soldiering. I fought through the First World War and, at its close, I was sent to the Paris
Conference as an assistant military attaché. I was shocked and disappointed at what I
saw there. During the four years of slaughter on the Western Front, I had believed we
were fighting to save civilisation. But at the Paris Peace Conference, I saw selfish
politicians laying the groundwork for the Second World War-each country grabbing all it
could for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secret
diplomacy.
I was sick of war, sick of the army, sick of society. For the first time in my career, I spent
sleepless nights, worrying about what I should do with my life. Lloyd George urged me
to go in for politics. I was considering taking his advice when a strange thing happened,
a strange thing that shaped and determined my life for the next seven years. It all came
from a conversation that lasted less than two hundred seconds-a conversation with
"Ted" Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", the most colourful and romantic figure produced
by the First World War. He had lived in the desert with the Arabs and he advised me to
do the same thing. At first, it sounded fantastic.
However, I was determined to leave the army, and I had to do something. Civilian
employers did not want to hire men like me-ex-officers of the regular army-especially
when the labour market was jammed with millions of unemployed. So I did as Lawrence
suggested: I went to live with the Arabs. I am glad I did so. They taught me how to
conquer worry. Like all faithful Moslems, they are fatalists. They believe that every word
Mohammed wrote in the Koran is the divine revelation of Allah. So when the Koran
says: "God created you and all your actions," they accept it literally. That is why they
take life so calmly and never hurry or get into unnecessary tempers when things go
wrong. They know that what is ordained is ordained; and no one but God can alter
anything. However, that doesn't mean that in the face of disaster, they sit down and do
nothing. To illustrate, let me tell you of a fierce, burning windstorm of the sirocco which I
experienced when I was living in the Sahara. It howled and screamed for three days and
nights. It was so strong, so fierce, that it blew sand from the Sahara hundreds of miles
across the Mediterranean and sprinkled it over the Rhone Valley in France. The wind
was so hot I felt as if the hair was being scorched off my head. My throat was parched.
My eyes burned. My teeth were full of grit. I felt as if I were standing in front of a furnace
in a glass factory. I was driven as near crazy as a man can be and retain his sanity. But
the Arabs didn't complain. They shrugged their shoulders and said: "Mektoub!" ... "It is
written."
But immediately after the storm was over, they sprang into action: they slaughtered all
the lambs because they knew they would die anyway; and by slaughtering them at
once, they hoped to save the mother sheep. After the lambs were slaughtered, the
flocks were driven southward to water. This was all done calmly, without worry or
complaining or mourning over their losses. The tribal chief said: "It is not too bad. We
might have lost everything. But praise God, we have forty per cent of our sheep left to
make a new start."
I remember another occasion, when we were motoring across the desert and a tyre
blew out. The chauffeur had forgotten to mend the spare tyre. So there we were with
only three tyres. I fussed and fumed and got excited and asked the Arabs what we were
going to do. They reminded me that getting excited wouldn't help, that it only made one
hotter. The blown-out tyre, they said, was the will of Allah and nothing could be done
about it. So we started on, crawling along on the rim of a wheel. Presently the car
spluttered and stopped. We were out of petrol 1 The chief merely remarked: "Mektoub!"
and, there again, instead of shouting at the driver because he had not taken on enough
petrol, everyone remained calm and we walked to our destination, singing as we went.