As he is being sent back, one of the British soldiers in Cairo slaps Lawrence on the shoulder and says, "Dream of desert sands."

He probably thought it was poetic, but Lawrence despairs. How can he do anything else? It is all in his mind. The weight of sand sinks between his ears and wails through his brain in a storm. He wants to dream of green fields and water nobody will kill for, but he can't grasp it any longer. It's beyond his reach.

Sharif Ali is angry at him, he knows. He guesses at why - failure to hold Damascus. Abandonment of his duties to the Arabs. Attempting to buy Ali's loyalty; Ali had looked at the coins, looked at him, and his face had hardened. Perhaps simply the act of living between two worlds - To British for an Arab. Too much a wog for a Brit. He wonders if he will be forced to continue like this. Going between symbolic robes and symbolic uniform. It is sickening. Dizzying. He hates everyone in moments like this.

They're passing the bodies before he notices them. Five or six, bloody. He wonders which of them were killed by swords. Which by guns. How many shots until they stopped moving. What it felt like to pull the trigger, that act of God. His shoulders are so tight to be painful, his knuckles white, stiff as his camel sways.

Ali notices. "War continues," he says, shrugging their deaths off. Then, disgusted - At Lawrence, not at his own people - he adds, "And we are barbaric, are we not?"

Lawrence knows his eyes are too wide, face too bland, but he can't change it. He can't unclench his fingers. The everlasting grind of sand whispers in his mind, desert dreams.

"All men are barbaric," he says.