All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence
My subsequent encounters with the Middle East were a little more productive. After my exploits with Alex in 2003, I had cause to return to the region a few times over the next fifteen years. In 2010, I drove across Turkey, Syria and Jordan into Africa delivering ambulances. I’d hitchhiked along the Silk Road studying Islamic culture and spent more time than I could remember in Afghanistan, both as a civilian and as an officer in the Parachute Regiment. I’d been to Egypt in the wake of the Arab Spring and in 2012 I returned to Iraq to trek among the Zagros Mountains on the Iranian border.
After I’d left the army, I’d dedicated my life to travel, and as an occasional photojournalist I’d spent as much time on the road as possible undertaking several expeditions to some of the most remote and far-flung reaches of the earth, and yet still I was pulled back to the place that for me held the most fascination. Often, I wonder why it was that I couldn’t help being drawn to a place so full of hardship and danger.
Possibly I missed the excitement I’d felt in war zones in the army? Perhaps I felt an affinity to people who seemed to relish a simple life, or maybe it was because I wanted to see those deserts that were ingrained in my soul after a Church of England upbringing – a sense of purity and authenticity maybe, to counterbalance the reality of a privileged life in rural England? Who knows. Whatever it was, I found myself time and again back in the mountains and deserts of Arabia, always looking for something new, something real.
In 2016, I saw something new alright, and it was very real. I was sent by the Daily Telegraph to report on the rise of ISIS and the massacre of Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq. It was an assignment that opened my eyes forever to the brutality of this new and evil empire that was growing in strength and numbers across Iraq and Syria.
Even though I’d served in Afghanistan as a soldier, this was something else. In 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had announced the formation of the new Caliphate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from the minaret of the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul. It was a town I’d passed through with Alex years before, and there I was again, standing on its northern fringes, embedded with the Kurdish Peshmerga, looking on as ISIS caused havoc and destruction across the country.
I’d gone to see for myself the devastation they had wrought, and the scenes were beyond anything I could have ever imagined. The stories of mass executions, rape and torture were heartbreaking and incomprehensible. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing: entire towns destroyed, bombs everywhere, relics smashed and museums looted; women and children sold into slavery; an entire civilisation imploding.
Between 2013 until the end of 2017, ISIS – or Daesh, as locals prefer to call it – took over great swathes of Iraq and Syria, with branches forming in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran and even further afield. The conflict, which began when al-Qaeda split into factions amid the chaos that followed the Iraq war, now seemed to be spilling onto the streets of our own cities.
It was as if Saddam’s ghost had finally come back to haunt us all. ISIS, the reincarnation of al-Qaeda, had gone fully global. Suicide bombers had attacked everywhere from Paris to Boston, Jakarta to Mogadishu. There was a surge in shootings, stabbings and a new horrific trend in terror attacks involving cars and lorries running people over.
In the UK, 2017 was named as the year of terror. ISIS-inspired Islamic terrorists had gone on a murderous spree with attacks in Manchester and London; the city I’d chosen as my home in between expeditions. The capital had suffered greatly as a result of this jihadist determination to kill Westerners. I’d seen the carnage of both the Westminster and London Bridge attacks and how fear was being sown in my own country.
That’s the point of terrorism; it’s not only the tragedy of those killed and injured, it’s the deep-rooted anxiety that is born of fear, and how it causes fractures in society. It reinforces divisions and creates an atmosphere of distrust. That was the intention of ISIS all along: to generate isolationism among the Muslim communities of the West. To stop them being accepted by the rest of society and to create a sense of us and them.
In doing so, Muslims everywhere would be forced to choose between integration into their host communities, or going over to the side of extremism. ISIS’s real strategy was to win the civil war within Islam; to defeat the Shi’a and to establish a single Caliphate that would become a centre for ‘true believers’.
