Page 71 - Egypt & the Eternal Nile by Private, Classic River-Yacht

in 2002 he closed a deal to help save the Dead Sea by piping Red Sea water to the Jordan Rift
Valley at a cost of US$800,000,000, and in 2004 signed an agreement to develop a desert
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also been strengthened.

Despite the fact that Jordan has no oil and few natural resources, it stands out in the Middle
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toll on its economy; many believe tourism will play a crucial role in Jordan’s economic
revival. Queen Rania in particular has been the public face of this new Jordan, advocating for
environmentally friendly tourism and championing the use of new technology as a way of
bringing Jordan to the attention of the world.

Lawrence of Arabia
by John Bregoli, from Dispatches

Winston Churchill once said of T. E. Lawrence: “I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in
our time ... We shall never see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the
annals of war ... It will live in the legends of Arabia.”

That’s some pretty high praise for someone who considered himself just an “ordinary man.”
But most would agree that Lawrence—who came to be known as Lawrence of Arabia—lived
quite an extraordinary life.

Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in 1888 in Wales. He was interested in history at an
early age, and loved exploring old churches and castles. After embarking on a thousand-mile
walking tour of Syria to explore Crusader castles as a student at Oxford, Lawrence decided to
become an archaeologist. So he returned to the Middle East in 1910 and remained there until
1914, working on archaeological surveys. It was during this time that Lawrence developed a
passion for all things Arabic—often living with nomadic tribesmen, wearing traditional Arab
clothing, and going for long walks in the desert.

He was back in England at the outbreak of World War I, however, and because of his
knowledge and familiarity with Arabs, he was assigned to the intelligence section of the British
Army in Cairo. In 1916 he joined the Arab forces under Faisal al Husayn and became a leader
in their Great Arab Revolt against the Turks (who were allied with the Germans). The Arabs
seemed no match for the Turks, who at the time had the fourth largest army in the world
and were expertly trained and possessed modern weapons. But Lawrence developed brilliant
guerrilla warfare tactics to tie down large Turkish armies with an Arab force of only a few
thousand and he eventually defeated the Turks.

By the end of the war, Lawrence was a hero among the Arabs. But he had already gained their
respect in many ways. Apparently, he could ride a camel faster and more easily than most
of them (he could run alongside a moving beast and then swing into the saddle that was
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