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A Casual Bedouin...? by ~Nazafar:iconNazafar:

Categories Fan Art > Traditional Art > Drawings > Books/Novels

©2008-2009 ~Nazafar
:iconnazafar:

Artist's Comments

Inspired by a particular passage of Chapter 77 in Seven Pillars of Wisdom that made me giggle somewhat.

~ - ~ - ~

"I could not hear the train coming, but trusted, and knelt ready for perhaps half an hour, when the suspense became intolerable, and I signalled to know what was up. They sent down to say it was coming very slowly, and was an enormously long train. Our appetites stiffened. The longer it was the more would be the loot. Then came word that it had stopped. It moved again.
Finally, near one o'clock, I heard it panting. The locomotive was evidently defective (all these wood-fired trains were bad), and the heavy load on the up-gradient was proving too much for its capacity. I crouched behind my bush, while it crawled slowly into view past the south cutting, and along the bank above my head towards the culvert. The first ten trucks were open trucks, crowded with troops. However, once again it was too late to choose, so when the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. Nothing happened. I sawed it up and down four times.

Still nothing happened; and I realised that it had gone out of order, and that I was kneeling on a naked bush, with a Turkish troop train crawling past fifty yards away. The bush, which had seemed a foot high, shrank smaller than a fig leaf; and I felt myself the most distinct object in the country-side. Behind me was an open valley for two hundred yards to the cover where my Arabs were waiting and wondering what I was at. It was impossible to make a bolt for it, or the Turks would step off the train and finish us. If I sat still, there might be just a hope of my being ignored as a casual Bedouin.

So there I sat, counting for sheer life, while eighteen open trucks, three box-waggons, and three officers' coaches dragged by. The engine panted slower and slower, and I thought every moment that it would break down. The troops took no great notice of me, but the officers were interested, and came out to the little platforms at the ends of their carriages, pointing and staring. I waved back at them, grinning nervously, and feeling an improbable shepherd in my Meccan dress, with its twisted golden circlet about my head. Perhaps the mud-stains, the wet and their ignorance made me accepted. The end of the brake van slowly disappeared into the cutting on the north."


The sign hanging around his neck I added as an afterthought. XD

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:iconlordshadowblade:
~LordShadowblade Jan 26, 2009, 5:39:16 PM
:XD: lol, that's awesome! :laughing: :D I need to read that book. I just watched the movie with Peter O'Toole on Saturday. :D

--
"A man never deserves a sword until he can hold it by the blade. His hand may bleed; but it is then that he sees the Cross."

~ The Return of Don Quixote by G.K. Chesterton
:iconnazafar:
~Nazafar Jan 27, 2009, 11:43:03 AM
Oh, do read Seven Pillars. It took me a few months to plod my way through it, but it was such a rewarding experience...
And what a fabulous film! :D
:iconlordshadowblade:
~LordShadowblade Jan 28, 2009, 4:15:12 PM
I wil definetly add it to my book list of things to read. :D

--
"A man never deserves a sword until he can hold it by the blade. His hand may bleed; but it is then that he sees the Cross."

~ The Return of Don Quixote by G.K. Chesterton
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