Selim Ahmed (Dahoum)
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Photo: T.E. Lawrence.
Selim Ahmed (ca. 1897-1916) was a Syrian Arab known for his relationship with T.E. Lawrence. In 1911 he became friends with Lawrence, who was working as an archaeologist at Carchemish, where Ahmed had been hired as a water boy. Lawrence and the youth, nicknamed Dahoum, "little dark one", worked and traveled together. Ahmed learned English and maths from Lawrence, and taught him Arabic in exchange. The Arab workers at the dig, as well as the British archaeologists in charge were scandalized by the closeness between the two.[1][2][3] During the summer of 1912 he and the boy visited the fabled perfumed palace of Ibn Wardani.[4]
Lawrence employed Dahoum as an assistant, sending him to investigate Deve Huyuk, a village between Carchemish and Aleppo, where an early grave site had been discovered. In 1913 Dahoum moved in with Lawrence, who carved a sculpture of a gargoyle, using Dahoum as a model and installed it on the roof of their house — according to Lawrence, "I did a squatting demon of the Notre Dame style, also in limestone.") The event scandalized the local population as well as Leonard Woolley, the supervisor of the digs. However, Lawrence's official biographer rejects the notion that their relationship was anything more than friendship, claiming that the salacious insinuations stem from Woolley's comments, a source which he (as did Lawrence) considers less than reliable.[5] That same year Ahmed and Hamoudi, the head foreman, traveled with Lawrence to England for the summer, where he gave a series of lectures to publicize the plight of the Arabs.[6] In June 1914, Lawrence left Dahoum as custodian at the Carchemish site to return to England and participate in the war effort. Upon his return to Syria in 1918, he discovered the youth had shortly before succumbed to typhus.
Lawrence dedicated Seven Pillars of Wisdom to "S.A" with one of the few poems he ever wrote[7]
To S. A. I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.
Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness...[8]
Despite ongoing debate and Lawrence's occasional suggestions that S.A is a "composite character," many of Lawrence's friends and relatives, as well as modern scholars, consider the initials to be Dahoum's. [9][10] In Lawrence's diaries there is another poem, "A Photograph from Carchemish," thought to be addressed to the youth:
I gaze at you now, my darling, my brother
the pistol asleep in your young groin,
your lips pulled back in a mighty grin.
My little Hittite, after you there can be no other.
In your dark eyes, my darling, my brother,
The world was created from the waters of Chaos;
now black waves of tears
crash upon the beaches of my sleep
and drown my dreams forever.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "However, the two became closer than just friends and many biographers are clear in their opinion that there was probably a sexual partnership between the two. Whether sexual or not, Lawrence certainly loved Dahoum, so much so that he chose to live with him and take him everywhere he went. Their relationship caused much scandal amongst the community of British archaeologists who would certainly not accept homosexual relationships." Fyne Times
- ^ "Lawrence adopted the boy as a semi-permanent companion and trained him up as his archaeological assistant. They went on expeditions together, worked alongside each other, swapped clothes and were rarely apart." "Some historians report that many Arabs working on the ancient site were 'tolerantly scandalized' by Lawrence and Dahoum's friendship, especially when Lawrence stayed on in 1913 and Dahoum moved in with him. It should be noted that Lawrence was not living alone with Dahoum. The home in which he stayed at the time was owned by another family. Others reject any notion that their relationship was anything more than friendship and believe Lawrence encouraged the scandalous gossip as it appealed to his sense of humor." PBS - Lawrence of Arabia
- ^ Knitting Circle article
- ^ T. E. Lawrence, 'The Kaer of Ibu Wardani' ['The Kasr of Ibn Wardani'] Jesus College Magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, January 1913
- ^ Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography. Ch.7 p.125-6
- ^ The Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society, Autumn 1997, pp.38-39
- ^ Susan H. Warren, "Thomas Hardy and T. E. Lawrence: A Literary Friendship" Journal of the T.E. Lawrence Society, vol. VI, no. 2, spring 1997.
- ^ Lawrence, T. E. Dedication.
