    22

    the

    back of a camel, something few Arabs could accomplish.  He had

    steeled himself to ride across the desert for days without food.  He had

    stretched his limits until he'd gained an endurance far beyond that of

    the average desert dweller, and he was admired greatly for it.

    At the same time, Lawrence convinced the British that he could

    successfully mobilize the Arab nomads into a unified fighting force.

    With that force, Lawrence argued, he could help defeat the Germans

    and Turks in the First World War.  The success of his argument

    boosted his power.  When he rode into a circle of  Bedouin  tents,  his

    camels frequently carried several million dollars worth of gold--a gift

    to cement his negotiations with the desert chieftains.

    Using bribery and the force of his personal reputation, Lawrence

    drew together the widely-scattered Arab tribes to storm Akaba.  His

    force took the city despite seemingly impossible odds, defeating a

    small Turkish army in the process.  After riding the desert for days,

    and leading the charge in two successful battles, Lawrence was totally

    exhausted.  Yet when he realized his troops in Akaba were starving, he

    mounted his camel and rode three days and three nights, covering 250

    miles, eating and drinking on his camel's back, to reach the Gulf of

    Suez and summon help from a British ship.

    The sense that he was critical to the success of the social

    organism had given the young British officer an almost unbelievable

    physical endurance.  When at last the war was over, Lawrence rode

    into the city of Damascus in a Rolls Royce as one of the conquerors of

    the massive Turkish Empire.54

    But once the fighting ended and Lawrence was forced to pack his

    Arab robes away and return to England, he felt totally out of place.

    True, he had friends in high places--Winston Churchill and George

    Bernard Shaw, among others.55  But he felt wrenched from the social

    body into which he had welded himself.  He was bereft of

    purpose--unneeded by the larger social beast.56  Lawrence went back to

    live in his parents' home.  His mother said that the former war hero

    would come down to breakfast in the morning, and would still remain

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