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T.E.Lawrence: Was he really "assaulted" by the Turks?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Lawrence (of Arabia) himself always denied that he was ever raped after being flogged by his captors, the Turks.
  
  The famous David Lean film 'Lawrence of Arabia' shows Omar Sharif waiting long into the evening for the captured and flogged Lawrence to be thrown out of the Effende's offices by the turks, and depicts a suddenly alarmed Sharif at a moment of realisation, with dramatic theme music?
  
  Was this Lean's way of depicting the fact that something shocking was now happening- rape?

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• Message 2

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Was this Lean's way of depicting the fact that something shocking was now happening- rape?Β 
  How on earth History, Discover, or any other cable channel did not come up with this idea? This program would be a hit!

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• Message 3

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  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Third-rate sarcasm aside, it is a disputed event.
  
  Author and former SAS soldier Michael Asher, who set out to explore and re-tread Lawrence's treks across Arabia, but sadly ended up debunking the book.
  
  Lawrence's travel accounts in his fascinating post-WWI book "Seven pillars of wisdom" have largely been disproved by former SAS soldier and lifelong fan Michael Asher, also a fluent Arabic-speaker who has spent years living with the bedouin.
  
  These links might help;-
  
  
  
  29
  
  and the real Turkish officer who arrested Lawrence;-
  
  
  

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• Message 4

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Third-rate sarcasm aside, it is a disputed event.Β  Third-rate sarcasm? Sorry about the smiley - no offense intended. But I'm actually dead serious about the this program being a hit nowadays.
  
  

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• Message 5

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  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Apologies then, I've just come from a site which does indeed offer that kind of reception!
  
  By programme, do you mean Asher's documentary? Or Lean's 1962 film?

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• Message 6

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  By programme, do you mean Asher's documentary? Or Lean's 1962 film?Β 
  
  No, I haven't seen either. I mean, they have - on the History Channel, for example - programs like 'Decoding History' and such, in which they tackle some more or less controversial claims. This would be a popular one, it seems to me.

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• Message 7

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  I understood from Lawrence's subsequent behaviour that his great obsession with pushing himself to and through the limits turned into finding an erotic pleasure in sadistic beatings.. Apparently in his would-be obscurity, when he changed his name and went into the RAF, he would pay people to cane him viciously. This was not unlike the Byronic idea that death is an ultimate orgasm- a real storm of sensation.
  
  We have subsequently become quite accustomed to penetrative sex being very commonplace, but (having been mentioning D.H.Lawrence a bit today) Lawrence was constantly railing about just how screwed up people of that generation of "Englishmen" were about sex..
  
  E.M. Forster's intimates probably understood from that strange chapter, when weird things happen when the heroine penetrates into some old caves in "A Passage to India" , that Forster had finally lost his virginity..
  
  In fact the Indian ruling Prince, who hired him as a secretary around 1921 , was so amused that Forster was a virgin having been a homosexual since at least the secondary school days related in "Maurice"- that he assigned one of his chauffeurs to Forster as a sex-slave. Hence he had very personal experience of just how British Imperialism could degrade the Indian people.
  
  Lawrence also recounts how one sadistic Turk enjoyed having people thrown alive into a blazing furnace and telling everyone to shush. Then there was an audible "pop", at which the man would smile and turn to his guests saying "I just love that. It is when the skull explodes."
  
  But there is a school of thought that the story of the Turkish assault and the subsequent beatings were a kind of guilt fantasy. Lawrence was a complex character, and one has to wonder when he discovered that his parents were "living in sin": and that his father was actually an Irish aristocrat who had taken up with a Scottish Presbyterian domestic..
  
  
  As a fellow old boy of COHS- and with family revelations too blighting my childhood- I really wonder just to what degree these traumas sent him out into the desert to do great things.. And there was also probably survivors guilt. He had several brothers who died in the muck and mud on the Western Front, without anything like the clamour fame and recognition he won in what was after all a pretty fringe affair.
  
