AN ARABIAN ODYSSEY

Aravind Adiga dissects his all-time favourite read, T.E. Lawrence8217;s Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

Aravind Adiga dissects his all-time favourite read, T.E. Lawrence8217;s Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
T. E.lawrence 8220;of Arabia8221; , stirred up the Arabs against Ottoman rule during the First World War, became a legend in his own lifetime, and inspired a Hollywood epic. He also wrote one of the strangest classics of the English language. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph is Lawrence8217;s first-person account of how a bookish, Oxford-educated Englishman, sent on a quixotic mission to rally a band of scattered desert tribes against the Turkish empire, did just that8212;by reinventing himself as an Arab Muslim nomad.

Dressed like a Bedouin, and speaking in fluent Arabic, Lawrence rides on camel-back through the desert with the Arabs, attacking Turkish troops and blowing up their trains. Along the way, he gets an insider8217;s view into nomadic Arab society, which he describes in superb detail8212;no lover of mutton should miss his account of a traditional Bedouin feast.

The tale Lawrence tells is epic in its scope8212;he is rallying the Arabs so they will seize Damascus8212;but is kept nimble by his sense of humor, often self-deprecatory; in one particular battle, aiming at a group of Turks, he shoots his own camel in the head and is pitchforked into the desert sand. Historians have questioned the veracity of parts of this book; indeed, there is a poetic, almost dream-like quality to the narrative, which asks to be interpreted not as objective history but as something more private: a confession.

Seven Pillars is a celebration of fantasy and voyeurism8212;English boy dresses up like Sheikh and romps through fabled Biblical cities8212;but the fantasy and voyeurism are marred by guilt. Lawrence knows only too well that once the Turks are defeated, the British will go back on their promise of freedom to the Arabs. The question of how he is to stay a loyal Englishman and yet not betray his Arab comrades becomes the crux of David Lean8217;s great film, made years after Lawrence8217;s death.

Peter O8217; Toole8217;s Lawrence is another of the angry young men of the 1950s and 1960s cinema, trapped by an empire which forces him to betray the Arabs. The torment faced by a man who, unsure of what he is8212;Arab or English, white or brown, is pushed to the forefront of Lean8217;s film, but the careful reader will observe this torment already present, beneath the mayhem and comedy of Lawrence8217;s own narrative.