AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH
In Arabia the Old Testament law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth, a life for a life, still holds good; complicated feuds
drag on for centuries. A murderer can rarely escape the death
penalty; it is almost impossible for him to avoid being found by
the murdered man’s relatives somewhere in the desert sooner or
later. His only chance is to relinquish tent-dwelling and become
a townsman; and since the Bedouin regards people who live in
villages and cities as greatly inferior to him, he can seldom bring
himself to such an indignity.
Photograph: LAWRENCE’S MOUNTAIN GUNS IN ACTION
Photograph: LAWRENCE CONFERS WITH ARAB NATIONALISTS LEADERS
FROM BAGDAD AND DAMASCUS
A peculiar feature of Arabian unwritten law is that for purposes
of retribution no distinction is drawn between accidental and
intentional manslaughter. If one Bedouin kills another, whether by
chance or design, it is customary for him to flee and send regrets
and explanations back by courier. Lawrence’s body-guard was involved
in an affair of this sort. During a raid an Arab climbed through
the window of a railway station and attempted to open the door from
the inside. Meanwhile, some of his companions were trying to batter
it open from without. One of them fired his rifle through a panel,
and when the door finally was forced, the man who had entered
through the window was lying dead. The Bedouin who had fired the
shot immediately dashed through the crowd, jumped on his horse,
and galloped off. Now, it is the custom that the slayer may avoid
the penalty of death by paying damages if the lost man’s relatives
are willing to accept money in lieu of life. In this case the
guards collected among themselves a sum of £100, which they sent
to the relatives, and all was well. The rate of exchange on an
ordinary life varies from £100 to £500. This particular fellow was
rather a bad lot, and so his companions of the bodyguard thought
£100 was ample. Shereefs (members of the Prophet’s family) have a
far higher blood value than other Arabs. Having killed one of them,
a slayer must forfeit not less than £1000, unless he has arranged
a bargain price with his victim’s family before committing the
deed.
Lawrence never met a case of treachery against himself among the
tribes with whom he established friendly relations, and even among
unfriendly tribes he encountered only one serious violation of the
laws of hospitality. Alone he had passed through the Turkish lines
for a tour of inspection among the enemy’s camps. He called on a
chieftain of the Beni-Sakr, a tribe which had been coöperating with
the Turks and Germans. The sheik broke the unwritten law of the
desert and attempted to double-cross his guest. He sent a courier
to some Turkish forces that were ten miles distant and, in the
meantime, attempted to persuade Lawrence to remain in his tent.
His intention was to betray his valuable visitor and claim the
£50,000 reward offered for the capture of the “uncrowned king of
Arabia.” But Lawrence’s uncanny insight into the minds of Orientals
caused him to surmise that there was villainy afoot, and he
hurriedly left the Beni-Sakr camp. The fate that befell the sheik
of the Beni-Sakr is instructive. Although he was one of the leaders
of a tribe considered hostile to the Arabs coöperating with
Lawrence, his own people gave him a cup of poisoned coffee because
he had been treacherous to a guest. The people of the Beni-Sakr
felt themselves disgraced by the act of their sheik.
The strict observance of the rules of desert hospitality is almost
a religion. If in his own district an Arab has a man at his mercy
and is about to kill him, the victim can usually save himself by
saying “_dakhilak,”_ an Arab word implying, “I have taken refuge
with you,” or, “I am in your tent and at your coffee-hearth as your
guest.” Among the Bedouins the protection is a sacred obligation.
The meaning of this magic word _“dakhilak”_ is one of the points
of difference between the nomads of Arabia and the town Arabs of
Syria. The Syrian uses it as a variation of “please,” which to a
Bedouin is a ghastly breach of etiquette.
In the gigantic task that he set himself, Lawrence had to win the
adherence not only of the wandering tribesmen but of the less
reliable Arabs of the towns and villages. He accomplished this by
taking into account the many differences between the two types,
and using correspondingly different methods. The Bedouin is of a
pure breed and to-day lives in much the same manner as he did three
thousand years ago when Abraham and Lot were wandering patriarchs.
