Eager to get the Arabs to start fighting the Turks, the British did not deny the sharif’s claims; they merely cautioned him that they and the French would have to be satisfied, and that discussion of the exact frontiers of an Arab nation would have to wait until the peace conference following the Allies’ victory. In the meantime, Britain had already taken and occupied a sizable part of Mesopotamia, including Basra and Baghdad, in part to ensure a steady supply of oil for the Royal Navy, and also wanted control of the approaches to the Suez Canal; France had, or claimed, strong historic ties with Lebanon and Syria going back to the days of the Crusades; and neither country wished to see Jerusalem in Arab hands.
The sharif of Mecca was only too well aware of the fact that Britain, France, and Russia would have to be satisfied, as was his son Abdulla, who had been directly involved in the negotiations, so it seems likely that some hint of the problem would have made its way to Feisal, though the sharif’s policy toward his allies and his sons was to simply ignore what he didn’t want to hear. In much the same way, the sharif affected to ignore the fact that his rivals in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly ibn Saud, as well as the educated and highly politicized elite in Damascus, were hardly likely to accept him as their king.
Lawrence’s guilt at encouraging the Arabs to fight even though he knew they were not going to get what they wanted (and what they thought they had been promised) would become increasingly severe as the war went on and as his place in the Arab Revolt increased in importance. It was the reason why he would refuse to accept any of the honors and decorations he was awarded; it was at the root of his self-disgust and shame;it would eventually make him follow a strategy of his own, urging Feisal and the Arabs on in an effort to reach Damascus before the British or the French entered the city, and declare an independent Arab nation whose existence could not be denied at the peace conference—a grand, sublime gesture would, he hoped, render the Sykes-Picot agreement null and void in the eyes of the world.
Lawrence’s mention of Damascus when he first met Feisal was thus both a challenge and the equivalent of a knowing wink: an indication that here, at least, was one Englishman who understood what Feisal really wanted—a so-called “Greater Syria,” long the ambition of Arab nationalists, which would include Lebanon (and its ports) as its Mediterranean seacoast and, of course, Damascus as its capital. Attacking Medina, even taking it, would hardly get Feisal any nearer to Damascus than he was at Wadi Safra. Medina was more than 800 miles from Damascus, and so long as Feisal’s army was stuck in the desert halfway between Medina and Mecca, with no roads or railway to supply it, Damascus might as well have been on the moon. The British—accompanied by just enough French officers and French Muslim North African specialist units to stake out France’s claim to Lebanon and Syria when they got there—were still trying to break through the Turkish lines at Gaza, which was only 175 miles away from Damascus as the crow flies. It was not enough for Feisal and his brothers merely to defend Mecca against Fakhri Pasha. If the Arab army, whatever its deficiencies, could not move north, leapfrogging past Medina, and win some highly publicized victories along the way, Hussein’s claim to a kingdom and the hopes of Arab nationalists would both be stillborn.
Lawrence and Feisal understood each other on this point, but it was not yet clear to Feisal how to accomplish the goal with the ill-armed and unreliable forces at his command. It was Lawrence’s strategic imagination, and his determination to make the British high command in Cairo not only accept his vision but finance and support what most of this command thought was unlikely or impossible, that would make himself and Feisal famous within a year and start Feisal on a path that would reshapethe Middle East and lead to the creation of new nations and frontiers that are still in place today, for better or for worse.*
At the end of their second long talk together, Lawrence promised to return, if he was allowed to, after he had seen to Feisal’s needs, and requested from Feisal an escort to take him to Yenbo, rather than back to Rabegh. This was an interesting decision, since it shows how Lawrence’s mind worked. The port of Yenbo was in Arab hands, though lightly and precariously held, but it was more than 100 miles north of Rabegh, and in fact actually behind Medina. The ride to Yenbo was considerably longer and more difficult than the ride back to Rabegh, but it was at Yenbo that he had arranged to be picked up by the Royal Navy.
He left Hamra at sunset, accompanied by an escort of fourteen handpicked tribesmen; rode down the Wadi Safra back to the village of Kharma in the darkness; then turned right and climbed up a steep “side valley,” full of thorn and brushwood, onto an ancient stone causeway, an old pilgrim route, until they reached a well and a ruined fort, where they rested. At daylight they moved on again through a lunar landscape of hardened lava, “huge crags of flowing surface but with a bent and twisted texture, as though it had been played with oddly while soft,” set in a sea of shifting sand dunes. They began riding quickly—to Lawrence’s great discomfort, for he was not yet accustomed to the motions of a swiftly moving camel—onward into the intense heat of the day over “glassy sand mixed with shingle,” where the reflected sunlight soon became unbearable, and each drop of sweat coursing down his face was a torture.
From there they traveled on to Wadi Yenbo, a deep, wide valley, scoured by flash floods, where heat mirages shimmered before their eyes. They rested during the worst heat of the day under the sparse branches ofan acacia tree, then rode on through sand and shingle until they halted for the night, and felt at last like a balm “a salt wind from the sea blowing over our chafed faces.” After baking bread and boiling coffee, they rested until two in the morning, then moved on over rough country—hard, slow going until they arrived at a salt flat, which they raced over, reaching the gates of Yenbo, perched high above the salt flat on a coral cliff, at six in the morning.
Here Lawrence spent four days in the “picturesque, rambling house” of Sheikh Abd el Kader el Abdo, Feisal’s “agent” here—at this point Yenbo was by no means safe, since the local sharif and emir was known to be pro-Turk. While waiting for the Royal Navy to appear, Lawrence wrote down everything he had seen. His reports were remarkable documents, long (in this case 17,000 words), detailed, full of trenchant and well-expressed military and political opinions, and containing a wealth of invaluable information and observations on everything from the position of wells to the most minute topographical observations. This was to be an important factor in Lawrence’s swift rise—even those who did not much like him, or agree with him about the importance and the direction of the Arab Revolt, were often persuaded by his written reports, which reached the very highest levels of the War Office and even the war cabinet, and confirmed that here, at any rate, was a uniquely well informed and self-confident young officer, with strong opinions formed on the spot, rather than in an office in Cairo 800 miles from the fighting.
However, when Captain William (“Ginger”) Boyle, RN, appeared at last with HMS Suva, a former Australian freighter, on November 1, Lawrence failed to make a good initial impression; he was “travel-stained,” he had abandoned his luggage, and he wore a native head cloth instead of his uniform cap, which he had lost during his arduous days of desert travel. Boyle, the senior officer of the Red Sea Naval Patrol, was a large, bluff, hearty, quick-tempered naval type (he would go on to a long career, ending as Admiral of the Fleet the Twelfth Earl of Cork and Orrery, GCB, GCVO). He had been a fervent supporter of the Arab Revolt from its beginning—and generous with supplies, ammunition, and offshorebombardments of Turkish positions—but not to the point of wishing to see a British officer dressed like a native, or sauntering casually onto the bridge of HMS Suva with his hands in his pockets, as if the vessel were a cab he had just hailed on the Strand. Lawrence’s unmilitary appearance, his failure to salute, and his strongly expressed opinions on every subject under the sun, including the Royal Navy, sent Boyle’s temper soaring; but despite Lawrence’s diminutive height, improper attire, and irritating habit of omniscience, his combination of enthusiasm, sincerity, and practical common sense eventually put Boyle at ease, and by the time they reached Jidda they were friends, and would remain so for life. Boyle had discovered the most striking thing about Lawrence: however far-fetched his ideas might seem at first, he usually knew what he was talking about.