Lawrence of Arabia in the Oxford Heat

It was hot as hell in Oxford, but even then I couldn't imagine that I was going to meet Lawrence of Arabia.

It was at the Ashmolean, the overwhelming museum of art and archaeology, where they also opened an exhibition on the Pre-Raphaelites.

Pre-Raphaelites, Lawrence and me: I can't think of a happier coincidence.

The Ashmolean, in the heart of Oxford, is full of beautiful and exciting things, but the big surprise was in the textile rooms, after passing through the rarities section (the museum started in the 18th century as a building for house the cabinet of curiosities of Elias Ashmole), with objects such as the big shoes of John Bigg, the executioner of Carlos I, or the spurs of the monarch himself, who never imagined that he would wear them so far from his head.

In a display case was TE Lawrence's Arabic clothing!

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Let's see, I had controlled a change, the one that is usually exhibited in the National Army Museum of London, in Chelsea.

But, of course, Lawrence must have had more, in the desert you get very dirty, especially if you are blowing up Turkish trains or having a roll in Deraa,

the bey… It will be for wardrobe, Thomas Edward.

The fact is that there was an extraordinary outfit with a white and gold silk tunic, a belt with a precious dagger and a gold and white sapphire ring that the mannequin showed on one finger of the left hand.

But the most moving thing was a pair of sandals, battered as if they had just made the entire walk to Aqaba.

I spent a long time looking at them, lost in thoughts of courage, sacrifice and sand.

Then I realized that it was not uncommon to find traces of Lawrence in Oxford, since he lived his youth here from the age of eight, when the family moved to the university city in 1896 so that he and his brothers could have a good education.

They lived to the north in a red-brick Victorian house at 2 Polstead Road, one of whose doors was auctioned off not long ago and on which you could see scratches that had marked the growth of TE Lawrence (they didn't go very high). .

The boy studied at the City of Oxford High School and in 1907 entered Jesus College, from where he left to go excavate Karchemish, the Arab revolt, the motorcycle, etc.

Apparently he was already passionate about archeology and military history and had in mind to liberate a town that he did not reveal.

According to those who knew him, he was preparing for a serious matter that fate had in store for him.

I used to do the same and I ended up as a cultural journalist.

Visiting Oxford has that, that you can't help but wonder if you've made the most of your life,

Central courtyard of Christ Church College, Oxford.KIM SAYER

I walked past

and felt like an even more miserable, tieless version of Charles Ryder from

.

My melancholy increased when I found myself at sunset on a playing field near the Museum of Natural History (where I greeted Jordi Serrallonga's dodo) and the Pitt Rivers, whose visit was recommended to me years ago by the longed-for Mike O'Grady, a cricket ball that it stood out red on the grass like a reminder of past glories.

I showed it to the Pakistani clerk at my not-so-Victorian Victoria House hotel on George Street—my room barely fit me and my melancholy—in case he taught me the rudiments of the game and to make a friend, but he was too busy, the man .

So I wandered around the city again, bought a postcard for Javier Marías, visited the castle and all the bookstores I found, as we had vowed to do one day with Mike.

I ended up in an old one, Arcadia Second Hand Books, on Sant Michael Street,

just past The Three Goat Heads pub and close to the Saxon Tower.

Come on, the only thing missing was the

of Nottingham.

The place also offers souvenirs and old photos and postcards.

I was looking at them when the owner told me that he had all the

and asked me which one I had gone to.

Just opening his mouth and he understood that none, but he was very cordial while I went through the piles of books and went to find a copy of the biography of the explorer Wilfred Thesiger by Michael Asher, who by the way wrote another great one of Lawrence of Arabia .

The explorer Wilfred Thesiger.

Thesiger (1910-2003) was also a student at Oxford (at the Magdalen, where he captained the university's boxing team) and also a lover of the desert and, like many of Lawrence's papers and things (ie clothes), his archive and his wonderful photos are deposited in institutions of the city, in his case the Pitt Rivers Museum.

I explained to the owner of the bookstore, a cultured and friendly older man named Michael, that Thesiger crossed the Rub al Khali, the fearsome central Arabian desert, the Empty Territory, with a group of Bedouins on camels and dressed as they;

perhaps studying at Oxford predisposes one to dress as an Arab, I risked.

Book in hand like the taciturn Danish prince with Yorick's skull, I mentioned to Michael that I had met Thesiger shortly before he died.

He surprised her.

"And what was he like?"

Special.

Between a person and a camel he preferred a camel.

Unless you were a Bedouin;

then it depended on the circumstance.

"Do you think you met Tony Blair?"

The question puzzled me.

I doubt it, I said, because I had no social life and no friends.

At most he was loyal to Haile Selassie.

"How sad".

Perhaps it was the heat, the weight of the trip, and the fact that I had been kicking Oxford like a man possessed for two days without eating, but I was invaded by a sorrow the size of the Carfax Tower.

There he was, with no Mike, no company except the bookcase and distant memories of a dead misanthropic explorer and the dusty sandals of Lawrence of Arabia.

But then I remembered that I was carrying the cricket ball, red as the torch of life, and ran back to the playing fields remembering the

”Play up!

play up!

and play the game!”, cheer up, cheer up and play the game—and those words from the

: “Nevertheless, I was happy;

for he had been among individuals capable of anything, and the world would believe that he was too."

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