. “The fighting was worth seeing,” wrote Emir Abdullah to Colonel Lawrence. “The armed locomotives were escaping with the coaches of the train like a serpent beaten on the head.”

Inspired by a squadron of antiquated bombing and reconnaissance planes which Lawrence had brought down from Egypt, the Arabs won an important victory over the Turks in the desert just south of the Dead Sea. Thereupon the commander of the Arabian army sent this message to King George:

To His Majesty the King of England.Our victorious troops have captured one of the enemy’s divisions near Tafileh. The truth follows by post.Feisal.

To His Majesty the King of England.

Our victorious troops have captured one of the enemy’s divisions near Tafileh. The truth follows by post.

Feisal.

Another Arab chieftain in writing an account of an engagement said:

I sallied forth with my people, drinkers of the milk of war. The enemy advanced to meet us, but Allah was not with them.

During the war the British Government ran telephone and telegraph wires from Jeddah on the Red Sea to the king’s palace in the Forbidden City. The lines were strung by Mohammedans from Egypt, not by Christians. In spite of his abhorrence of all modern inventions, the king permitted the installation merely because he realized the urgent importance of being able to keep in touch with his Allies. As he insisted on living in the Forbidden City, the telephone and telegraph were a military necessity. There are about twenty branch ’phones on this official telephone system. One day a British general telephoned to his Majesty from Jeddah to discuss some urgent military and political question with him. In the middle of the conversation the king overheard other voices on the line and shouted angrily down the wire to the exchange: “I command thee to cut off every telephone in the Hedjaz for one hour! It is I, the king, who speaks.” And so it came to pass that the entire Arabian telephone system was tied up by a royal command. If you ever happen to be in Arabia and want to telephone to King Hussein, “Calif of Islam and commander of the Faithful,” all you have to do is to ask Central to give you “Mecca Number One.” Shortly after the capture of Jeddah, Lawrence, in company with Colonel C. E. Wilson, the governor of Port Sudan, Mr. Ronald Storrs, and Emir Abdullah, for their amusement, made the Turkish band which they had captured a few days before play “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,” “The Hymn of Hate,” and other German songs. The king happened to ring up in the middle of the concert. Hearing the medley of discord he requested that the receiver be left down, and for half an hour he sat in his palace in Mecca chuckling with glee while the band did its worst.

The British aviators who came down to Arabia not only had to wear Arab head-dress, but they had to fly at a considerable height to avoid being shot at by the Bedouins, who have an irresistible desire to shoot anything that is moving fast. They peppered an armored car on one occasion and then sent around profuse apologies. They admitted they knew it was a friendly machine but said it was going so fast they simply could not resist the temptation to see if they could hit it.

Colonel Lawrence and his associates introduced the first motor-cars into Holy Arabia, and Emir Feisal used a one-ton truck as his royal limousine. I went with him on one of his journeys from Akaba to the front line outposts at Waheida in the desert, north of the Turkish stronghold at Maan on the Hedjaz Railway. We camped for the day on the summit of a high hill amid the ruins of an old Turkish fortress. That noon Feisal gave a dinner in our honor. We sat around on empty boxes instead of squatting on the ground Arab fashion, and a table was improvised for our special benefit. The others present were General Nuri Pasha, Malud Bey, and old Auda Abu Tayi. Before the meal they served us with cups of sweetened tea. Then for dinner a great plate of rice crowned with chunks of lamb and goat was placed in the center of the table. Besides this there was another dish of rice mixed with pieces of meat. Beans with tomato sauce, lentils and peas, pomegranates, dried dates and figs, and a sort of candy made from sesame seed and sugar, resembling raw asbestos, heaped the groaning banquet board. For dessert we were to have had a tin of California pears; they had been sent down from Egypt as a gift for the Emir. Old Auda Abu Tayi had never seen such delicious-looking pears in his life, and the temptation to sample them so sorely tried his patience that he was unable to await the end of the meal. Disregarding the food before him, and throwing formality to the winds, he attacked them at once and devoured all of them before the rest of us were through with the first course! At the end of the meal small cups of coffee flavored with cardamom, an Indian seed with a minty taste, were served to us, and a bowl of water was solemnly passed around in order that we might remove remnants of gravy still lingering in our beards. Then the emir’s Abyssinian slaves brought cigarettes, and we strolled out with our field-glasses to watch the battle in progress a few miles distant in the hollow of the land around Maan.

Both before and after lunch scores of Arabs filed into the tent to kiss Feisal’s hand. He never allowed them to touch it with their lips, but pulled it away just before they had an opportunity to kiss it, to show them how reluctant he was to be treated with special deference.

Both Feisal and Lawrence owed much of their authoritative leadership to their recognition of the traditional independence of the tribes. The gallant old brigands who had roamed freely all their lives over the vast stretches of Arabia, making little private wars of their own, were not to be commanded or conscripted; they had to be gently cajoled into the bigger war and made to feel the sense of their own importance.

AUDA ABU TAYI, THE BEDOUIN ROBIN HOOD

“By the grace of Allah, I, Auda Abu Tayi, warn you to quit Arabia before the end of Ramadan. We Arabs want this country to ourselves. Unless this is done, by the beard of the Prophet, I declare you proscribed, outlawed, and fair game for any one to kill.”

This was the official and personal declaration of war issued by Auda Abu Tayi, the Howeitat chieftain, the greatest popular hero of modern Arabian history, the most celebrated fighting man the desert has produced in four generations. The proclamation was addressed to the sultan of Turkey, to Djemal Pasha, the viceroy of Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, and to the mutesarif of Kerak, who was the Ottoman governor of the important district on the edge of the desert near the southern end of the Dead Sea where Auda lived. The Arabian revolution appealed to the Bedouin Robin Hood, largely because it furnished him with an ideal excuse to declare personal war against the Turkish government.

When Auda heard that Shereef Hussein had started a revolt against the Turks, he and his fearless Howeitat followers jumped into their saddles, galloped across the desert sands to Feisal’s headquarters, and swore on the Koran that they would make the shereef’s enemies their enemies. Then they all sat down to a banquet in honor of the occasion. Suddenly old Auda uttered a potent Moslem oath and reminded himself and his friends that he was wearing a set of Turkish false teeth. Cursing the Turkish dentist who had made them, he dashed out of the tent and smashed them on a rock. For two months he was in agony and could eat only milk and boiled rice. When Lawrence came down from Egypt, Auda’s mouth was giving him so much trouble that he had to send to Cairo for a British dentist to make the old brigand a special set of Allied teeth!

His undying loyalty and friendship proved a most valuable asset to Hussein and the Allies in the Arabian campaign. Besides, he offered his rich and rare experience in the kind of warfare suitable to his country. With the exception of Lawrence, he has been the greatest raider of modern Arabia. During the last seventeen years he has killed seventy-five men in hand-to-hand combat; all of them Arabs, for he does not include Turks in his game-book. I do not think that his claim is far wrong, for he has been wounded twenty-two times and in his battles has seen all his tribesmen hurt and most of his relatives killed. His right arm is so stiff that he can’t scratch himself and has to use a camel-stick. Although the Howeitat territory is situated inland near the Gulf of Akaba, Auda has led expeditions six hundred miles south to Mecca, north as far as Aleppo, and a thousand miles east to Bagdad and Basra. Occasionally the tables are turned on him. One year while he was leading an expedition against Ibn Saud, the ruler of Central Arabia, the Druses came down from Jebel Hauran, in the hills south of Damascus, and spirited away all his camels. Auda took his loss calmly and philosophically, but word of his misfortune reached the ears of his friend, Nuri Shalaan, emir of Jauf, ruler of North Central Arabia. In accordance with one of the unwritten laws of the desert, Nuri Shalaan immediately sent Auda half of all his possessions.

Old Auda prides himself on being the quintessence of Arabian tradition. A hundred successful raids have taken him from his home near the Dead Sea to all parts of the Arabian world. His loot he dispenses in staggering hospitality. He talks long, loud, and abundantly in a voice like a mountain torrent.

Although Auda has probably captured more loot on his raids than any other Bedouin chieftain, he is a comparatively poor man as the result of his lavish hospitality. The profits of a hundred successful raids have provided entertainment for his friends. One of his few remaining evidences of transitory wealth is an enormous copper kettle around which twenty-five people can gather at a meal. His hospitality is sometimes very inconvenient except to guests in the last stages of starvation. One day, when he was helping me to a heaped portion of rice and mutton from the copper kettle, I was discussing the subject of camels with him and mentioned the fact that we had none in my country except in the zoos. The old Bedouin couldn’t understand this and insisted on presenting me with twenty of his prize dromedaries to take back to America to start a camel industry. It required all Lawrence’s persuasive eloquence to convince him that it was impossible for me to accept the regal gift on account of the difficulty of transporting his camels half-way around the world.

In May, 1918, the Turks sent a large number of camels down from Syria. They put them into an impromptu corral at Maan railway station. Auda heard of this, and at the head of a small party of twelve of his tribesmen he dashed boldly into Maan. There were thousands of Turkish soldiers all around, but before they realized what had occurred Auda had rounded up twenty-five of the camels and had driven them off at a twenty-five-mile-an-hour gallop. He was full of such pranks as this and recounted his adventures afterward with great gusto.

One of the most amazing bits of brigandage in Auda’s long and lurid career was when he held up his intimate friend and prince. Feisal was on his way across the desert on an expedition and had four thousand pounds in gold coin. Unluckily his route lay through Auda’s country, and somehow the latter got to know about the treasure. So he insisted that Feisal and retinue remain as his guests until they had given the old pirate three thousand out of the four thousand sovereigns. Auda, of course, did not use force; he merely intimated that he was entitled to the gold!

Auda Abu Tayi is a handsome old chieftain, a pure desert type. He is tall, straight, and powerful, and, although sixty years of age, as active and sinewy as a cougar. His lined and haggard face is pure Bedouin. He has a broad, low forehead, high, sharp, hooked nose, greenish brown eyes inclined to slant outward, black pointed beard, and mustache tinged with gray. The name “Auda” means “Father of Flying,” which recalls the day on which he made his first aëroplane flight. Instead of showing any fear he urged the pilot, Captain Furness-Williams, to take him higher and higher.

