Lawrence in Arabia: E-Books and War

Lawrence in Arabia

In a recent conversation with a fellow bibliophile, I had to agree that e-books had no soul. The weight of a paper book in hand and the texture of the pages can never be displaced by the best soft backlighting or sharpest of images that their electronic avatars tout. The conversation also reminded of a 15-year old tablet in my possession and of the e-book within it which had long awaited my attention. Soul or no soul, the fact that the tablet still functioned and that the e-book was still unread led me back to Scott Anderson's "Lawrence in Arabia".

The book's fairly long subtitle "War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East" was what had drawn me to purchase it back in 2010. Nothing beats reading yet another record of the casual psychopathy and apathy with which the imperial nations of the modern age, maybe all ages, treat their 'subjects'. While nothing about their behaviour is truly surprising, it bears repetition every once in a while to prevent relapsing into quiet acceptance and a "Let It Be" mentality. The past cannot be undone but it need not be forgotten.

In that jolly spirit, I dipped into the soulless e-book and came away surprised. For one, the core story of Thomas Edward Lawrence (a.k.a "Lawrence of Arabia") turned to be much more than the white 'saviour' of the 'wild' tribes who did not deserve him that I was expecting. For the uninitiated, the legend of Lawrence of Arabia goes that there was this British academic turned spy turned rebel leader who went full "native" with Arabian tribes during the first World War helping them win their freedom from the Ottoman Empire of the Turks only to be immediately divvied up by the British and French ones at the end of it. Lawrence as the lonely symbol of British honour was thus betrayed and his noble intentions were flushed down the drain.

My only acquaintance with the Lawrence legend until this e-book was through an overtly celebratory movie on him, a much awarded 1962 cinematic blockbuster - David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" - which my Dad and many of his generation were big fans of. It was like the Jurassic Park of their times so they were blind to the movie's faults as much as I would be of Steven Spielberg's 1993 masterpiece. As a post liberalization Indian, I already had a less than rosy image of such British 'heroes' but Scott Anderson, as an experienced war journalist, brought me a lot more nuance on the legend. 

The cloak of macho-ness that mass murder (under the banner of war) requires a person to put on and the terrible turbulence caused from the same in any sane person's conscience is captured exceedingly well. Lies, half-truths, averted eyes - all in pursuit of 'national' objectives fuelled by old men sending young men to die brutal deaths for questionable gains. As the book indicates, Lawrence was an extraordinary man shaped by equally extraordinary circumstances but subject to almost all the same flaws as an ordinary one. What Scott Anderson also does very well is flitting between multiple memoirs of the same events, giving due cognizance to the Rashomon effect of individual perceptions and self-images.

It was clear to me through a reading of the story how books, even e-books, stand head and shoulders above any other medium of learning. Here I was, in the comfort of my home in a rainy week in Dehradun, travelling to multiple destinations threaded together through 4 main protagonists - the aforementioned TE Lawrence representing British interests and conflicts; Curt Prufer a German spy academic who was then serving the Kaiser and would go on to serve Hitler too; Aaron Aaronsohn an agronomist cum Zionist with a key role to play in forcing the momentum that would one day birth Israel and William Yale a Yankee scouting for oil in the same war torn provinces while also keeping America up to speed on goings on. 

As an authorial voice, Scott Anderson goes well beyond the usual to elaborate on the confusions, double-dealings, personality quirks and blind coincidences that would shape what continues to be one of the most troubled regions in the world today. More importantly, the book performs a sincere takedown of the glories of war and pseudo-nationalists leaving a bitter and necessary aftertaste of what it does even with its so-called heroes and victors. All sides in a war belabour under the pretence that they are doing "the right thing" but the blood-and-guts journey to victory leaves even the most ardent believer in doubt of their methods.

While I would have loved to have partaken of this story through the pages of a well-thumbed hardcopy, browsing this 15-year old digital replica of a book made me reconsider, albeit briefly, my rigid declaration of the soullessness of an e-book. Are the words that make a book less important just because they have been coded into binaries of 0 and 1 instead of being printed in ink on processed wood pulp? 

All I can say is that I am happy that Scott Anderson's version of the Lawrence story found its way to me, convolutedly, through an ancient barely functional tablet. Digital though it was, its impact was like that of all good books and soon enough, when the tablet dies as it is bound to, I will miss these journeys I took with it across space and time. Unlike a 'real' book, it will not stay on my bookshelf to remind me of our past association. That to me is a different sort of tragedy.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/09/lawrence-in-arabia-e-books-and-war.html]