Lawrence had been quartered with the Egyptian artillerymen, whose commander, Zaki Bey, had a tent pitched for him. He retired unsatisfied, however. At first light, Feisal and Maulud al-Mukhlis came to see him again, and they argued solidly for five and a half hours. Lawrence had slept well, and, rested after his journey, he made full use of his powers of persuasion. Today, he gradually began to feel that his arguments were telling. Privately, he perceived that Feisal, though highly intelligent, was by nature cautious, and a weaker character than his brother ‘Abdallah, of whom he was notoriously jealous. The Sharif told Lawrence later that when he had advised his father to delay his declaration of the revolt, ‘Abdallah had called him a coward: he referred to his elder brother as mufsid:‘the malicious one’. Feisal was susceptible to advice, whereas ‘Abdallah was not; in fact, Lawrence told Liddell Hart, ‘his defect was that he always listened to his momentary adviser, despite his own better judgement.’ 11This was a very different picture, of course, from the one Lawrence presented in his official dispatches, where he emphasized the fact that Feisal was regarded as a hero by his men, and had risked his life at Medina to hearten his troops. He represented him as impatient and impetuous, hot-tempered and proud, ‘full of dreams and the capacity to realise them’. 12It was not, Lawrence said, the fact that Feisal had been unnerved by a shell through his tent which had caused him to order his troops back from Bir Abbas, but because he was ‘bored with his obvious impotence’ – a languid emotion which smacks more of the Oxford common room than the heat of battle. In reality, he thought Feisal timid and terrified of danger, and this private view was echoed by others who knew Feisal well, such as Pierce Joyce, who wrote that Feisal was ‘not a very strong character and much swayed by his surroundings’. 13Lawrence felt that Feisal’s passion for Arab freedom had forced him to face risks he hated, and since his own masochistic nature obliged him to do the same, he had great empathy with the Sharif. For the British establishment, though, the leader of the Arab Revolt must appear heroic, and Lawrence resolved to ‘make the best of him’, even if this meant portraying his character falsely in his dispatches. 14He was no novice in manipulating the facts and the media to get his way, and he was as passionate about the Arab Revolt as Feisal was: ‘I had been a mover in its beginning,’ he wrote, ‘my hopes lay in it.’ 15This was not pure altruism. Lawrence had been romantically attached to the Arabs since his experiences at Carchemish. He saw Feisal and the revolt as an expression of his own rebellion – the same emotions which had led him to bring Dahoum and Hammoudi to Oxford – the competitive spirit, the ‘beast’ within, which craved others’ notice, yearned for recognition that he was ‘different’ and ‘distinct’. His attitude to the Hashemites was an extension of his attitude to Dahoum, for just as he had written that he wished to help the boy help himself, so he would tell Graves that his object with the Arabs was ‘to make them stand on their own feet’. 16Lawrence felt he knew what was best for Dahoum, and now he knew what was best for the Hashemites. The problem of the Arab Revolt was lack of leadership, he concluded, and he, Lawrence, would provide that leadership through his proxy, the malleable Feisal. For his part, Feisal was moved by Lawrence’s masterly rhetoric, and encouraged that British GHQ were taking a closer interest in his affairs. He had the impression that Lawrence was empowered to make definite promises. Above all, Lawrence’s mysteriousness and whimsicality began to win the Sharif over. At the end of their second discussion, they parted amicably for lunch.
In the afternoon, Lawrence made it his business to stroll around the wadi, chatting with Feisal’s troops. He felt that they were in fine fettle for a defeated army. The Bedu, who had made camp in the palm-groves, mostly belonged to the Juhayna, a large tribe based in the Wadi Yanbu’ to the north, and to the Harb, their deadly enemies. Lawrence saw that Feisal had done a remarkable job in reconciling the traditional foes to fight side by side for the Hashemite cause. He was under no illusion though: it was Hashemite money – ultimately from British coffers – which had bought the Bedu’s allegiance, and if things went badly, they might easily desert to the enemy. The British conception of the tribal levies as a feudal army under the noble Sharifs was quite wrong. In feudal Europe serfs had been the chattels of their lords and bound to military service when required. Not so the Bedu. They were not bound to anyone or anything but their own tribe, and for this reason would not consider it bowqa –treachery – to change sides, as long as such a defection were agreed by the tribe or the family as a whole. The people they served – Hashemites or Turks – were aliens. The Turks already had Bedu irregulars working for them. The Billi, a powerful and xenophobic tribe to the north, were still wavering, and one of their Sheikhs, Suleyman Rifada, had already declared for the Turks. If the Billi went over to the Turks en bloc,then the Juhayna might follow. Nevertheless, Lawrence reckoned that the Turks were spending Ј70,000 a month on attempts to buy the tribes, and were receiving mostly empty promises in return. He believed that ultimately the Hashemites had a sentimental appeal to the Bedu which the Turks could not equal.
