That night was a terrible one: the party had no water, and could neither drink nor bake bread. Instead, they lay tossing and turning sleeplessly on the desert floor with thirst and hunger pangs tearing at them: ‘Tonight worst yet in my experience,’ Lawrence wrote in his diary. 16When the day dawned, however, they found themselves in the great Wadi Sirhan, and knew that they had crossed al-Houclass="underline" the terror of thirst lay behind them, the ordeal was over. They struck camp at first light and by eight o’clock they had arrived at the well of Arfaja, an eighteen-foot shaft containing cream-coloured muddy water which both stank and tasted horrible. Nevertheless, it was all there was, and a blessing after the waterless waste behind them, and they drank until their stomachs swelled. They dumped their baggage, watered the camels, drove them out into the grazing and sat down to enjoy a well-deserved respite after the strain of crossing the ‘Devil’s Anvil’. They had not been resting more than a few minutes, though, when they were startled by the cry of ‘Raiders! Raiders!’ and Lawrence saw a wedge of Bedu cantering towards the wells on fast camels with rifles in their hands. At once he and Nasir mustered the ‘Agayl, who fell on their bellies with cocked rifles behind their baggage, ready to defend the camp. Za’al Abu Tayyi rushed for his camel and rode bravely towards the interlopers, who, seeing organized resistance, turned and retreated into the desert. They had not gone far, however. That evening, Lawrence and his men were sitting around the fire being served with coffee in turn by an ‘Agayli called Assaf. Suddenly a fusillade of shots rapped out of the darkness, hitting the coffee-server – the only man standing – who was mortally wounded and died only minutes later. Lawrence’s men doused the flames at once and rolled into the dunes, located the position of the enemy from the flashes of their rifles, and shot back with such concentrated fire that the raiders gave up and disappeared into the night: ‘Tonight we were shot into,’ Lawrence wrote in his diary; ‘an [‘Agayli] killed just after giving men coffee.’ 17
No other incident marred their welcome into Sirhan, and within two days they had located the camp of ‘Ali Abu Fitna, a Howaytat chief, where they were to remain for several days, feasting royally on Howaytat sheep. Auda left them here and rode off north to meet Nuri ash-Sha’alan, the paramount chief of the powerful Rwalla, whose help, tacit or explicit, they would require if the operation were to be a success. Lawrence, Nasir and their patrol made slow progress along the wadi, which to Lawrence began to appear sinister – even actively evil – with its snakes, brackish wells, salt-marsh, stunted palms and barren bush. This view was a reflection of his inner state, for the further he moved into enemy territory the more the fear gripped him. He was also troubled by the job of recruiting levies, for as groups of Bedu appeared in his camp each night to swear allegiance to Feisal, he was obliged to reassure them that the Arabs were fighting for independence, not to further Allied objectives in the Near East. This had been easy in the Hejaz, which would almost certainly receive independence if the Allies were victorious, but Lawrence was less able to convince himself of the honesty of his preaching here in Syria: he was quite aware of the Sykes–Picot agreement, and that Britain and France intended to carve the region up between them afterwards. He despised Arab Nationalists like Nasib al-Bakri who believed in development and modernization: he had fallen in love with the ‘Old Syria’ and hated the thought of change: he wanted the East to remain the mystical, romantic land he had encountered in 1909, but without the oppressive government of the Ottoman Turks. He admired the Bedu and the semi-nomadic or tribal peasants such as Dahoum and Hammoudi – these were the ‘real’ Arabs. The ‘fat, greasy’ townsmen of Syria and Palestine were, he considered, of a different race, despite the fact that they were linguistically, culturally and racially homogenous. He perceived the East through a set of highly romanticized – and therefore ethnocentric – ideas. His idea of ‘self-determination’ was in reality determination by certain traditional and reactionary elements – the Bedu, the Hashemites, the conservative Sheikhs and Islamic elders – who represented his own romantic idea of what the East shouldbe like: not the ‘will of the people’, but the superimposition of a romantic structure of his own. That Lawrence believed in these ideas passionately, and believed that they were right for the Arabs, is beyond question: from early childhood he had seen himself always as the clever ‘elder brother’. It is similarly likely that his views changed as he moved into Syria: the wily intelligence officer who had at first accepted the realpolitikof sacrificing Arab priorities to those of the Allies became increasingly plagued by doubt. Though the guilt niggled at him more and more strongly, his chameleon-like quality never allowed him to abandon the pose of the tough, practical politician with his own side. War correspondent Lowell Thomas, who actually spoke to him only a few months later, reported his opinion that the British could never keep the ‘promises they had made to the Arabs, and that, in wartime, promises were made to be broken’. 18Lawrence made a great deal of his anguish in having to deceive the Arabs in Seven Pillars:no doubt this is part genuine, part ‘elaboration’. Beneath this role of martyrdom lies the stratum of Lawrence’s masochism – the constant need to be punished for mankind’s transgressions, and to be seen to be punished: ‘In the contradictory and paradoxical phenomenon of [masochistic] exhibitionism,’ Lyn Cowan has written, ‘the roles of masochist and martyr interchange in the same actor, their distinction almost obliterated in the spotlight’s glare.’ 19The fear and the hypocrisy, the divided loyalties, the divided soul, the sheer inertia of the heavy days in Sirhan, wandering from tent to tent, stuffing himself against his will with vast quantities of mutton and rice in order to placate his hosts, receiving delegations, exchanging pleasantries, telling lies: all this began to inflate his emotions to bursting point.