My all-time favourite film is "Lawrence Of
Arabia" and, if I have a favourite scene from the movie, then I guess it
is the one of Lawrence's triumphal return from the Nefud desert, having gone
back to rescue the Arab Gasim. The crossing of the Nefud desert is considered
impossible, even by the local Arabs, but Lawrence persuades them that, in this
way, they can take the Turkish port at Aqaba from the rear.
Having carried out the superhuman feat of traversing this
furnace, it is discovered that one of the Arabs, Gasim, has fallen off his
camel and is no doubt dying somewhere back in the desert. Lawrence is told that
any idea of rescue is futile and, in any event, Gasim's death is
"written". When Lawrence achieves the impossible and returns with
Gasim still alive, Sherif Ali admits to him: "Truly, for some men nothing
is written unless they write it".
As an impressionable teenager when this film was first
released, I was stunned by Lawrence's courage and unselfishness in going back
into the hell of the Nefud to attempt to find a man he hardly knew among the
vast expanse of a fiery terrain and I was so moved by the...
sense of purpose of a
man who is determined to take nothing as "written" but to shape his
own destiny. This sense of anti-determinism and this belief that anything is
possible has stayed with me always and continues to inspire me in small ways
and large.
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