Addendum

There were many things I omitted from my original publication. Hours sat in a sweaty tent mulling over tactics and strategy does not make for engaging reading, and the finer details of dysentery are of no interest to anyone. That which wasn’t dull or grossly inappropriate was pretermitted for a simple reason. It was secret, be it to a state or a friend. One secret has refused to take leave of my dreams for many years now, and I hope that this belated account will somehow alleviate these terrors. As many have told me, a problem shared is a problem halved.

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One must forgive the preamble, but the excluded subject that will follow required some doctored recounting from the very beginning of the memoir. There was an additional colleague touring the Hejaz with me during the war that I forbade myself from mentioning. Perhaps this was out of fear, out of shame, or due to the secret I had sworn to on my journey to Aqaba. Most likely, it is a culmination of the three. David Harris was an archaeologist, as I had been before the war, studying Egyptian affairs not so far from my own station in Carchemish. Unfortunately, our paths never crossed under this occupation, only meeting one another when co-opted into the war. Harris was a handsome man. He was just taller than me, with a strong, sharp facial structure, and a short moustache, as trim and keen as his jawline. His hair was usually black but was often lightened by the abundance of sand we found on our journeys across the peninsula. I find myself unable to remember his true eye colour, which grieves me to no end. Harris’s timbre was of a higher pitch of my own, but eluded that shrill, ringing annoyance by being rather melodious. He would take advantage of this and sang often, be it idly to himself, or for the entertainment of others.

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Before I divulge this secret, which I have kept for so many years, I must first explain the secret that Harris had kept. You see, Harris had a wife awaiting his return in England. She had expected to see him return home before the war broke out. Harris had been documenting his work in Egypt twofold. One with the intent of academic review and publication, the other for his wife, who had all the interest that Harris had in antiquity, but none of the qualifications to pursue it. Harris’s intent was to present this diary of his work, some two years’ worth, to her on his return. With the breakout of the war, he instead sent a letter to his wife explaining his return would be delayed. I had asked him why he had not simply sent the diary home with the letter. It was then he revealed the diary still in his possession, now being filled with his account of the war in Arabia, much as my initial publication. I told him I had a similar intent to document the Revolt once the war had ended. He had rather delightedly insisted I examine his work so far at that. I leafed through the more recent pages, where he had written about Sharif Hussein and his sons, attached sketches of Meccan architecture. Additionally, and rather disturbingly, he had also divulged a worrying amount of our military plans. I explained the danger of such a document, asking how he might explain such a thing to any Turkish captors.

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He had merely laughed and told me, ‘I will simply avoid capture, Thomas.’

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‘You had better,’ I warned. Before warning further against mentioning it to our Arab friends, who would not take nicely to such risky sentimentality. The diary went unmentioned for much of the following months. I would see Harris add to it but made no inquiry as to the contents. I was fond of Harris, but not willing to meet a court marshal for him. Our paths crossed and diverged often as we gathered intelligence across the Hejaz and the Levant. I only thought to specifically request his presence when I proposed the attack on Aqaba. When I found myself among some of the less familiar or trustworthy members of our army in the irregulars, I invited Harris so that I might have some decent, or at least Anglophone company on my journey. Considering the grosser secrets that I intend to unveil, I suppose it is worth mentioning my Arabic is not as strong as some accounts, including my own, would imply. My invite was under the pretence of his skill at laying mines, which I exaggerated somewhat. Faisel saw no issue with the request and made the necessary rearrangements. I feigned ignorance when Harris questioned this move.

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I will not recount the entire journey to Aqaba, as there is little to add that was not present in my original account. Harris was present but contributed little more than anyone else on the journey, and much of our conversation was on archaeology, nothing worth transcribing. We were but a week into our excursion through Wadi Sirhan when disaster struck. I had slept poorly the night before and was not in the mood for conversation. I had distanced myself from my usual position in the convoy, attempting to hide from Harris. The Howeitat were not much for conversation, so they posed no threat to my mood. Their few, sparing comments revolved solely around the condition of various camels. Boredom eventually overwhelmed my want for rest, and I elected to find Harris. I inquired as to his location in the caravan, which was relatively small. It soon became clear that Harris was not with us. I rode to the fore of the company and notified Sharif Nasir of our missing member.

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‘We have been riding for well over three hours, brother. Harris is either dead or soon to be,’ Nasir sighed with defeat. ‘Although I will miss his singing.’

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I insisted we find him, ‘I will ride back alone, I have made the journey before.’ But Nasir refused to hear it, insisting we were making too good of a progress to stop for one man. My mind was fixed on Harris’s diary, and his wife awaiting his return. There was little other way I could convince the Sharif.

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‘Harris kept a journal, a diary of sorts,’ I revealed. ‘It may have contained information. If a Turk were to find it-’

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Nasir cut me off, suddenly serious, ‘Rayan, to me.’

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A burly looking man approached on his camel, bearing the same beard and garments as Nasir, evidently one of his men. His dark, golden face was shadowed under a head-cloth, but the lack of light did little to mask the numerous scars across his countenance. Nasir’s Arabic was fast and fluid. Floundering in its rapids, I soon lost track of his meaning. As far as I could tell, this Rayan was to go in search of Harris. I did not know I was expected to follow until he met my eyes and jabbed his chin in our intended direction. I noticed Rayan load his gun as we rode. He was almost certainly preparing for an Ottoman encounter, but a sense of foreboding crept in regardless. I too loaded my rifle.