This was the first time Lawrence had been close to the Bedu, and he was thrilled by their appearance, and awed by their toughness. Not all were nomads – most, indeed, were cultivators and semi-nomads, and many were armed slaves and retainers of the desert folk. Their ages ranged from twelve to sixty – small, dark, spare, bird-like, elegant men, clad only in loose dishdashas,baggy sirwalsand headcloths, bristling with cartridge-belts and rifles which they would fire off at any excuse. They were superbly fit, and could run and walk in the sun for hours barefoot over rock and burning sand. They moved with a quick nervousness which gave the impression of the need to burn offboundless energy. Lawrence thought they would make superb guerrilla fighters and, when trained properly, excellent snipers. They would run and climb long distances in order to find themselves the right niche for a shot, though they were as yet more used to their slow old muskets than modern rifles with sights, and were accustomed to engage their enemies at short range. They had an intimate knowledge of the terrain and their tracking skills appeared almost supernatural. As conventional troops, though, Lawrence felt that they would be useless. For one thing, the actual personnel were constantly shifting as tribesmen returned home to visit their wives, handing their rifle to a brother or a cousin to take their place. Sometimes an entire clan would get bored and quit. They would not take orders from anyone but their own tribal Sheikhs, and would not serve beside an enemy tribe unless they were under the command of a Sharif, who was thought to be above tribal politics. As individuals they were brave and reckless, but the cult of reputation by which they lived made them poor team-players. Every man was his own master, and he would not readily obey commands, fight in line, or help strangers merely because they happened to be in the same army. The Bedu were obsessively clannish: ‘Me and my cousin against a stranger, me and my brother against my cousin,’ was their modus vivendi.Their traditional raid or ghazwawas fought to specific rules – an attack was never made by night; women, children and unarmed shepherds were inviolate; at least one camel was always left so that the victims could survive. It was also fought for property – usually camels – rather than life. Their way of fighting did not allow of high casualties, which the ancient rule of lex talionis –blood-feud – had for generations proscribed. Their way was the way of the individual warrior – this new-fangled method of warfare, of faceless armies and weapons that killed indiscriminately from afar, was beyond their ken. To the Bedu, each fellow-tribesman was a valued individual rather than just another soldier, which was why they had traditionally turned tail when faced with resolute opposition or greater numbers. As early as 1830, Burckhardt described Arab warfare as that of partisans whose main object was to surprise the enemy by sudden attack and plunder his camp: 17‘I could adduce,’ he wrote, ‘numerous instances of caravan-travellers and peasants putting to flight three times their number of Arabs [Bedu] who attacked them: hence …they are reckoned miserable cowards and their contests with the peasants always prove them such.’ 18C. S. Jarvis called them ‘very good ten minute fighters’ – and added, ‘there is nothing so savage and terrifying as Arab horsemen dealing with a demoralised enemy; and nothing quite so easy as the same Arabs with the “wind up” ‘. 19Pierce Joyce would write that the Bedu were ‘more of a bluff than a real menace’, and felt that the notion of working to a set programme was an impossibility for them. 20Alec Kirkbride would say later: ‘You could get a terrific charge out of them. If it came off, splendid, but if it didn’t, well, they ran away. That seemed the only sensible thing to do.’ 21Lawrence thought that they would be good for dynamiting the railway, plundering Turkish caravans or stealing camels, and noted in his report later that while one might sneer at their mercenary nature, despite considerable bribes from the Turks the tribes were not helping them, and the Hashemite supply caravans were still plying through the hills unmolested.