لقد كان اصل هذة
الشعوب العربية بالنسبة لنا نحن معشر الاوربيين قضية اكاديمية
have been so violently uprooted and plunged so
deeply into a job too big for me, that everything feels unreal. I have dropped
all I ever did, and live only as a thief of opportunity, snatching chances of
the moment when and where I see them. My people have probably told you that the
job is to foment an Arab rebellion against Turkey, and for that I have to try
and hide my frankish exterior, and be as little out of the Arab picture as I
can. So it’s a kind of foreign stage, on which one plays day and night, in
fancy dress, in a strange language with the price of failure on one’s head if
the part is not well filled.
-T.E. Lawrence to Vyvyan Richards - Cairo - July,
1918