  Cass

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• Message 8

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  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Illuminating, Casseroleon, thanks. I'd read briefly about his sexually deviant fetishes elsewhere.
  
  But does this mean that Lawrence 'enjoyed' the sexual and physical assaults heaped on him by the Turks? Or indeed inflated the true events?

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• Message 9

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  Seamus an Chaca
  
  I have to confess that having had him rather hung over us at school- especially by the "swanks" of Lawrence House- though I did not mind being in Jolliffe House- names after the school's illustrious Constitutional Historian- I rather pushed off reading "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", until a couple of years ago, when I suggested it as a present idea.
  
  The introduction, therefore, was quite up to date, and points out that Lawrence quite deliberately and consciously wanted to write a work of great literature, a work of art rather than a simple historical account like so many others were doing. He was a great admirer of James Joyce- and shared perhaps some of that Irish flair for- what an old man I chat to from time to time on his daily constitutional being over 90 years old calls- "a bit of the blarney"..
  
  Like E.M. Forsters "A Passage to India" there may well have been some artistic licence and a realisation that the work needed some kind of climax. And as the dedication seems to be to the boys who were his constant companions in the desert, perhaps there may have been some attempt to bring out the sexual aspects in a scene that did not involve them.. The recent bombing in North Africa Morocco is a reminder that it was a haven for British homosexuals while homosexual activities were illegal in Britain.
  
  I think that it is not possible to read the book without a very strong feeling that Lawrence's mind and mental struggles found some kind of "bliss of solitude" in those great endeavours in which this very slight "Englishman" apparently outperformed men who had been hardened to the desert for all their life.
  
  But the testimony of Churchill's bodyguard, who was present when Lawrence travelled with WC up from Egypt through the new British Mandated territories, leaves no doubt that Lawrence had achieved a phenominal personal respect among the desert Arabs, so there had to be some substance.
  
  But I think that the History of Archaeology that am currently reading made the point about the dangers that Europeans faced in the early twentieth century through the "native" fascination with pale and delicate skin.. There have been many recent studies about the fascination of trans-racial sexual relations.. and just how easy it was to break through the barriers- particularly for non-whites to instigate relations with whites.
  
  I remember once a female old friend from University inviting me to a party.. She said that she was throwing it for all her "gay" friends, but she knew that I could mix with anyone and so would be useful to get conversations going.. Though the other guests were all couples, it was quite interesting to be "sized up" by men- a very different experience to being sized up by the opposite sex.
  
  Cass

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• Message 10

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  Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Wednesday, 4th May 2011

  "The recent bombing in North Africa Morocco is a reminder that it was a haven for British homosexuals"
  
  Was there a gay aspect to that incident?

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• Message 11

  , in reply to message 10.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 4th May 2011

  arty macclench
  
  Well I was thinking in terms of sex-tourism of earlier ages.. Morocco was a great spot for Gay I believe during the first half of the twentieth century.
  
  The Gary Glitter case highlighted that British sex-tourists now seem to target the Far East.. but then in these days when homosexuality between adults is now a normal part of Western Civilization the old kind of sex-tourism seems to be limited to paedophilia.
  
  But the "Brixton bomber" a few years ago targetted a "Gay bar" in the centre of Soho, and when a bar that is popular with Western Tourists is picked out as a target, the generic nature of its clientele is one thing that any investigation would surely have to consider.
  
  Stephen Fry's latest increment of autobiography includes- if my memory serves me right- a description of the shock of a new dimension to his self-loathing, when he suddenly caught sight of his naked body in a hotel room in Morocco.. I can not remember whether this was after he had publicly described himself as gay, but celibate.. or after his long-term partner had left him.
  
  As our daughter is currently holidaying in Bali, in the light of the killing of Bin Laden and the Bali bomb some years ago, I will feel a lot better when she is back home.. But the heightened state of alert is global.
  
  Cass

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