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We followed our tracks back for some half hour before Rayan spoke; ‘What we find out here… you may not like it.’

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‘I have seen death before, unfortunately,’ I assured him.

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‘This could be worse than death,’ he said sombrely, still scanning the horizon for Harris.

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If I had known what I would see, I would’ve turned back for the caravan there and then.

Yet another half hour passed before another development, a dot on the horizon. Rayan spurred his camel and I followed suit. They quickened their pace, but they were still a dire substitute for horses in terms of speed. The speck on the skyline drew closer at a painful pace. I could make out no movement, but we were still a way from making out any detail. The sun seemed to beat down harder as we approached. The air grew more arid. It was as though the desert itself was urging us to turn back. Eventually of course, we reached the black mark we had spotted against the endless yellow and blue. What we found was as confusing as it was grotesque. First, we found Harris’s waterskin, torn open at the base. Just a few feet away was his camel, dead from a similar wound.

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‘By God, what did this?’ I gasped aloud.

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Rayan’s answer was curt, ‘Harris.’

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I chastised the man for being so absurd. Harris couldn’t have ripped the leather waterskin, let alone tear a camel’s stomach open. Or at least I had thought such. Rayan eventually deigned to explain.

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‘He was thirsty, so he drank his waterskin. When he ran out of that, he sought the water the camel had stored in its belly.’ He pointed to the tracks leading away from the camel, ‘He has left in search of more. He won’t find it. How sure are you that he holds intelligence valuable to the Turks?’

I tore my eyes away from the carrion before me just long enough to reply, ‘Positive.’

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‘Then we must make haste. I am hungry, as I am sure you are.’

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Rayan’s calm demeanour still abhors me to this day. It did not quite register with me at the time, as confusion and disgust were fighting for supremacy in my head. We carried on, following the tracks Harris had left. They were not footprints, Harris was crawling. Rayan noted we would catch up soon as a result. He was correct, he was not more than a few minutes ride. We had followed him over a large dune and found he had tumbled to the base of the other side. We took the safer route down, around the drift’s shallower incline. I called out to Harris on our way, but Rayan shushed me after my first shout. Harris heard me regardless and began crawling toward us. He did not look up, apparently following my voice. Grateful to have found him alive, I hurried toward him, only to stop a few yards shy at Rayan’s sudden command.

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‘Do not let him touch you.’

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Harris was near-unrecognisable. He crawled toward us, face down in the sand. His clothes were somehow torn, as though he had been wrestling with himself. His back was almost entirely exposed, he had lost one of his shoes at some point on his journey. Any skin the sun had reached was severely burned, turned a sickly red and turning purple in places. Blisters and boils were swelling out of his arms and back, threatening to pop as he carelessly waved about, trying to find some traction in the fine sand. His hands themselves were encased in a thin layer of sand, glued in place by dried camel blood. His hair had no discernible hint of black anymore, it was as pale as the desert he was dying in.

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‘Harris,’ I called out once more. Rayan reached out to silence me, but I had already spoken.

Harris lifted his head, and by God I wish he hadn’t. The sand fell away from his once handsome profile. His face was dry, impossibly dry. The skin had pulled tight and begun to crack and fissure, like a mudflat deprived of all moisture. His eyes were completely white. The only hint that they were moving was coming from the sand, which he dislodged from under his eyelids as he looked around for the source of my voice. His lips, cracked and dried as the rest of his sorry face, began to move. For a moment, all that came out was sand. As he coughed it up, even more sand fell from the newformed abysses and crevices in his countenance. Then he spoke.

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‘Thomas… Thomas…’ he wheezed, more sand falling from his fissured face. ‘Water… Please…’

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He groped blindly toward me. Finding purchase, he lurched toward us. I reached for the skin on my camel when Rayan grabbed my arm.

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‘Your friend is dead,’ he said calmly.

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He stared at me, unblinking, and impossibly serious. I looked back to Harris, slowly making his way toward me, begging. He was moving and speaking right before me, he was undeniably alive. And yet I believed Rayan implicitly.

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I nodded slowly, and Rayan lifted the stock of his rifle to his shoulder. I reached out and lowered the barrel, before reaching for my own weapon. Rayan did not protest. There was no blood when I fired. Rayan clapped a hand on my shoulder.

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‘You were brave brother. You have seen one of the many secrets of the desert, be thankful you avoided it this long. I think it best to keep it secret, no?’

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‘Of course,’ I replied, distant. Then, I asked the only thing a man could, ‘Will that happen to me?’

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‘Perhaps. Is your will to live stronger than the sun?’ he asked casually, more focussed on mounting the camel than my response.

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I did not know, and I told him as much.

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‘In sha’Allah, we need never find out,’ Rayan remarked, sparing a glance back to Harris. ‘He was a good man. We will miss him. But come, find his diary and we will return to the caravan with haste.’

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I nodded. That was the worst of it: rolling his body over to better pick his pockets, if I had eaten that day, it wouldn’t have stayed in my stomach. We left Harris unburied. The desert would do that itself in time, and we had not the means to produce a grave marker. Of course, we made it back to the convoy. I lost many hours sleep over the following weeks, and memory still wakes me on occasion. I kept the diary until I returned to England, but not once did I open it. I delivered it to his wife with my condolences, relaying some poor fiction about his death in the Battle of Aqaba. I never spoke with her again after that. The only option left to me is the hope this revelation will shirk the weight that has hung on my soul for so many years.

 

- T.E. Lawrence