Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to his family
Umm Lejj
16.1.17
I have not written for a fortnight, for at first I was up country hopping about on a camel, and later there was no post-boat. You see we have no mail-steamers, but depend entirely on the Navy for our communications, and they go about their business strictly. However, in any case you know that I am completely well. I have got leave to stay down here a fortnight longer, because things here are interesting, and new. Life in Yenbo was varied, because I lived always on ships, and while there was always a ship, it was sometimes one and sometimes another sort of ship. Some were luxurious, some warlike, and some very plain - but all different. This place you will not find on any map, unless you buy the northern sheets of the Red Sea Admiralty charts (I don't recommend them!): any way, it is about 100 miles North of Yenbo, and is a little group of three villages (about 40 houses in each) on a plain about a mile square under red granite hills. As it is spring just now the valleys and slopes are sprinkled with a pale green, and things are beautiful. The weather is just warm enough to be too hot at midday, but cold at night. I'm on a ship, as usual.
Sherif Feisul (3rd Son of Sherif of Mecca), to whom I am attached, is about 31, tall, slight, lively, well-educated. He is charming towards me, and we get on perfectly together. He has a tremendous reputation in the Arab world as a leader of men, and a diplomat. His strong point is handling tribes: he has the manner that gets on perfectly with tribesmen, and they all love him. At present he is governing a patch of country about as large as Wales, and doing it efficiently. I have taken some good photographs of things here (Arab forces and villages and things), and will send you copies when I can get prints made. That will not be till about the end of the month, when I go to Cairo.
My Arabic is getting quite fluent again! I nearly forgot it in Egypt, where I never spoke for fear of picking up the awful Egyptian accent and vocabulary. A few months more of this, and I'll be a qualified Arabian. I wish I had not to go back to Egypt. Any way I have had a change.
N.
| Source: | HL 332-3 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 9 January 2006 |
T. E. Lawrence chronology
1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales
1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys
1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909
1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish
1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo
1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt
1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference
1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office
1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF
1923 January: discharged from the RAF
1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps
1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant
1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah
1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published
1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey
1929-33: stationed at Plymouth
1931: started working on RAF boats
1932: his translation of the Odyssey published
1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe
1935 February: retired from the RAF
1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May
1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset