Golden Warrior, The by Lawrence James

Author:Lawrence James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2011-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

Lawrence’s accounts of what befell him in Dera are open to many challenges. Fearful that someone might seek out Hajim Muhittin Bey and ask for his account of what happened that night, Lawrence changed his name to Naji in the 1926 version of the Seven Pillars. The real Hajim died, undisturbed by enquirers and unaware of his notoriety, in 1965 at Smyrna (Izmir). His brother officer, Ismet Karadoyen, denied that he had ever been a homosexual, as did his family when confronted with the Dera story. To contradict the picture drawn by Lawrence, Hajim’s son produced his father’s Dera diary which was a saga of determined womanising.18 Moreover, Hajim was a patriot, and even if it had been possible in a small garrison town to keep secret the capture of an important British officer, it would have been out of character for him to keep his prize for sexual indulgence. On the other hand, custom, if not the law of the mosque, tolerated the active homosexual and invested his activities with qualities of virility and manliness. The experience of American prisons indicates that many homosexual rapists are heterosexuals with an urge to dominate and humiliate their victims. Still, on balance, Hajim Bey appears not to have been the sort of man to perpetrate the outrages alleged against him.

It is equally hard to believe the sequel to Lawrence’s capture. If the Seven Pillars is to be believed he managed by a sequence of forced camel rides to reach Aqaba on 26 November. This was undertaken without, it appears, any medical treatment beyond that applied by the dresser in Dera. And yet, within a fortnight, he had suffered a broken toe, minor flesh wounds, stabbing with a bayonet, pummelling and kicking, a flogging and homosexual rape. His superhuman resilience is all the more amazing for it occurred in a region where even the smallest wound turned septic unless it was treated quickly. Ordinary servicemen who suffered these sores were swiftly evacuated from the front and placed in hospitals where they were given a diet of fresh food.19 Somehow Lawrence recovered without treatment or convalescence and despite a gruelling camel ride from el Azraq to Aqaba which, he told his parents, took him an astonishing three days.

His powers of recuperation verged on the miraculous. On 3 December he was fit enough to undertake a journey by air and six days later he took his place in the ceremonial parade held to mark the liberation of Jerusalem. Less than a week later, he met Hogarth who reported that he was ‘looking fitter and better than when I saw him last’.20 So, within three weeks of his ordeal at Dera, Lawrence was restored to health.

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