Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 59).djvu/49

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'''This instalment introduces Colonel Lawrence to the reader and gives an outline of the striking events which, later on, are to be described in full. See the announcement at the end of the article.'''

HOW I FIRST MET LAWRENCE.

day, not long after General Allenby had captured Jerusalem, I happened to be in front of a bazaar on Christian Street remonstrating with a fat old Turkish shopkeeper who was attempting to charge twenty piastres for a handful of dates. My attention was drawn to a group of Arabs walking in the direction of the Damascus Gate. The fact that they were Arabs was not what caused me to drop my tirade against the high cost of dates, because Palestine is inhabited by a far greater number of Arabs than Jews. My curiosity was excited by a single Bedouin, who stood out in sharp relief from all his companions. He was wearing an agal, kuffieh, and abba such as are worn in the Near East only by native rulers. In his belt was fastened the short curved gold sword of a prince of Mecca, insignia that marked him as a descendant of the Prophet.

Christian Street is one of the most picturesque and kaleidoscopic thoroughfares in all Asia Minor. Russian Jews, Greek priests in tall black hats and flowing robes, desert nomads in goat-skin coats like those worn in the time of Abraham, Turks with red tarbooshes, Arab merchants lending a brilliant note with their gay turbans and gowns—all rub elbows in that narrow lane of bazaars and shops and coffee-houses that leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Jerusalem is not a melting-pot. It is an uncompromising meeting-place of East and West. Here are accentuated, as if sharply outlined in black and white by the desert sun, the racial peculiarities of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan peoples. A stranger must, indeed, have something extraordinary about him to attract attention on the streets of the Holy City. But as this young Bedouin passed by in his magnificent royal robes, the crowds in front of the bazaars turned to look at him.

It was not merely his costume. It was the majesty with which he carried his