The old hero is as hard-headed as he is hot-headed. He receives advice, criticism, or abuse with a smile as constant as it is charming, but nothing on earth would make him change his mind or obey an order or follow a course of which he disapproves. He is modest, simple as a child, honest, kind-hearted and affectionate, and warmly loved even by those to whom he is most trying—his friends. His hobby is to concoct fantastic tales about himself and to relate fictitious but humorously horrible stories concerning the private life of his host or guests. He takes wild delight in making his friends uncomfortable. One time he strolled into the tent of his cousin, Mohammed, and roared out for the benefit of all present how villainously his kinsman had behaved at El Wejh. He told how Mohammed had bought a beautiful necklace for one of his wives. But, alas, Mohammed met a strange woman, a very beautiful strange woman in El Wejh who was as fascinating as starlight, and, succumbing to her charms, he presented her with the necklace. It was a wonderful necklace with gems that sparkled as the stars, with blues that recalled the seas and reds of desert sunsets. Most eloquently Auda discoursed on the lady’s charms. On the other side of the partition the women of Mohammed’s household heard of their lord and master’s perfidy. Although the tale was mischievously fabricated, there was a great commotion in the household of Mohammed, and his life was made unbearable for several weeks.

Auda’s home is on a mud flat eighty miles east of Akaba. During his association with Lawrence in the Arabian campaign, he picked up many interesting details of life in Europe. His eyes sparkled at tales of hotels and cabarets and palaces, and he was suddenly fired with the determination to abandon his tent for a house as splendid as any Sidi Lawrence had known in London.

The first problem that confronted him was the question of labor. This was solved by raiding a Turkish garrison and taking fifty prisoners, whom he put to work digging wells. After he had finished that job, he promised them their liberty if they would build him a beautiful house. They constructed one with forty rooms and four towers, but on account of the scarcity of timber in the desert, no one could figure out how to roof such an enormous building. Auda, keen as a steel trap, immediately worked out a plan. Summoning his warriors, he started out across the sands to the Pilgrim’s Railway, over-powered the passing Turkish patrol, and carried off thirty telegraph-poles, which now form the framework of his desert palace.

Photograph: SAND STORM ROLLING DOWN ON KHARTOUM

Photograph: THE LAST RESTING-PLACE OF THE MOTHER OF US ALL

Photograph: THE WALDORF-ASTORIA OF ARABIA—INCLUDING 200 ROOMS WITH ACCOMMODATIONS FOR 1000 GUESTS WITH ALL THE LATEST ARABIAN CONVENIENCES EXCEPTING BATH, ’PHONE, LIGHT, HEAT, OR SERVICE

Even a forty-room palace is none too large for Auda, who has not been strictly abstemious in his nuptial aspirations. In fact he is noted throughout Arabia for his reckless polygamy. Every Mohammedan is permitted to have four wives at one time—if he can support them. Old Auda has been married twenty-eight times and is ambitious to raise that record to fifty before he dies. But in spite of his numerous marriages he has only one son living. All the others have been killed in raids and feuds. Young Mohammed Abu Tayi was eleven years old when I saw him, but so undersized that his father could pick him up by the scruff of the neck and swing him into the saddle on his camel with one hand. When the caravan was on the march at night, his father, afraid that Mohammed when asleep would fall off the camel, often picked him up and stuffed him into one of his own saddle-bags, where the boy would spend the night. The youngster fought beside his father and Colonel Lawrence through the whole Arabian campaign.

Auda’s enthusiasm in making the Turks his enemies to thenth power—pouring into the cause all the hatred he had reserved for personal feuds—brought many of the tribes to Lawrence’s personal standard. Lawrence once remarked that Auda was somewhat like Cæsar in his ability to keep around him a free country of faithful friends, and around that a great ring of enemies. Even the renowned Nuri Shalaan, as well as many other powerful chiefs friendly to Auda, were in constant terror lest they should offend him.

The Howeitat tribe was formerly under the control of Ibn Rashid and his tribe, which long roamed the North Arabian Desert. Later, under the leadership of Ibn Jazi, the tribe broke up into discordant sections. The Abu Tayi subsection is the joint work of Auda, the fighting man, and Mohammed el Dheilan, the thinker. Ibn Jazi mistreated a Sherari guest of Auda’s, and the proud and hospitable chief was infuriated. In the fifteen-year feud that followed, Annad, Auda’s eldest son and the pride of his heart, was killed. This feud between the two sections of the Howeitat was one of Feisal’s greatest difficulties in the operations around Akaba and Maan. It drove Hamed el Arar, the Ibn Jazi leader of today, into the arms of the Turks, while Saheiman Abu Tayi and the rest of the subtribe went to El Wejh to join Lawrence and Feisal. Auda made peace with his sworn enemies at the request of Feisal, and it was the hardest thing the old man ever had to do in his life. The death of Annad killed all his hopes and ambitions for the Abu Tayi and has made his life seem a bitter failure. But Feisal ruled that his followers were to have no more blood-feuds and no Arab enemies except the adherents of Ibn Rashid in North Arabia, who have carried on perpetual and bitter warfare with all the other tribes of the desert. Feisal’s success in burying the innumerable hatchets of the Hedjaz is pregnant with promise. In all Arab minds a shereef now stands above tribes, men, sheiks and tribal jealousies. A shereef now exercises the prestige of peacemaker and independent authority.

KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK TENTS

After Auda, Mohammed el Dheilan is the chief figure of the Abu Tayi. He is taller than his cousin and massively built; a square-headed thoughtful man of forty-five, with a melancholy humor and a kind heart carefully concealed beneath it. He acts as master of ceremonies for the Abu Tayi, is Auda’s right-hand man, and frequently appears as his spokesman. Mohammed is greedy, richer than Auda, deeper and more calculating. Allah has endowed him with the eloquence of an Arabian Demosthenes; his tribesmen address him as “Father of Eloquence.” In a tribal council he can always be relied upon to persuade his audience to accept his views. He can wield a sword right lustily too, and is “a drinker of the milk of war” second only in prowess to the mighty Auda.

