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T. E. Lawrence to his family
Carchemish
Oct. 22, 1912
Woolley will go into Aleppo tomorrow, if
the Railway succeeds in getting into order again. A thunderstorm of two
days ago lifted out the temporary bridge over the Sadjur, and left them
lamenting. And only about three days before, when I was nearing Jerablus on my return from Aleppo, the engine dropped its forepart off
the rails because they were spread, and skated along on its belly,
cutting off bolts and sleepers, and twisting up about 250 metres of
line. That made one more delay added to the many they have had in laying
the metals. Now for news. We are digging out a room in the palace of the
great stairs, and finding many interesting things: and I have been doing
some copper-work in the fire-place, grinding the mosaic smooth, and
building chimneys and waterproofing the roof, against the rain now
overdue. The weather is become ideal - cold at night (when we sit on
Bokhara carpets before a wood fire in a stone and copper grate on a
mosaic floor, and read beautiful books): - almost any good book is
welcome. - hot at midday, when we go bathing with a frolicking company,
but always with a fresh-blowing wind. All the country is of one colour,
a murrey brown, but very subtly beautiful. As for our troubles, we
carried the day in the matter of military service: the two railway
sections lost numbers of men and are crippled: we did not lose a man.
There were rumours and panics, and they say 200 men slept out in the
digs (and seventy in our house, which is immune of the Ottoman police),
and all the villages tabled their asses and horses with us, but the
patrols scouring the district passed not within gunshot of the Kala'at,
except the day they paid a friendly call to drink coffee and smoke a
cigarette. This has much enhanced our prestige.
What else? Nothing: we
dig and dig: and doctor our men and settle their disputes and talk with
them about all things in heaven and earth. I am gathering a store of
Arab News and notions which some day will help me in giving vividness to
what I write - and by the way I did write something (I have forgotten
what, but something very short and simple) for the man who wrote to me
about a Jesus College magazine: you will know whose it is if he prints
it as I suppose I should subscribe to the production.
We have again no money, having paid out over £100 last Thursday:
if the Museum has left us still without any funds it will be a black look out
for Woolley; though the little money-lender-banker who paid for last week's work
would like to pay for next week's also. He takes about 12%, and offered to lend
me on note of hand up to £1,000.
I bought in Aleppo a very handsome beaten bronze plate in the
manner of the Italian-Arab platters in the Fortnum room in the Ashmolean: - very
good work, though worn. We are pleased with this in our living room: it, with
the mosaic peacocks and gazelles, the Bokhara rugs, and a strange
cement-and-Roman-pillar table that I made (and the copper hooded fire) make a
good beginning in the furnishment of our room: we hope to line it with Hittite
bas-reliefs (trial casts!) and are buying any cheap (and pretty) Damascus tiles
we find: if we could only venture to set out the Arab glazed pottery we bought
in Aleppo we would make it very fine: but it would be too dangerous from the
Expedition point of view.
This letter contains no news, but after all only is the more
evident that there is none to give. Haj Wahid has dengue fever, but is better
today - and about 60 of the men are down with it also - his wife is quite
recovered her health again, but the baby is weak and ill: we are building a new
house for it (and the other two elder ones) to howl in at pleasure: for there is
a wide space in between as safety zone. Also we are building a store room, two
stables and a huge warehouse of antiquities: so that before we leave here we
will have a large colony of buildings under our care. We of course are
architects and head masons: no one can complain of the monotony of our daily
occupations: if only our stores had come and our light railway!
N.
Hope to send a P.P.C. or two - of Dahoum's work - showing what
and where we are.
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