This is going to be fun

Very little is known about Dahoum's biography. Most information about him is from the writings and photographs of TEL, and there are a few comments by people who met or worked with him like Leonard Woolley at the Carchemish dig.

Let's start from the beginning. It is supposed that Dahoum was born in the late 90s of the 19. century. His mother supposedly named him Dahoum (little dark one) as a joke as he had a fair complexion. His name is also credited as Selim Ahmed. He started working as a water boy for the dig in 1911 and progressed to a general assistant of TE (mainly in photography) and even a foreman of the dig. He had taught himself to read and write a bit and TE wrote about him being one of the cleverest workers and his wish of supporting his education (but not too much, he did not want to get him too westernized).

He was a constant companion to TEL during his time at Carchemish. When TE lay sick with dysentry and was nursed back to health by Sheikh Mahmoody in 1911, Dahoum came to visit every day. TE took them both back to Oxford in 1913 for a brief visit where the two Arabs made quite an impression cycling around Oxford in their robes.

Dahoum - according to TE - also asked for a tap to take home in order to have warm water back in Carchemish. This sounds rather naive and may just have been another TE-like anecdote, I kind of refuse to believe this, as this boy had travelled all the way to England on ships and trains and had worked with cameras.

He probably died in 1916 as a famine and diseases swept through the area, it is assumed that TE only found out about his death in 1918.

There has been a lot written about him by various people here on tumblr, a lot of information can be found for example on the blog of @ouphrontis, so I am not going into full detail, you can look up a lot of stuff there.

What fascinates me is the way how Dahoum actually was utilized by various people in order to convey messages about TE himself.

Leonard Woolley wrote about him being "a boy of about fifteen, not particularly intelligent (though Lawrence taught him to take photographs quite well) but beautifully built and remarkably handsome. Lawrence was devoted to him." Then he told the story of the carved figure and Dahoum posing for it, but hurriedly denouncing any hint of homosexuality. Thereby rubbing it in intentionally.

Faridah el Akle in her turn heightened Dahoum into some kind of symbolic figure representing the pure Arab as such (not unlike TE himself whose description of him and Dahoum visiting the ruined castle ties into this notion: ‘Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all’,). Akle claims Dahoum said : "‘You ask why we love Lawrence? and who can help loving him? He is our brother, our friend and leader. He is one of us, there is nothing we do he cannot do, and he even excels us in doing it. He takes such an interest in us and cares for our welfare. We respect him and greatly admire his courage and bravery: we love him, because he loves us and we would lay down our lives for him.’ This boy in fact saved Lawrence’s life three times."

Tom Beaumont, a former gunner in the Arab Campaign, even told the journalists Simpson and Knightley that TE had been in touch with Dahoum throughout the campaign, using him as an intelligence agent, and even meeting up with him at Umtaye in 1918. Beaumont claimed Dahoum died in TE's arms: “He’s finished. He’s dying. He’s got typhoid.” I’m sure it was typhoid he mentioned because we all gotemergency typhoid shots soon afterwards. Lawrence turned awayand pulled his kuffieh over his face and I heard him say, “I loved that boy”. When he turned back I could sec that he had beenweeping. I overheard the bodyguards talking and I caught theArabic wordfor death and I saw them make gestures like Lawrence holding Salim in his arms." I think this is really quite tasteless, Beaumont was a notorious liar when it came to TE and he really liked the attention. (He even claimed to have a photograph of Daud and Farraj, which was published in one of the lesser known biographies. As we know they were not even called Daud and Farraj in real life, if they ever existed.)

The way TE actually depicted Dahoum would be a whole seperate chapter, he really liked to stylize him as the ideal, pure Arab. I believe Dahoum was a kind and loyal companion and probably Woolley was right in saying that TE was smitten by him not so much because of his intellect. But he was true friend to TE, he appealed to his boyish nature (well, by being a boy in fact), and probably also shared his rather juvenile sense of humour. The years in Carchemish were definitely the happiest in TE's life and Dahoum played a great part in it.