Zaal Ion Motlog is Auda’s nephew. He is twenty-five, something of a dandy, with polished teeth, carefully curled mustache, and a trimmed and pointed beard. He, too, is greedy and sharp-witted but without Mohammed’s mentality. Auda has been training him for years as chief scout to the tribe, so that he is a most daring and acceptable commander in aghazu.

Nuri Shalaan, emir of Jauf, is not such a picturesque character as his friend and kinsman, Auda Abu Tayi, but as ruler of the Rualla Anazeh tribe, two hundred thousand strong, the largest single tribe in the desert, occupying nearly all the territory between Damascus and Bagdad, he is one of the great men of Arabia. His friendship was most vital to Hussein and Lawrence in the taking of Deraa and Damascus, and might have been of tremendous weight to Feisal now that he has been placed on the throne of Mesopotamia had he not sold himself to the French in Syria in 1919, after the war. Lawrence would not let Nuri declare war on the Turks until the last minute, because Nuri’s allegiance would have meant too many mouths to feed. Nuri Shalaan was the deadly enemy of Ibn Rashid, who coöperated with the Turks, but who since the Great War has lost his portion of Arabia to Sultan Ibn Saud of Nejd. At one time Nuri Shalaan wanted an armorer. He captured Ibn Bani of Hail, Ibn Rashid’s armorer, the most skilled man of his craft in Arabia, and put him in prison with his own smith, Ibn Zarih. He gave them both forges and tools and declared that they should languish in prison until Ibn Zarih could make swords and daggers that could not be distinguished from those of Ibn Bani. They sweated and worked and the forges were kept burning until late every night, and finally, after many weeks, Ibn Zarih produced a wonderful dagger with an edge that could almost cut the wind. Nuri was satisfied; he released his two prisoners and sent Ibn Bani back to his country with rich presents. Nuri Shalaan was an old man of seventy when the Arab revolution broke out. He was always ambitious and determined to be a leader. Thirty years ago he killed his two brothers and made himself chief of the tribe. He ruled his people with a rod of iron, and they were practically the only Bedouins who obeyed orders. If they fail him he has their heads cut off; but in spite of his cruelty his followers all admire and are proud of him. Most Arab sheiks talk like magpies, but Nuri remains silent in the tribal council and settles everything with a few final clean-cut words of decision. Until the end of the war he had preferred tent life to that of all the palaces from Bagdad to the Bosporus, and kept great state in the largest black goat’s-hair tent in the desert, where sheep were slaughtered every few minutes for the endless stream of guests. He owned the best wheat land in Syria and the finest camels and horses. He is so rich he does not know how to measure his wealth.

Motlog Ibn Jemiann, sheik of the Beni Atiyeh, south of Maan, added four thousand fighting men to King Hussein’s forces. He is hard-working and brave as a lion. He helped Lawrence blow up trains near Maan and was in the thick of the fray whenever there were railway stations to be captured or any other little jobs of a particularly dangerous nature. During the scouting around Maan, two of Lawrence’s officers were trying to find an ancient Roman road in the desert. Motlog, always eager for adventure, went with them. In the deep sand their Ford careened madly from left to right and then at one point swerved so sharply that Motlog was thrown on his head. The officers jumped out of the car and ran back to pick him up and apologize to him, thinking he would be very angry. But the old sheik brushed off the sand and said ruefully, “Please don’t be offended with me; I haven’t learnt to ride one of these things yet.” He regarded riding in a motor-car as an art that had to be mastered just like riding a camel.

The Robber Harith Clan may not have been in the good graces of Hussein before the war, but their shereef, Ali Ibn Hussein, a youth of ‘nineteen, was responsible for converting nearly the whole of the Hauran to the revolt. He was the most reckless, most impertinent, and jolliest fellow in the Arabian army. The fastest runner in the desert, he could catch up with a camel in his bare feet and swing into the saddle with one hand while holding his rifle with the other. When Ali went into battle he took off all his clothing except his drawers. He said it was the cleanest way to get wounded. He had a wild sense of humor and made jokes about the king in his presence. He was one of the two shereefs in the Hedjaz who did not stand in terror of King Hussein.

The other was Shereef Shakr, a cousin of Feisal and the richest man in the Hedjaz. He was the only big shereef who plaited his hair, and, in addition, he encouraged lice in it, to show his respect for the old Bedouin proverb, “A well-populated head is a sign of a generous mind.” His home was in Mecca, but he spent most of his time in the saddle with the Bedouin tribesmen.

These are a few of the leading chieftains, in some of whom enthusiasm for Arabian nationalism had to be kindled, others cajoled by appeals to their vanity, and almost all inflamed with the zest for war on a big scale—the game they had known and played at from childhood. When they had once sworn allegiance they were as true as steel. Without their loyalty and dauntless courage and epic love of blood-curdling adventure the Arabian campaign would have been a dream on paper fabricated by an impractical young archæologist.

