God alone is great: there is no god-but God.'Īt the close he dropped his voice two tones, almost to speaking level, and softly added: 'And He is very good to us this day, O people of Damascus.' The clamour hushed, as everyone seemed to obey the call to prayer on this their first night of perfect freedom. I found myself involuntarily distinguishing his words: 'God alone is great: I testify there are no gods, but God: and Mohammed his Prophet. One, with a ringing voice of special sweetness, cried into my window from a near mosque. Later I was sitting alone in my room, working and thinking out as firm a way as the turbulent memories of the day allowed, when the Muedhdhins began to send their call of last prayer through the moist night over the illuminations of the feasting city. Lawrence's account is rarely in the slightest bit romanticised, though, and hunger, thirst, battle and death are treated in a most matter-of-fact manner that contrasts both with the myth of Lawrence of Arabia on the one hand and the deliberately political and horrifying verse of Sassoon and his fellow War Poets. The mud, trenches, gas attacks, whole-sale slaughter and stalemate of France and Belgium feel like a different world from the rock, sand, guerilla warfare and endless gadding about by horse, camel, plane and (Rolls Royce) car that Lawrence describes in the Middle East.
The contrast between the Western and Eastern conflicts could hardly be greater, on this basis. I know very little about WWI my main impressions of it come from two books All Quiet on the Western Front and this. Interest was re-ignited when the Allies turn up in force and events become novel again. It turns out that camel rides and raids on railways and bridges can become repetative and dull. The first half fled fairly fast but the second was a struggle for most of its length. Lawrence is at his best when describing landscape and action, at his worst when being judgemental, whether it be about history, peoples or individuals. I'd have much prefered to read a critical edition that put the book in the context of the known history so that truth and fiction could be easily separated - I don't know if such a thing exists, though. The veracity of the account was challenged in a publication of 1955 that I don't have.
I was aware before starting that this was a somewhat unreliable account of the exploits of Lawrence on the Eastern Front during WWI but the Introduction introduced such a level of scepticism that it tainted my reading I was forever wondering what was true, what was exaggerated, what entirely fabricated.
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