Dryden, the British government official who sent T.E. Lawrence to Arabia to liaise with Prince Faisal and rally his support for a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, he warned him that “in the desert there are only two types of creatures that have a good time, the Bedouins and the gods, and you “You are neither one thing nor the other.” “Don’t worry, I’m going to have fun,” the young British soldier who would become a myth responded when he accepted the mission.
Lawrence of Arabia’s footprints are all over Jordan, from Amman to Wadi Rum and from the Syrian to the Saudi border, along the iconic Highway 15, which crosses the country from north to south. And in Aqaba, the Red Sea port that he conquered by surprising the Ottomans with a small army of only a thousand men gathered during an epic two-month journey through one of the most hostile deserts in the world. But his presence is only remembered by a small statue of him, perched on a camel in front of the Sharif Hussein bin Ali mosque, which goes unnoticed by most tourists who go to sunbathe, scuba dive and shop, since there is no VAT. .
Thomas Edward Lawrence fell madly in love with Arabia, but, like so many others, it was not a reciprocated love. The subject of more than seventy biographies, of the legendary film by David Lean, of essays, monologues and dissertations, whose work, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, has been translated into a dozen languages, he is actually a figure typical of a tragedy. Shakespearean, with divided loyalties, tortured by the obligation to serve the interests of the British Empire (which paid him and whose uniform he wore) and the desire not to deceive those who had fought at his side against the Turks, believing that the goal was independence and not submission to colonial interests. In Jordan, the scene of many of his adventures and war exploits, he is viewed at best with ambivalence, and at worst, as a traitor.
“The story of Lawrence of Arabia ended badly for everyone, for himself, for the Arabs [whose territories France and Great Britain were divided as a result of World War I] and also, in a broad historical context, for the powers Westerners, because you just have to see what the Middle East is like,” says Yazan al Taamari, a tour guide, in the Aqaba fort that Prince Faisal’s guerrillas conquered, with T.E. Lawrence as strategist and advisor.
Of the Amman where Lawrence arrived in 1916 – in reality, a town with a station on the line of the ambitious railway built by the Turks to link Constantinople with Medina – very little remains. Also from when it became the capital of the emirate of Transjordan, largely as a result of the revolt it organized. Today it is a city of four million inhabitants, with rich neighborhoods where apartments cost as much as in Barcelona and Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps, poor houses and luxurious skyscrapers and shopping centers, technological and business financial districts. And on all the roofs, dozens of white water tanks with a capacity of two thousand liters that the City Council fills weekly to control consumption.
Lawrence lived and wrote at least part of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom in a yellowish clay Ottoman-style building with a semicircular porch and tiled floors, located on one of the city’s hills, with spectacular views of the center. which was the residence of Frederick Peake, commander of the British Arab Legion. Today it is the Museum of Contemporary Jordanian Art.
Lost in the yellowish and reddish desert of Wadi Rum, and accessible only by camel or four-by-four, are the ruins of the structure that served as Lawrence’s home when he settled among the dunes to attract the support of the Bedouins for his rebellion. But many tours don’t even stop there, preferring that tourists gaze at the stars in luxurious tent camps made of goat hair. Now, however, the usual silence is interrupted every five minutes by the roar of the engines of a plane that should cross the Israeli sky, but avoids it for security reasons.
The practically erased traces of the soldier, archaeologist, strategist and writer are along what was the Hejaz railway line, a great work of engineering, conceived as a symbol of modernity by the Ottoman sultans, essential for supplying the garrisons. of what is now Saudi Arabia and southern Jordan during World War I, and which the guerrillas of Lawrence and Faisal, with the support of mercenaries, dynamited time after time in a campaign that is still studied today in military schools . Also in Mudowarra, the southernmost Jordanian town, in the middle of the desert, where he established one of his camps and collectors find bullets (although none of the gold that he supposedly left hidden). Or in Ramha, a city on the border with Syria, six kilometers from where he was captured, tortured and raped by the Turks.
Embittered by the British betrayal of his comrades in arms, depressed, suicidal, a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome, more alone than ever, Lawrence changed his last name to Shaw and died at the age of 46 in a motorcycle accident on a Dorset country road. He is remembered by a tree and a plaque from which the name has been erased.