In his dealings with Auda and other Arab chiefs, Lawrence found their rich sense of humor an important asset. Make an Arab laugh, and you can persuade him to do most things. Arabic is a solemn language, full of ceremony and stateliness; and Lawrence, who had an unusual knowledge of the various dialects spoken in Arabia, made the discovery that the direct translation into Arabic of ordinary colloquial English, spiced with wit, delighted his hearers. Another highly useful weapon in Colonel Lawrence’s mental armory was the faculty of mastering the unexpected with some inspired improvisation. Time and again he happened upon a desperate situation from which there was no obvious means of escape. In the space of a few seconds his alert brain would work out some seemingly fantastic but really brilliant method of dealing with the emergency.

Such an incident was one of his many adventures in the Syrian Desert. He was at the town of Azrak among the shifting sand-dunes southeast of Damascus, when a courier brought news that some Turkish spies were in a caravan of Syrian merchants which was on its way to the Arabian army supply-base at Akaba, three hundred miles to the south. He immediately decided that in order to draw the teeth of the spies he must reach Akaba either in company with the caravan or soon after its arrival. Normally the journey from Azrak to Akaba is twelve days by camel, and already the Syrian caravan had a start of nine days.

Realizing that his followers could not stand the forced pace at which he meant to travel, Lawrence took with him but one man—a half-breed Haurani—who was famous in the North Arabian Desert for his endurance. The pair were racing over the ridges between Azrak and Bair, eighty miles south of the camp from which they started, when suddenly a dozen Arabs appeared over the edge of a sand-dune and galloped their camels down the slope to cut off the strangers. As they approached, the Arabs shouted a request that Lawrence and his companion should dismount, and at the same time announced themselves as friends and members of the Jazi-Howeitat tribe. When only thirty yards away they themselves dismounted by way of encouraging the lone couple to do likewise. But Lawrence had recognized the Arabs as of the Beni-Sakr, allies of the Turks and blood-enemies of most of the Bedouin tribes that were fighting for King Hussein and Emir Feisal. It was known to the Beni-Sakr that gold passed up and down the caravan route, and they were out looking for loot.

This particular sector was the only war-time trade-route between Syria and Arabia, along which the merchants of Syria had for many months journeyed to Akaba for the purchase of Manchester cotton. Lawrence used cotton both as an aid to propaganda and as a means of getting as much gold as possible from Syria and Turkey. The Ottoman Empire needed cotton urgently, and for this reason the military authorities allowed traders to pass back and forth through the lines. When they reached Akaba. Lawrence and the Arab leaders would make converts among them by preaching Arab Nationalistic doctrines. At the same time they would collect much valuable information regarding conditions in Turkey. The merchants were also useful in smuggling down to Akaba German field-glasses which Lawrence needed for the equipment of his desert troops.

Meanwhile, the dismounted marauders of the Beni-Sakr stood on the sand and fingered their rifles expectantly, while still passing friendly greetings. Of a sudden Lawrence grinned so genially that they became mystified.

“Come near; I want to whisper something to you,” he said to their leader. Then bending down from the saddle of his camel he asked, “Do you know what your name is?”

The sheik looked speechless and rather amazed. Lawrence continued, “I think it must be ‘Terrace’ (Procurer)!”

This is the most terrible insult that one can offer a Bedouin. The Beni-Sakr leader was dumfounded and rather nervous. He could not understand how an ordinary traveler would dare to say such a thing to him in the open desert when numbers and arms were on his side. Before the sheik had time to recover himself, Lawrence remarked pleasantly:

“May Allah give you peace!”

Quietly telling the Haurani to come along, he swung off across the sand. The men of Beni-Sakr remained half bewildered until the pair had ridden about a hundred yards. Then they recovered their senses and began shooting; but the blond Prince of Mecca galloped over the nearest ridge and escaped. Bullets, by the way, have but little immediate effect on a camel that is traveling at twenty miles an hour.

Both Lawrence and his Haurani nearly killed their camels during the journey. They rode on an average of twenty-two hours a day. From dawn to setting sun they crossed the burning sands, only stopping then for a moment’s rest for their camels. When they reached Auda Abu Tayi’s country, east of the southern end of the Dead Sea, they exchanged their mounts for fresh beasts. They covered the whole distance of three hundred miles in just three days, a record for fast camel trekking that should stand for many years.

This weird adventure was but one of a hundred that befell Lawrence. I heard of another which explains why he always carried a Colt revolver of an early frontier model.

Some years ago, while wandering in Asia Minor, near Marash, a fever came upon him, and he made for Birgik, the nearest village. He happened to meet a Turkoman. They are a semi-nomadic crowd of Mongol descent, men with crooked eyes and faces that look as though they had been modeled in butter and then left out in the sun. He was not quite sure of his directions and asked the Turkoman to point out the way. The reply was, “Right across those low hills to the left.” As Lawrence turned away from him the Mongol sprang on his back, and they had a bit of a dog-fight on the ground for a few minutes. But Lawrence had walked more than a thousand miles and, apart from the fever, was nearly done up. Soon he found himself underneath.

“He sat on my stomach, pulled out my colt,” said Lawrence, “pressed it to my temple, and pulled the trigger many times. But the safety-catch was on. The Turkoman was a primitive fellow and knew very little about revolver mechanism. He threw the weapon away in disgust and proceeded to pound my head with a rock until I was no longer interested. After taking everything I had, he made off. I went to the village and got the inhabitants to help me chase the scoundrel. We caught him and made him disgorge the things he’d relieved me of. Since then I’ve always had a profound respect for a Colt, and have never been without one.”

