(1921)
When he remembers the railway attacks in the desert, the straight adrenaline of those weeks, Lawrence cannot help but weep - or would weep if he could muster up the emotion. He does not even flinch when Churchill claps him on the shoulder. Is this what happens when you become what you hate, he wonders. In the Colonial Office they draw maps like trench systems and wield treaties like artillery. It is not clean.
He cannot stop thinking of Ali, how he must be suffocating amid the lies and half-truths; wonders how much of himself he had to gag or cut off or wall up not to go mad from it. Ali was not nearly as disillusioned as he thought. Lawrence is sure he himself only survives because he is already dead.
He has to get out of here. He has to get out.
