Sunday, July 30, 2006  Lawrence Of Arabia  From the very
informative PBS site on Lawrence of Arabia that helps in
deciphering the complex events of the film: "Selim Ahmed's life
changed irrevocably in 1911 when he went to work as a water boy
at the ancient archaeological site at Carchemish, on the modern
Syria-Turkey border. There he met a young, British archaeologist
called T.E. Lawrence who would turn his world upside down.Selim
Ahmed was nicknamed Dahoum - 'the little dark one' - by his
fellow Arabs. Lawrence was struck by young Dahoum's natural
intellect and he singled him out for English and Math lessons.
In return Selim helped Lawrence improve his spoken Arabic.
Lawrence adopted the boy as a semi-permanent companion and
trained him up as his archaeological assistant. They went on
expeditions together, worked alongside each other, swapped
clothes and were rarely apart.In the summer of 1913 Lawrence
took Dahoum and the site foreman, Hamoudi, home to Oxford, where
they intrigued the locals by cycling aroun