It was a scary prospect indeed, not least for the many millions of Muslims around the world who had no desire whatsoever to be ruled by a mad mullah in Syria. Rarely a day went by without the news of the civil war in that country, the daily murders and executions, or of atrocities committed by these Wahhabi psychopaths. Having already travelled widely in the Islamic world, I was more intrigued than ever to find out more about what made presumably normal young men and women leave their homes to go and fight for a barbaric organisation, hell bent on the destruction of the Western world.
The idea of a journey around Arabia came not as one epiphany, as so many of my others had, but more as a growing concern. I’d walked the Nile, the Himalayas and travelled across the fringes of Europe from Russia to Iran in a bid to try to understand what made people tick, on the fault-lines of the geopolitical arena.
I was determined to learn more about the Middle East, and why it has the reputation as the most contested and dangerous region on earth.
I figured it was time to strike into the very heart of the culture that had drawn me time and again back to its roots. I knew I had to go back, on the eve of the defeat of ISIS, and see for myself what the future might hold.
‘Are you serious?’ said Dave, sipping on his Guinness. It was number five or six by the time I’d built up the courage to mention my idea to my friends.
‘Deadly,’ I said.
‘A trip round the Middle East …’ He stroked his beard. ‘When are you thinking?’
‘Well, this time there’s no sponsors. No one will pay for it, they all think it’s too risky. So I guess there’s no point in hanging around, I’d like to go this autumn.’
For a moment there was silence.
‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘We don’t get back from the Caucasus till July. It’ll take months to get this off the ground. And how do you propose to pay for it all without any sponsorship?’
‘I haven’t figured that one out yet. I’ll pay for it myself if I have to.’
Dave looked quizzically at me. ‘Let me get this right. You want to circumnavigate the entire Arabian Peninsula? It’ll take months.’
‘Yes. Five, I think. Give or take.’
‘And how many countries do you propose to go through?’
‘Well, it depends which ones are out of bounds, but at this rate not fewer than eleven. There’s a few tricky spots.’
‘Tricky spots? That’s an understatement. And where do you plan to start this grand adventure?’
‘Syria,’ I said
‘Are you fucking kidding me? You’ll get your head cut off. The place is a war zone swarming with ISIS.’
‘I know. But we can’t go around the Middle East and not go into Syria, can we?’
‘We?’ He pushed his seat back. ‘You’re assuming I even want to be involved.’
‘Well, do you?’ I said.
He stared at me intently for a good thirty seconds before taking the last swig of his pint.
‘Well, I can’t very well let you go on your own, can I?’
‘I can’t pay you,’ I said.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said and strode off to the bar.
I watched him trying to order more Guinness in his thick Belfast drawl. I could barely understand him myself half the time and the Russian barman was giving him a bemused shrug. He wore a check shirt and skinny black jeans and his mousy ginger hair shone under the strip lights of the hotel bar.
Dave couldn’t usually blend in outside his native Ireland. That wasn’t ideal for a man whose job it was to sneak around unnoticed. But somehow, we’d found ourselves in an Irish bar in the Caucasus Mountains, where his massive red beard had allowed him to pass seamlessly for a Chechen fighter. He’d earned himself the nickname ‘The White Mullah’ from the locals.
Dave was a man of many talents. We’d met as officer cadets at Sandhurst Military Academy a decade before and served in Afghanistan together. Since then he’d acted as a security consultant on several of my projects and been with me in the ganglands of Central America. He was an academic, an engineer, a bomb disposal expert, an accomplished climber and mountaineer, a yoga instructor and all-round travelling guru. On top of that he was a heroic boozer.
I’d also asked Simon to join the party. Simon was tall, impossibly handsome and muscular. He was a photographer and business consultant, who’d travelled to some of the most remote parts of the world advising companies on how to establish themselves in dodgy places. He was a Cambridge graduate who spoke six languages fluently and a reservist in the Armed Forces.
I knew that if I wanted to do this expedition I’d need them both on board in some capacity, even if it were only to get them to help me with the planning and preparation. Ideally, they would come and help with some of the ground logistics and maybe even join for parts of the expedition itself. It was a tall order.