MY LORD THE CAMEL

No knowledge that could increase his influence over the peoples of Arabia was neglected by Lawrence. He even made a minute study of that beast of mystery, the camel, the character and quality of which few Arabs are altogether familiar with, although it plays such an all-important part in their lives. Lawrence is the only European I have ever met who possesses “camel instinct”—a quality that implies intimate acquaintance with the beast’s habits, powers, and innumerable idiosyncrasies. Auda Abu Tayi, the Bedouin Robin Hood, had this instinct developed to an unusually high degree.

There are six different species of camels found in Central Arabia, from whence come the finest breeds. The Bedouin call their country “the Mother of the Camel.” Arabian camels have but one hump; in fact, most of the Arabs have never even heard of the two-humped variety, which is found only in Central Asia, to the northwest of Persia, chiefly in the Gobi Desert. The two-humped breed is slow and of little use except as a beast of burden. The one-humped camel is the dromedary, which is the Greek word for a camel that runs.

The chief unit of wealth in Arabia is the camel. A man is not spoken of as owning so many apartment-houses or country estates, but as owning so many camels. From biblical down to modern times, wars have been waged in the desert for the possession of camels. One tribe will swoop down upon another and steal all its camels; then that tribe will mount its horses, dash across the desert, and drive off all the camels of another tribe. So, in the course of twelve months, one camel may become the stolen property of half a dozen different tribes. The very existence of human life in the desert depends upon the camel. The Arabs use it not only as a beast of burden; they drink its milk and use its hair for making cloth, and when it becomes old they kill it and use its flesh for food. Camel steak in Arabia is regarded much as blubber is among the Eskimos, but the average European would prefer to worry along on caviar and pâté de foie gras.

The camel is practically the only animal that can exist on the scant vegetation of the desert. Its teeth are so long that it can chew cactus without the thorns pricking either its lips or the roof of its mouth. Although camels can go for long periods without water, when theydodrink they more than make up for lost time. It takes a half-hour to water them, but each camel can accommodate a nice little swallow of twenty gallons. It is very irritating when suffering from thirst in the desert to hear your camel drawing on the copious reserve of water inside its body. At such times the Arabs, when in dire straits, will kill a camel and drink the water in its stomach. The water is of a greenish color and has a greenish taste, but one can’t be too fastidious when perishing from thirst.

In judging a camel, some of the many things to be considered are the length of the inside of the belly, the way the beast lifts its feet, the way it carries its head, the depth of the neck, the length of the front leg, the length of the front and back shoulders, and the girth and shape of the hump. A very long leg is particularly desirable, as is a small circumference around the waist. A camel should be neither too fat nor too thin. The hump, which should be of hard, fatless muscle, is of paramount importance. The dromedary actually seems to live on its hump, and if it be worked too hard the hump gradually disappears. If it has no hump, or a low one or a thin one or a fat one, the animal is of little value and will break down in a short time. Age is judged by the teeth, as with the horse. Camels usually live for about twenty-five years, being in their prime between the ages of four and fourteen. Over good ground first-class Arabian dromedaries can trot up to twenty-one miles an hour, canter up to twenty-eight miles an hour, and gallop up to thirty-two with their legs going like huge pistons. For a whole day’s travel, however, the most desirable pace is a jog-trot of seven miles an hour. The ordinary speed for a long journey of many days across the desert is only about four and a half miles an hour; and if the journey extends over hundreds of miles, it is advisable always to keep the camel at a walk. Lawrence’s feat in making a forced trek of three hundred miles in three days was therefore looked upon by his followers as almost a miracle. A good camel makes absolutely no sound when it walks; a trait which is of great assistance both to the Bedouins during their night raids and to desert traders who fear assault. The Arab teaches his mount not to whine, and a whole caravan may pass within twenty yards of a tent without being heard by the occupants.

Photograph: THE MOSQUE OF THE HOLY KAABA

Photograph: COLONEL LAWRENCE AND THE AUTHOR

The winter of 1917-18 was a severe one for the camels. Lawrence’s army was at Tafileh in January, at an altitude of five thousand feet. The snow drifted to a depth of four feet, impassable for the camels unless their riders dismounted and dug a path with their hands. Many of them, both camels and Arabs, perished from the cold.

Lawrence sent a request to headquarters, Cairo, for heavy clothing and boots for his men. Instead of receiving them, he got a wireless message telling him that Arabia was a “tropical country”!

One morning an Arab column awoke on a hillside to find that snow had drifted over their crouching camels. They dug them out with the iron spoons which are used for roasting coffee-beans, but all were dead. Lawrence and his men had to walk barefoot through the snow for miles before they reached a military encampment. Another time thirty-four men started from Akaba for Tafileh on camels, and only one man succeeded in getting through alive. The Arab army had plenty of camels at this time, thanks, partly, to Prince Zeid. Some months previous the Turks had sent a large caravan of supplies toward Medina from Hail, Ibn Rashid’s capital in Central Arabia. Zeid and his men surprised it at Hanakieh, killed thirty Turks, captured two hundred and fifty more and also three thousand camels, two thousand sheep, four mountain-guns, and several thousand rifles.

