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the
back of a camel, something few Arabs could accomplish. He had
steeled himself to ride across the desert for days without food. He had
stretched his limits until he'd gained an endurance far beyond that of
the average desert dweller, and he was admired greatly for it.
At the same time, Lawrence convinced the British that he could
successfully mobilize the Arab nomads into a unified fighting force.
With that force, Lawrence argued, he could help defeat the Germans
and Turks in the First World War. The success of his argument
boosted his power. When he rode into a circle of Bedouin tents, his
camels frequently carried several million dollars worth of gold--a gift
to cement his negotiations with the desert chieftains.
Using bribery and the force of his personal reputation, Lawrence
drew together the widely-scattered Arab tribes to storm Akaba. His
force took the city despite seemingly impossible odds, defeating a
small Turkish army in the process. After riding the desert for days,
and leading the charge in two successful battles, Lawrence was totally
exhausted. Yet when he realized his troops in Akaba were starving, he
mounted his camel and rode three days and three nights, covering 250
miles, eating and drinking on his camel's back, to reach the Gulf of
Suez and summon help from a British ship.
The sense that he was critical to the success of the social
organism had given the young British officer an almost unbelievable
physical endurance. When at last the war was over, Lawrence rode
into the city of Damascus in a Rolls Royce as one of the conquerors of
the massive Turkish Empire.54
But once the fighting ended and Lawrence was forced to pack his
Arab robes away and return to England, he felt totally out of place.
True, he had friends in high places--Winston Churchill and George
Bernard Shaw, among others.55 But he felt wrenched from the social
body into which he had welded himself. He was bereft of
purpose--unneeded by the larger social beast.56 Lawrence went back to
live in his parents' home. His mother said that the former war hero
would come down to breakfast in the morning, and would still remain
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