The townsman, a mixture of all races in the East, has many a bar
sinister in his racial ancestry. The nomad is a sportsman, a lover
of personal liberty, and a natural poet. The villager is often
indolent, dirty, untrustworthy, and entirely mercenary. There are
even differences in the every-day observances of life; in the form
of salutation, for instance. The townsman shows his respect for
shereefs and other notables by kissing the hand, but the Bedouin
considers such action undignified and only performs it when he
wishes to convey the deepest reverence.
Although Lawrence received support from many town Arabs, it was
primarily the Bedouin who, under the guidance of Lawrence and
Feisal, carried the Arabian revolution from small, localized
beginnings to glorious success. The Bedouin passion for raiding
and looting was a valuable asset in the guerrilla campaign against
the Turks. But the true Bedouin is nearly always content with booty
and abhors the sight of blood. He will rob but will not otherwise
abuse a stranger.
The pure Arabs of the desert belong to a race that has one of the
oldest forms of civilization. They had a philosophy and literature
when the inhabitants of the British Isles were undeveloped savages.
They are one of the few peoples of the world whom the Romans failed
to conquer. Their primitiveness is due to the necessity of leading
a nomadic life, as they are obliged to follow their herds from
place to place in search of grass and water. They are wanderers on
the face of the earth; creatures who trek behind their camels
across the sand-dunes, who sleep under starry skies, and who live
as their forefathers lived when the human race was young.
Both the regulars and the irregulars in the Arabian army were paid
wages just the same as other Allied troops in other parts of the
world. They received their pay in gold coin, all of which was
supplied by the British Government. Lawrence usually had a bag or
two of sovereigns in his tent, and whenever a sheik came in and
asked for money, Lawrence would tell him to help himself. He
allowed them to keep all that they could take out of the bag in
one handful. A swarthy two-fisted Howeitat giant dropped in for a
cup of coffee and a cigarette one morning. In the richly ornamented
language of the people of the black tents he reminded Lawrence of
the valuable assistance that he had been rendering King Hussein.
Lawrence took the thinly veiled hint, and, pointing to his gold
bag in one corner, he asked his guest to help himself. The sheik
broke all records by picking up one hundred and forty-three
sovereigns in one hand!
The nomad tribes are amazed at the sordid lack of hospitality in
the towns. They despise their settled kinsmen for their selfishness.
In older times, just as to-day, the Arabs prided themselves on four
things: their poetry, their eloquence, their horsemanship, and then
hospitality. Among Arab legends are many which glorify and keep
alive the tradition of hospitality. One concerns three men who were
disputing in the sacred mosque of the Kaaba as to who was the most
liberal person in Mecca. One extolled the virtues of a certain
Abdullah, the son of the nephew of Jaafar, the uncle of Mohammed.
Another praised the generosity of Kais Ibn Said. The third
proclaimed Arabah, the aged sheik, to be the most liberal. At last
a bystander, to end the discussion and avoid bloodshed, suggested
that each should go and ask for assistance from the one whose
liberality he had extolled and return to the mosque, where the
evidence would be weighed and judgment given. This agreed upon,
they set forth. Abdullah’s friend going to him, found him mounting
his dromedary for lands beyond the horizon, and thus accosted him:
“O son of the nephew of the uncle of the apostle of Allah and
Father of Generosity, I am traveling and in dire necessity.” Upon
which Abdullah bade him take his camel with all that was upon her.
So he took the camel and found on her some vests of silk and five
thousand pieces of gold.
The second went to Kais Ibn Said. The latter’s servant told him
that his master was asleep and desired to know his mission. The
friend answered that being in want he came to ask Kais’s assistance.
The servant protested that he himself preferred to supply the
necessity rather than wake his master; so saying, he gave him a
purse of ten thousand pieces of gold, all the money in his master’s
house, and likewise directed him to go to the caravansary with a
certain token and take therefrom a camel and a slave. When Kais
awoke, his servant informed him of what had occurred. Kais was so
much pleased that he gave the servant his freedom, at the same time
upbraiding him for not arousing him. “By my life!” he said, “would
that thou hadst called me that I could have given him more.”
The third man went to Arabah and met the old sheik coming out of
his house on his way to noonday prayers at the Kaaba. His eyesight
having failed him, he was supported by two slaves. When the friend
made known his plight, Arabah let go the slaves and, clapping his
hands together in the name of Allah, loudly lamented his misfortune
in having no money, but he offered to give him his two slaves. The
man refused his offer, whereupon Arabah protested that since he
would not accept them he must give them their liberty. Saying this,
he left the slaves and groped his way along the wall. On the return
of the adventurers a unanimous judgment was rendered in favor of
Arabah as the most generous of the three. “May Allah reward him!”
cried they with fervor.