Although “the camel is an intricate animal and calls for skilled labor in the handling,” according to Colonel Lawrence, “she yields a remarkable return. We had no system of supply: each man was self-contained and carried on the saddle from the sea-base, at which the raid started, six weeks’ food for himself. The six weeks’ ration for ordinary men was a half-bag of flour, forty-five pounds in weight. Luxurious feeders carried some rice also for variety. Each man baked for himself, kneading his own flour into unleavened cakes and warming it in the ashes of a fire. We carried about a pint of drinking-water each, since the camels required to come to water on the average every three days, and there was no advantage in our being richer than our mounts. Some of us never drank between wells, but those were hardy men; most of us drank a lot at each well, and had a drink during the intermediate dry day. In the heat of summer Arabian camels will do about two hundred and fifty miles comfortably between drinks and this represents about three days’ vigorous marching.

“The country is not so dry as it is painted, and this radius was always more than we needed. Wells are seldom more than one hundred miles apart. An easy day’s march was fifty miles: an emergency march might be up to one hundred and ten miles in a day.

“The six weeks’ food gave us a range of over a thousand miles out and home; and that (like the pint of water) was more than ever we needed, even in so large a country as Arabia. It was possible (for me, the camel novice in the army, ‘painful’ was a better word) to ride fifteen hundred miles in a month without revictualing; and there was never a fear of starvation, for each of us was riding on two hundred pounds of potential meat, and when food lacked we would stop and eat the weakest of our camels. Exhausted camel is poor food, but cheaper killing than a fat one; and we had to remember that our future efficiency depended upon the number of good camels at our disposal. They lived on grazing as we marched (we never gave them grain or fodder); and after their six weeks on the road they would be worn thin, and have to be sent to pasture for some months’ rest, while we called out another tribe in replacement, or found fresh riding-beasts.”

Tradition says that the horse originated in Arabia. The most beautiful and symmetrical horses are found there. They do not, however, have the greatest powers of endurance; neither are they the fleetest.

The Arabs are very fond and proud of their horses. They are really domestic animals, and it is by no means uncommon for them to occupy the same tent as their master. The pedigrees of some of them can be traced back to the fifth century, and registered mares are seldom sold, although stallions are sometimes given away to distinguished foreigners. It is maintained that a female, whether horse or camel, has much more highly developed powers of endurance. The Arabs oil the hoofs of their horses to keep them from slipping on the hot sand, and feed them on boiled goat’s-meat to give them staying powers. They are seldom given all the water they desire to drink. Even as colts they are continually stinted of water so that they may become inured to thirst and suffer as little as possible when crossing the dry parts of the Arabian Desert. Many of the water-holes of the desert are five days’ travel apart. A horse, of course, cannot go so long without water; a camel can, however, and so an Arabian horse will travel by the side of a camel and drink the camel’s milk, and in that manner make the distance from one water-hole to another.

The foregoing is but a small fraction of the horse and camel lore familiar to a Bedouin expert. After years of careful study in the Arabian and Syrian deserts, Lawrence confessed to me that often he could not size up his dromedary correctly.

Photograph: PANORAMA OF AKABA

Photograph: COLONEL JOYCE

ABDULLAH THE POCK-MARKED, AND THE STORY OF FERRAJ AND DAOUD

Abdullah, the pock-marked, undersized, fiery little Bedouin who commanded Lawrence’s personal body-guard, although in appearance a dried-up stick of a man, is one of the most daring and chivalrous sons of Ishmael that ever rode a dromedary. He would take keen delight in tackling ten men by himself. Apart from his fearlessness, he was a valuable lieutenant, because he knew how to deal with unruly members of the body-guard. Lawrence would urge his followers on with the promise of extravagant rewards—gold, jewels, and beautiful clothes—if they succeeded. Abdullah would promise them a sound beating if they failed, and the certainty that he would fulfil his threat carried at least as much weight with the body-guard as did Lawrence’s milder method. As for Abdullah himself, his most frequent boast was that he had served under all the princes of the desert and had been imprisoned by every one of them.

The English shereef’s personal body-guard, consisting of eighty carefully picked men, was the corpsd’éliteof the desert. All its men were famous fighters who possessed powers of endurance which would enable them to ride hard for a day and a night on end, if necessary. They were required to be ready for a raid on the Turks at any moment, and always to keep up with their leader on the trek. No man was accepted who could not, with one hand free, leap into the camel-saddle at the trot while carrying a rifle in the other. Taking it all round, the bodyguard was an extraordinary collection of mettlesome, gay-spirited, good-natured scalawags.

Its members were devoted to their Anglo-Bedouin shereef; but to guard against the possibility of a conspiracy among them, never more than two men were selected from each tribe, so that intertribal jealousy might prevent any group from plotting against their leader. Nearly every man in the Hedjaz army wanted to belong to the body-guard, because Lawrence took it on all of his raiding, bridge-blowing, and train-wrecking expeditions, “stunts” which provided much loot and many thrills—gifts dear to the heart of the Bedouin. Then, too, the pay was greater than that given to any of the other volunteers in the Arabian army. Furthermore, they received a liberal allowance for costly raiment, for they spent all their money on clothes, and when gathered in a body they produced an effect similar to that of an Oriental flower-garden.

A familiar saying among them was that they might as well spend their gold on clothes and a good time, since Allah might take them to paradise at any moment. Among Colonel Lawrence’s personal retinue the percentage of casualties was far greater than among other regulars and irregulars of Feisal’s army, for they were continually being sent across the desert on dangerous missions. Frequently they were despatched through the Turkish lines to act as spies, a service for which the body-guard was especially suitable, since it contained at least one man from each district between Mecca and Aleppo. Lawrence always arrogated to himself more than his full share of these hazardous missions.

