In the movie Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence is the classic White Savior: "a white person who comes upon, sympathizes with, and then ultimately
rescues disenfranchised, victimized and/or brutalized people of color." In the military circles I run it, Lawrence is thankfully considered more critically, but he is still an exemplar: a brilliant military officer who used his deep learning and cultural expertise to help the Arabs fight the Ottomans and help Britain achieve its strategic interests.When I went to Jordan, I wondered how Arabs saw Lawrence. They certainly wouldn't view him as the leader of their revolt. I suspected they didn't even view him as a tutor. Did they view him favorably at all?
In the Wadi Rum desert I endured a tour obviously designed for Western tourists: these are the remains of Lawrence's house, this is the spring where Lawrence got his water. I asked my Bedouin guide how Jordanians view Lawrence and his place in their history, but got only a shrug.
I finally got one glimpse at university. During a discussion of Western exploitation, one student delivered a blistering critique of Lawrence: he was an imperialist who only feigned friendship with the Arabs, so he could later exploit them in the service of British national interests. He spent years living among them, learning their language, even wearing their clothes, but he was always a British soldier and colonialist. The British government used his knowledge and his relationships to subdue the Arabs, deny their dream of an Arab state, and gain control of their lands.
The angry critique was alarming for this well-intended American military officer who was in Jordan to live among the people, learn the language, and build relationships.
I suspect this student's view is typical. When discussing this era of history, my Jordanian colleagues almost never referenced Lawrence or even their own victories against the Ottomans; what they referenced most was the secret Sykes-Picot agreement that partitioned Arab lands into French and British territories.
Yesterday, while reading King Abdullah II's book, I discovered more clues about how Jordanians view Lawrence, although whatever truth lurks behind these quotes is diminished by the tepid tone one expects of a political memoir. Abdullah discusses the filming of Lawrence of Arabia in Jordan, then writes:
The film was tremendously popular in the West, less so in Jordan, where it is viewed by many people as a partial and inaccurate retelling of history. And although Lawrence is seen today by many in the West as a romantic hero who played a key role in leading the Arab people to freedom, the view in my family of the historical record is considerably more measured. My great-grandfather King Abdullah I regarded Lawrence as a “strange character,” eager to mold people to suit his interests.
He then cites the memoirs of his great-grandfather, King Abdullah I: "[Lawrence's] intrigues went as far as an attempt to influence me against my own father on the pretext that my father was obstinate... Lawrence appeared only to require people who had no views of their own, that he might impress his personal ideas upon them."
Abdullah II then continues his treatment of the Arab Revolt with (naturally) a discussion of the Skyes-Picot agreement.
Is there a lesson here? I think so. Although Lawrence remains an important figure and is worthy of study, these disparate views should alert us to the dangers of mirror imaging, and of overemphasizing our own importance in the affairs of other cultures.
2 comments:
That's a fine post, Mark.
You know how in a movie the camera sometimes travels from one side of a wall to the other, from one room to the next, perhaps as someone is going through a door from one room to the other, perhaps just to show what's happening on the other side of the wall?
A god's-eye vision takes in both sides of our walls and wars, surely -- wasn't Abraham Lincoln getting at something of the sort in his Second Inaugural when he said, Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other?
We have two eyes, two ears, but only one train of thought – and so it is that we tend to be partisan, to hold the position of one side with little understanding of the other, to polarize.
In my view, we need to move from monophonic thinking to polyphonic, from monoscopic vision to stereoscopic. In fact I very much like what Paul van Riper said:
What we tend to do is look toward the enemy. We're only looking one way: from us to them. But the good commanders take two other views. They mentally move forward and look back to themselves. They look from the enemy back to the friendly, and they try to imagine how the enemy might attack them. The third is to get a bird's-eye view, a top-down view, where you take the whole scene in. The amateur looks one way; the professional looks at least three different ways.
We need to understand both sides, feel the shifts and balances, evaluate and steer accordingly -- or we'll always be blindsided by feedback loops and undertows that we'll call "unknowns" in retrospective self-defense, when in fact they were simply our own "ignorances"…
"What we tend to do is look toward the enemy. We're only looking one way: from us to them" ---thats the wrong attitude to have if you want to build peace!
Lao Tzu says in the Tao te Ching
"Unevolved people are eager to act out of strength,
but a person of Tao values peace and quiet"
He knows that every being is born of the womb of Tao
This means that his enemies are his enemies second,
his own brothers and sisters first."
In order to build peace--one has to recognize and respect the others humanity. Human beings all have the same needs and aspirations. As the Quran reminds us---we are all "Children of Adam."
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