This legend may well be founded on fact, for one sees many examples
of this spirit of liberality, a liberality which increases one’s
admiration for these children of Allah. Lawrence, recognizing
generosity to be a cardinal virtue with the Arabs, made it a point
to excel them in this as well as in bravery, physical endurance,
and nimbleness of wit, which they so much admire. After the first
successes, which enabled him to gain the confidence of his own
government, he brought caravans laden with presents rich and rare,
and bewildered them with a prodigality surpassing even the legends
in the classic poems recited round their camp-fires and extolling
the generosity of the califs of old.
The Bedouins were all particularly fond of wrist-watches, revolvers,
and field-glasses, so that Lawrence used to take two or three
camels laden with trinkets of that sort to give away. He also gave
his men from fifty to one hundred pounds of ammunition each day,
and they always shot it off into the air regardless of whether they
were fighting or not! In most armies if a man fires off a single
round of ammunition without the permission of his commanding
officer, he is court-martialed. The Arabs shot at every sparrow
they saw, and one day, when a false rumor came in to us at Akaba
that Maan had been captured by Feisal’s chief of staff, General
Nuri Bey, thousands of rounds were fired wildly into the sky. If
the Bedouins who came into the supply-bases along the Red Sea coast
happened to see a British officer strolling along with nothing but
a riding-crop or a stick, they would shake their heads, stroke
their beards, and say: “Mad Anglesi! Mad Anglesi!” But if the
officer were wandering about with a rifle blazing away at every
rock or bird in sight, they would remark in the Arabian equivalent:
“I say, these blighters are not such silly asses after all. Really,
they are quite sane, don’t you know.”
Like the sepoys of India in the days of Clive, the Bedouins refused
to clean their rifles with grease made from pork, simply because
the Mohammedan religion teaches them that pork is unclean. So
Lawrence either had to clean all the rifles in the Arabian army
himself or provide rifles that did not have to be cleaned. He
solved this problem by equipping them with German nickel-steel
rifles which Allenby had captured on the Palestine front, rifles
that could survive a year’s service without being cleaned.
The freedom of the desert has been his for thousands of years; so
naturally the Bedouin is independent by nature. “Discipline” and
“obedience” are unknown words to him. Probably none of Lawrence’s
men would have made a high record in the senior examinations at
Sandhurst or West Point, but they did know how to fight the
Turks—and how to whip them. They regarded themselves as of equal
rank with any general!
These, then, were the men Lawrence had to mold from an inchoate,
intertribal conglomeration into a large army capable of defeating
highly trained and well-officered forces. All the organization had
to be improvised on original lines. There was no commissariat
department. When the Bedouin irregulars started off on an
expedition, each man carried a small bag of flour and some coffee.
Every meal was the same. The entire army lived and fought on
unleavened bread baked in ashes. The Arabs could eat a pound or
two at a time, but Lawrence usually carried a chunk in the folds
of his gown and nibbled at it as he rode at the head of a column.
The Bedouin looked upon tinned food as a dubious institution. One
day, when Major Maynard was accompanying us on a journey over the
desert northeast of Akaba, he handed a tin of bully beef to each
of the men with us. They took the meat reluctantly and seemed to
regard it as unholy. It was then we discovered how suspicious the
Arab was of things in tins—but from religious, not hygienic motives.
It is customary for an Arab, when he cuts the throat of a sheep or
of any other animal, to say, as he inserts the knife, “In the name
of Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate!” When they opened the
tins they repeated these same words, fearful lest the Chicago
packers had not performed the ceremony according to the law of the
Prophet.
Apart from a few such formal observances, the average Bedouin is
by no means a religious fanatic. He refuses to take notice of the
three cardinal principles of Mohammedanism. He never fasts for,
says he, “We never have enough to eat as it is!” He rarely bathes,
using the excuse, “We have not even enough water to drink.” He
seldom prays, for he maintains, “Our prayers are never answered,
so why bother?”
But with all his looting and his lack of religion, the Bedouin is
a man of honor and a man of humor.