To accompany Lawrence and his body-guard on an expedition was a fantastic experience. First rode the young shereef, incongruously picturesque with his Anglo-Saxon face, gorgeous head-dress, and beautiful robes. Likely enough, if the party were moving at walking pace, he would be reading and smiling to himself over the brilliant satire of Aristophanes in the original. Then in a long, irregular column his Bedouin “sons” followed in their rainbow-colored garments, swaying to the rhythm of the camel gait. And whether they were passing over the sands east of Akaba, or the stony hill country of Edom and Moab, they always sang and jested.

At either end of the cavalcade was a warrior-poet. One of them would begin to chant a verse, and each man, all along the column, would take his turn to cap the poet’s words with lines of the same meter. There were war-songs and songs that caused the camels to lower their heads and move at a faster pace. Often in the verses the men commented on each other’s love-affairs or on the Emir Feisal or Sidi (Lord) Lawrence.

“I wish he would pay us another pound a month.” This, decorated with rhetorical flourishes in Arabic, was the theme of the body-guard’s song one day.

Another time it was: “I wonder if Allah has seen the head-cloth which has the good fortune to cover our Lord Lawrence’s head? It is not a good head-cloth. The Lord Lawrence should give it me.” As a matter of fact, the head-cloths that Shereef Lawrence wore were more resplendent than any they had ever seen. His playful “sons” coveted them.

The harmonic scale of Arabian music is different from ours, so that to Western ears unused to it Arabian singing sounds like a medley of discords. Yet the Bedouin delighted in Western music churned out by a phonograph that Lawrence brought from Cairo. Its success encouraged a Scotch sergeant in Akaba to provide some instruments and organize a band. He helped the Arab bandsmen to create an Arabian national anthem and taught them to play “Annie Laurie” and “Auld Lang Syne” after a fashion. The Scotch airs we could stand for a time, even though every instrument was out of tune and every man chose his own key; but whenever the Arabs practised their own national anthem around the camp we preferred swimming and left at once for a deserted island down the gulf for a dip in the surf just below the ruin of a Crusader castle, where Godfrey de Bouillon and his knights had bathed a thousand years before us.

The Bedouin body-guard’s sense of humor sometimes took the form of practical jokes. If one of their number fell asleep in his saddle, a companion would charge his camel straight at the slumberer and knock him off. Whenever their Lord left them for a visit to Cairo or to Allenby’s headquarters, most of his body-guard managed to get themselves imprisoned by the Emir Feisal as a result of their wild humor and general unruliness. Nobody but Lawrence could handle his devils, as they were called.

Once, having just returned to Akaba from Egypt, he wanted to set out on a secret mission without delay. As usual, he found the majority of his personal followers in the lockup. Among the prisoners were two specially daring men named Ferraj and Daoud. Lawrence immediately sent for Sheik Yussef, the civil governor of Akaba, and asked what had happened. Yussef laughed and cursed, then laughed again.

“I had a beautiful white camel,” he said, “and one night she strayed away. Next morning I heard a great commotion in the street, and when I went out I found every one in the bazaar laughing uproariously at an animal with blue legs and a red head. Not without difficulty I recognized it as my camel. Ferraj and Daoud were found at the waterfront washing red henna and blue indigo dye off their arms, yet they denied all knowledge of my beautiful white camel. Allah will pardon me for doubting them.”

Ferraj and Daoud were well known as inseparable in a land where lonely desert and the need for mutual protection called for close friendship. David and Jonathan were not more intimate than Ferraj and Daoud, until, as an eastern story-teller might say, there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the Garnerer of Graveyards. Daoud died of fever in Akaba, whereupon Ferraj became intensely miserable and soon afterward committed suicide by galloping his camel headlong into the Turks.

Occasionally members of Lawrence’s body-guard accompanied him to Cairo. Those thus honored would don their most vivid robes, rouge their lips, darken the hollows under their eyes with kohl, and saturate themselves with bottles of scent. Then, bristling with weapons, they swaggered contemptuously past the town Arabs of Cairo, ogling the veiled ladies, buying richly brocaded garments, and causing much excitement, in which they reveled.

Abdullah, lieutenant of the body-guard, once traveled with his leader to General Allenby’s headquarters at Ramleh. While Lawrence was in consultation with the commander-in-chief, the Arab lieutenant roamed off alone. Six hours passed, and he did not return. Then Lawrence was informed by telephone that the assistant provost-marshal had arrested the fiery little Arab because he looked like a hired assassin who might be prowling around with the intention of shooting General Allenby. Abdullah, said the assistant provost-marshal, had explained through an interpreter that he was one of Sidi Lawrence’s “sons” and demanded a ceremonious apology for having been arrested. Meantime, he was eating up all the oranges in the quarters of the head of the military police.

Punishment for the misdeeds of the various members of the body-guard was difficult, for a nomad Arab can scarcely be imprisoned on his camel, and he cares naught for words of reproof. A conscientious beating from Abdullah was perhaps the most effective solution. A common form of punishment among the Bedouins is to throw at a man’s head a short dagger, so that it shall chop through the hair and cause a superficial but very painful scalp wound. Bedouins who are conscious of transgression sometimes wound themselves in this manner, and then, with blood streaming over their faces, crave pardon of the person they have wronged.

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