- ^ "Lawrence largely hides from view a later and equally discouraging event, namely, news of the death of Salim Ahmed, the young man who was the "S.A." to whom the book is dedicated. Lawrence had met Ahmed while working on an archeological dig in Carchemish, Syria, several years before the war. At this time, Ahmed (or Dahoum, as Lawrence called him) was only fourteen, but they established a close friendship." "The authorized biography attempts to defend Lawrence against "charges" of homosexuality, and indeed anyone seeking proof of his orientation in sexual acts will find little evidence of any sexuality at all. But there is no doubt that Lawrence was able to form closer attachments to young men (such as Dahoum, R. A. M. Guy, and Jock Chambers) than to women." Matthew Parfitt, Lawrence, T. E. (1888-1935) on glbtq.com
- ^ Primary evidence about the possible identity of "S.A.": YAGITANI Ryôko, An 'S.A.' Mystery: "First of all, let us examine Lawrence's own evidence. He left a penciled note on the flyleaf at the back of a book The Singing Caravan, written by Sir Robert Vansittart (1881-1957), TE's second cousin [see T. E.'s Famous Cousins] which is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It reads: I wrought for him freedom to lighten his sad eyes: but he had died waiting for me. So I threw my gift away and now not anywhere will I find rest and peace. Written between Paris and Lyons in Handley Page. This note, written in the aeroplane on his way to Cairo in 1919, was first printed in the biography written by Phillip Knightley (b.1929) and Colin Simpson (b.1931), The Sunday Times journalists [Lives, Panther ed., pp.188-89]. They and Jeremy Wilson, the authorised biographer regard it as the earliest surviving outline of 'S.A.'. On November 1919, discussing his motives in the Arab affair, TE wrote to G. J. Kidston (1873-1954), a Foreign Office official that: ' (i) Personal. I liked a particular Arab very much, and I thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present.' Though, when they took Damascus, 'I found had died some weeks before: so my fight was wasted, and my future doings indifferent on that count.' [MB, p.169] This account perfectly echoes the epilogue of Seven Pillars [Penguin ed., p.684]: The strongest motive throughout had been a personal one, not mentioned here, but present to me, I think, every hour of these two years. Active pains and joys might fling up, like towers, among my days: but, refluent as air, this hidden urge re-formed, to be the persisting element of life, till near the end. It was dead, before we reached Damascus. [Dahoum] It is presumed that 'a particular Arab' was Dahoum or Dahum (photo left), a waterboy or donkey boy who had been employed by the excavators in Carchemish, born in 1896. Dahoum, meaning Darkness was so nicknamed 'because he was very pale' [DG, p.103], or 'because he was a very black baby' [Woolley, Dead Towns and Living Men, Humphrey Milford, London 1920, p.142]. Finding a kindred spirit, TE was devoted to him and taught him to read and to take photographs. Dahoum posed as model for a naked figure which TE carved [*1], which caused a scandal in Carchemish. TE invited him and Hamoudi, the head foreman to Polstead Road, Oxford in 1913. There is a Dahoum portrait drawn in Oxford, and some pictures of him taken by TE. Dahoum died in 1918, as TE said that ' I found [he] had died some weeks before' they reached Damascus. In Letters of T. E. Lawrence (1938), David Garnett wrote that his real name was 'Sheikh Ahmed' [p.103], though, TE himself provided no direct confirmation of this. TE also wrote to R. V. Buxton (1883-1953), his colleague in Arabia, in September 1923, 'S.A. was a person, now dead, regard for whom lay beneath my labour for the Arabic peoples.' [DG, p.431] In a letter to R. A. M. Guy, his RAF friend, in December 1923, TE certainly described S.A. as an individual: '...People aren't friends till they have said all they can say, and are able to sit together, at work or rest, hour-long without speaking. / We never got quite to that, but were nearer it daily... and sinse S.A. died I haven't experienced any risk of that's happening.' [MB, p.253] TE's evidence through Robert Graves (1895-1985), a friend and biographer of TE's revealed that: One of his oldest friends [Vyvyan Richards] told me, in 1927, that he believed S.A. to have been a certain Sheikh Achmed, an Arab with whom Lawrence had a sort of blood-brotherhood before the War: and that Sheikh Achmed died of typhus in 1918. I hinted at this in the first draft of my biography: "Shortly before he captured Damascus there came news of a death by typhus, and this is one explanation, I believe, of his coming immediately away from the scene of his triumph and of much that has happened to him since." But Lawrence commented in the margin: You have taken me too literally, S.A. still exists: but out of my reach, because I have changed. [B:RG, pp.16-17] TE once explained to Graves that 'S.A.,the subject of the dedication, is rather an idea than person.' [ibid., p.55] On the other hand, in reply to a query by Liddell Hart (1895-1970), another biographer, he said 'One is a person and one is a place.' [B:LH, p.64] and on May 1933, 'The "personal" motive mentioned first in the concluding bit was the "S.A." of the opening poem. But S.A. "croaked" in 1918.' [ibid., p.68]. And being asked was there a real person or was it only symbolical, TE answered that 'partly geographical. S. and A. were two different things, "S" a village in Syria, or property in it, and "A" personal.' [ibid., p.143] There is more evidence. A. W. Lawrence (1900-91), youngest brother of TE, prepared a note in Oriental Assembly, in 1939, which read: "It is believed that his [Dahum's] personality supplied the largest element to the figure of S.A., to whom the Seven Pillars of Wisdom is dedicated -- "An imaginary person of neutral sex," according to a Note of the Author's." [Imperial War Museum ed., p.26 (first published from Williams & Norgate, London 1939)] This note, written by TE in his own handwriting, was reconfirmed by Knightley & Simpson, who found it in the Lawrence collection at the University of Texas, and its facsimile published in Texas Quarterly, Austin, Autumn 1962 [Lives, Panther ed., p.186; NPG, p.174]. This evidence goes to show that TE had mentioned an Arab who died in 1918, i.e. Dahoum as one motive in the Arab affair, and later he wanted to mystify others for pleasure, or because he had come to dread that people might find the identity of S.A., kept drawing a veil over S.A.
