46 1GM Saturday September 5 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
A load of hot air The 25 Balloons Above Rozkoš Lake fiesta took place this week
in Ratibořice, near Česká Skalice in the northern part of the Czech RepublicWhitewashed and topped with deli-
cately carved wooden balconies, the
house on the shores of the Red Sea was
the launchpad for one of Britain’s
favourite 20th-century war stories. But
after Lawrence of Arabia left the house
in the town of Yanbu at the start of the
Arab Revolt in 1916 it remained unoc-
cupied for a century and fell into ruin.
Locals feared that it was haunted.
Now Saudi Arabia has completed its
restoration, a project that
officials say symbolises
the once inward-look-
ing country’s att-
empts to build a
tourism industry.
TE Lawrence
was a junior Brit-
ish army officer
familiar with the
Middle East from
his work as an ar-
chaeologist before the
First World War. In 1916
he was sent to be liaison offi-
cer to Sharif Hussein of Mecca, local
ruler of the western part of the Arabian
peninsula, to encourage him to lead a
revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
His exploits were turned into a best-
selling book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom,
and an Oscar-winning film starring
Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. They
also prompted a century
of accusations of betrayal,
that the British reneged on
their promises of eventual
freedom and self-rule.
Lawrence, as a Christian, could
not visit Mecca or Medina so he stayed
briefly in Yanbu after the town was lib-
erated from Ottoman forces in 1916.
The tourist board and the mayor of
Yanbu, Ahmed al-Mahtout, said this
week that the first stage of restoration
was complete. Mr Mahtout rejected
stories about the house being haunted.Lawrence of Arabia’s Saudi
ruin revived to lure tourists
“I heard that fear of ghosts has led to the
neglect and I am telling you it is not
true,” he said. “The house is now a regis-
tered part of the Yanbu’s historical heri-
tage and tourists will be able to visit it.”
Yanbu remained a sleepy port town
until the oil boom of the 1970s, when
the authorities in Riyadh redeveloped
it as the second major city on the west
coast, after Jeddah.
In common with much of the area’s
distinctive architecture, old parts of
town were left to decay in favour of new
developments. Some old families in the
Hejaz, as western Saudi Arabia is
known, say that the association with
Sharif Hussein also led to their history
being overlooked. He was driven out in
the 1920s by the al-Saud family as they
forged the modern state.
The most powerful al-Saud today,
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
is on a drive to modernise the country,
including reforming the economy and
opening it up to tourism. Whether he
will succeed after the coronavirus pan-
demic and international uproar over
human rights abuses such as the killing
of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in
2018 is in doubt.
“The restoration of TE Lawrence’s
former home in Yanbu is just one of
many destinations for tourists to
discover along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea
coast and across the country,” Abdullah
al-Dakhil, a spokesman for the Saudi
tourism authority, said.Saudi Arabia
Richard Spencer
TE Lawrence stayed at
the house in Yanbu, on
the Red Sea, before
the Arab Revolt of 1916ect that
olises
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ison offi-
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