I got interested at the age of 13. For some reason I was on my own at home and watching TV late at night, ending up glued to the screen to LoA (dubbed into German) and when it finished in the early morning hours, I sensed that I had witnessed something truly special. So I set off to the university library of my hometown and borrowed all the books I could find on the life of TE Lawrence (it was rather well stocked) and started hastily to improve my English to actually understand all this stuff.

Why? Very hard to describe. I think the story just struck a chord in my pubescent heart. I was fascinated by archeology, history, warfare and adventure before, but reading up on TEL, I was thrilled that this was no hero in the classical sense. A controversial figure with flaws and massive self doubts, a human with eccentric quirks, struggling with his desires, endearing at times, but sometimes also awkward and sometimes even callous. I think in a way he never really grew up, that‘s why he‘s so relatable to young people. He‘s the patron saint to all of us searching for ourselves but never finding a definite answer.

As far as I know it's a letter to Charlotte dated 6 Nov 1928 but oftentimes it's behind a paywall

This question is rather tricky. As T.E. Lawrence/Shaw is dead, we will never know. He did not leave conclusive evidence about his romantic feelings towards anybody. There has been lots of debate between Lawrencians about his supposed sexuality. Was he homoromantic? Asexual? Homosexual? Straight?

As to women: There has been one woman who claims that he actually proposed to her. Janet Laurie, a close friend of the family since the days the Lawrences lived in the New Forest. She was a tomboyish girl and - being a few years older - had an older sister/younger brother relationship with Ned Lawrence, as he was called. When she was an old lady, Janet was interviewed by Prof. Mack, the author of "A Prince of our Disorder". She told Mack that Lawrence had proposed to her in 1910, after a dinner at the Polstead Road family home. However, he did not make any romantic statements, he asked her rather straight and she laughed it off. (She was more interested in Lawrence's brother Will, but this romance was ended by Will's death in 1916). Another friend of Lawrence from his Oxford days, Canon E.F. Hall also claimed that Ned was in love with Janet, but these statements were made a long time after TE's death. Janet is not a reliable source, she suffered an unhappy marriage and her friendship with TE provided a little bit of glamour to her drab life, so she might have just enjoyed the attention she got from Prof. Mack. After the publication of Richard Aldington's biography, which claimed Lawrence was homosexual, a lot of people tried to "redeem" him.

Another biographer, Dick Benson-Gyles, claims in his book "The Boy in the Mask" that Lawrence was in love with his Arabic teacher from pre-war days, Faridah el Akle , and that in fact she was the ominous S.A. he dedicated the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" to. Guyles actually visited Faridah as an old woman and talked her into believing his theory. Faridah always spoke very highly of Lawrence, but again, she did not read anything but friendship into their interaction at the time before she was brainwashed by Guyles.

Lawrence was very able to maintain friendships with women, later in life with older women mostly (apart from Clare Sydney-Smith, the wife of his RAF commander at Mountbatten, who obviously had a crush on him), but as a young man he was totally able to connect with women his age like Janet, Faridah or Emily Rieder, an American also working at the American Missionary School where Faridah taught.

But there is no evidence for anything beyond friendship. Why? This leads into the murky waters of interpretation. My personal opinion: TEL was homoromantic, he was attracted to the beauty of men (he did actually write about it). He had strong feelings about Dahoum, wrote admiringly about some of his comrade in arms during the Arab Revolt, and he probably had crushes on some of his fellow airmen. However, I think he just never entered any physical relationship with anybody. He was disgusted by sex as a concept due to his upbringing and family background, and he would never allow himself any positive feelings about it. BUT: I don't believe he was asexual as such. He actually hated himself for having desires and longings and he punished himself severely for them. But this is pure interpretation and we will never know for sure.

"Auda is a first-class shot"