The British had won the first round, but the Governor soon found a way to strike back. For the moment, though, they settled down to build their house, and Lawrence lifted a gloriously coloured and illustrated fifth-century Roman mosaic found in a field a mile away and installed it, piece by piece, as the living-room floor. The Expedition House became the ‘medieval hall’ he had dreamed about with Richards – a vast structure built round a courtyard, with no fewer than eleven rooms, including a dark-room. Lawrence practised the crafts he had learned as a youth to greater approval than he had received at home. He beat a bath and a firehood out of copper, built a table for the sitting-room, designed two armchairs which he had made for him in Aleppo, constructed basalt pillars and door mouldings, and eventually carved a mock-Hittite lintel over the door. He chose hangings and carpets, and crockery in the form of priceless Hittite pots and drinking-bowls, which he bought in neighbouring villages with Expedition funds, settling his conscience by resolving to let the Museum have anything which survived daily use. Descriptions of Lawrence at this time, indeed, portray him as something of a connoisseur – of carpets, Arab food, coffee, objets d’art, and other ‘beautiful things… to fill one’s house with’. 9Woolley said that the ‘evening Lawrence’ took on a very different aspect from the wild-haired youth of the day: ‘In the evening his hair was very carefully brushed,’ he wrote; ‘sitting in front of the winter fire reading… he would look with his sleek head and air of luxury extraordinarily unlike the Lawrence of the daytime.’ 10The centrepiece of the sitting-room was a William Morris tapestry sent out from Oxford, which became an endless source of amusement to Lawrence. When European visitors arrived, they would invariably pass over the exquisite Arab textiles he had collected, and stand gaping at the Morris. When they inquired in what remote bazaar he had obtained the marvellous stuff, Lawrence would take great delight in replying, ‘Oh, you can buy it in Oxford Street for so many shillings a yard!’ 11
Woolley and Lawrence kept open house, and frequently invited the German engineers to dinner in civilized fashion. But though Lawrence’s fears about the railway company carting away the ancient stones of Carchemish as railway ballast proved unfounded, he continued to harbour a secret grudge against them. He resented them ostensibly because ‘they did not know how to treat Arabs’, but actually because they had intruded on his private sphere, and formed an alternative centre of attraction for the natives. Lawrence’s skills lay in ‘handling’ the Arabs, a task he performed by harnessing the British tradition of colonial paternalism, nurtured over centuries. The Germans preferred more Teutonic methods of control, but the end was essentially the same. Although Lawrence genuinely tried to see things from an Arab point of view, and did so more successfully than most, his technique of’empathy’ remained a method of control. He believed the traditional Arabs morally superior to Europeans because they were ‘primitive’ and therefore ‘innocent’, but not intellectually so. The reality of his privileged position was stated frankly when he wrote: ‘Really this country, for the foreigner, is too glorious for words: one is really the baron in the feudal system.’ 12His sense of rivalry with the Germans was submerged, however, for to begin with they lived in symbiosis. The engineers needed ballast for their railway, and the British needed to get rid of certain heaps of stones they had dumped in the previous season, in order to dig beneath them. It was agreed that the Germans would carry away the British stones, and the British would thus get their dumps moved without cost to themselves. This suited everyone admirably, except the part-owner of the site, Hassan Agha, who felt distinctly hard done by. One morning he strode into the German camp and demanded payment for his stones. The engineers explained that they could not pay and that if he insisted they would go elsewhere for their ballast. Hassan Agha then fled to Birejik to complain to the Governor, who suddenly saw his chance of revenge.
A few days later, a lone horseman arrived in the camp carrying a summons. Lawrence was to appear in an Islamic court accused of having stolen the goods of Hassan Agha – namely the stones – to the value of Ј30, and sold them to the Germans. The summons was technically illegal, since foreigners were exempt from appearance in an Islamic court, but Lawrence decided to attend the trial as a courtesy, simply because the charge was so absurd. On the appointed day he rode off to Birejik and in the court – part of the government serail– he produced two documents: an agreement signed by Hassan Agha relinquishing rights to anything found on the site, and an affidavit signed by the German Chief Engineer, swearing that nothing had been paid for the stones. Lawrence also had with him documents authorizing their work at Carchemish. These papers, he thought, should be enough in themselves to have the case dismissed. He had reckoned without the machinations of the Governor, however, and was shocked when the prosecuting counsel produced six witnesses prepared to swear that the dumps had been paid for. The counsel asked to see all Lawrence’s documents and promptly confiscated them, leaving him bureaucratically naked. He arrived back at Carchemish that night far less contented than he had been on his departure. The work continued as before, however, until the Governor ordered the Corporal to post guards on the gate. Woolley managed to sidestep this development by taking the German-employed donkey-men on his own payroll, and having them dump the stones near the German lines.
On the day fixed for the full hearing, Woolley, Lawrence and Haj Wahid, festooned with carbines and revolvers as if on a tribal raid, made for Birejik. To their surprise, they ran into Hassan Agha coming in the opposite direction, who told them that the case had been adjourned. Woolley refused to accept it, envisaging more exasperating delays, and they pressed on to Birejik, where they demanded to see the Governor. Woolley explained that they could not afford to keep halting work on the dig to ride to Birejik, and insisted that the case be heard that day as planned. The Governor seemed friendly and compliant, and neither Lawrence nor Woolley guessed his part in the plot. In the courtroom next door, a crowd had gathered to watch the fun, and a scribe took copious notes. Woolley stood up, announced that he was taking full responsibility for the case, and declared that the prosecution had no witnesses. The prosecuting counsel then asked the court for a week’s adjournment to find some, a proposal the judge agreed to at once despite Woolley’s violent protests. Woolley was incensed. He refused to recognize the court’s jurisdiction and called loudly for the Governor. The judge laughed in his face, and told him that it was the Governor himself who held the papers authorizing work on the site. Only at that moment did Woolley realize what lay behind the conspiracy: ‘The trick that had been played on us and the Governor’s part in it were now quite clear,’ he wrote. ‘As long as they had the precious documents… I was at his mercy.’ 13Woolley saw that a return to gunboat diplomacy was called for, and drew his pistol, declaring that ‘the Judge would not leave the room alive’ unless he got his papers back. The judge’s sneer froze on his lips, and he sank back into his chair. Woolley told Lawrence to go to the Governor’s office next door and demand the papers: ‘Woolley kept him in his place,’ Lawrence wrote, ‘while I went to the [Governor] and pointed out how unpleasant the position of the [Judge] was …,’ 14Woolley recalled that Lawrence was gone only a few minutes and reappeared brandishing the papers, saying, ‘The blighter had them all in his own desk!’ 15When Woolley asked if there had been any trouble, Lawrence answered, ‘None’, except that the Governor had wanted a copy of Hassan Agha’s contract made, ‘And could you oblige him with a penny for the stamp!’