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had occupied his gaze hours earlier, unmoving, unmotivated.
Eventually, at the age of 47, Lawrence died on a lonely country
road, victim of a motorcycle accident.57 Or was he really the victim of
something far more subtle?
Not long before his death, Lawrence wrote to Eric Kennington,
"You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to
dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have
done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle me and bewilder
me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn
and been really puzzled about it? That's the feeling."58 Experts on
suicide explain that vehicular accidents often occur to those who are
depressed and courting death.59 Was it mere chance, then, that T.E.
Lawrence, a man of almost superhuman physical skills, was killed by a
bit of sloppy driving on a vehicle he had used for years? Or had the
former leader of the Arabs' inner calculators come to the conclusion
that, like the un-needed cell in a complex organism, it was time for him
to simply slip away?
ing at the table by lunchtime, staring vacantly at the same object that
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