Simon pushed Dave to one side and ordered the round of drinks in Russian, which he’d picked up in no time. The pair returned with the pints of beer and plonked them on the table.
‘Are you going to tell him, or am I?’ said Dave.
‘What are you boys plotting?’ Simon asked.
Dave and I looked at each other. I’d not known Simon as long as I had Dave, but I knew he’d make an invaluable contribution. Even though he didn’t speak Arabic, I was sure he’d be able to learn it in a few weeks.
‘We’re going to circumnavigate the Arabian Peninsula. Are you keen?’
‘Are you mad?’
‘That’s what he said. It’ll be a real quest. We’ll cross the Empty Quarter and see Dhofar. We’ll meet the Marsh Arabs and the Druze and the Yazidis. We’ll get camels and horses and trek the Hejaz. It’ll be the biggest adventure we’ve ever done. We’ll start in Syria and work our way clockwise around Arabia, all the way to the Mediterranean.’
Simon shook his head and smiled. ‘I think we’re going to need a few more drinks.’
The following morning, I woke up with a raging hangover and looked at my phone. In our excitement, we’d drawn out a route on Google Maps and scrolling along it now made me feel even more sick than the imported Guinness from the bar. Syria, Iraq, Yemen. Countries that people actively avoided, and for good reason. I went down for breakfast with my tail between my legs. I regretted suggesting that I would pay for it, too. I couldn’t afford to take on that kind of financial risk, not to mention the very real danger to our lives.
It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the whole idea was plain daft. As I sat down to breakfast, I was filled with doubt and embarrassment. How on earth could I expect to ask my mates to be involved in such a hare-brained scheme. Maybe what I really wanted was to just go home and read about the Middle East, rather than actually go and spend five months there.
Dave came over with a plate full of cabbage. ‘Well, at least the food might be an improvement there.’
‘Dave, listen—,’ I said, ready to give him an opt-out clause.
But before I could finish, he interrupted.
‘So, I’ve done a feasibility study,’ he said, in his best professional tone. ‘I’ve looked at the route and done a risk assessment.’
Simon came over and sat down as well. ‘It’s bad. Very bad,’ he said.
Dave nodded. ‘Syria is fucked. We all know that, but in the north-east the Turks are planning an invasion of Rojava to destroy the Kurds. On top of that, ISIS are still holding Raqqa and most of Mosul in Iraq. The Kurds are planning a referendum for independence, which will probably mean they end up scrapping with Baghdad. All of central Iraq is swarming with Shi’a militia, and trust me, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them. I’ve been there and fought the bastards myself.’
He looked serious. ‘Yemen is getting worse by the day. The Houthi rebels are in control of Sana’a and the civil war has already killed five thousand people and a cholera epidemic has just broken out. There’s outright famine in parts, and in any case there’s no way of getting in. All foreigner visas have been suspended and even the aid workers are getting chucked out. The coast is a no-go, too. The Gulf of Aden is as full of pirates as it’s ever been, and Saudi Arabia is off-limits. There’s been some new developments in the royal family. They’re saying one of the princes has been selected to take over as king, so no doubt that’ll upset the rest of them. They don’t give out tourist visas in any case and I haven’t heard of anyone being allowed to travel there as a journalist unmolested.’
Dave sighed. ‘Israel is getting jip about Gaza and Hamas is still kicking off. God knows what Trump will get up to with his policies there. Then, of course, the situation in western Syria is even worse. Assad doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere soon and nobody in their right mind would go into the rebel areas. There’s gas attacks and Russians bombing, and American drone strikes all over the place, not to mention ISIS, al-Qaeda and the two thousand or so other armed groups. Oh, and don’t forget Hezbollah in Lebanon. If they find out you’ve been to Israel, they’ll string you up by the balls. I don’t want to put a dampener on things, but it’s seriously shit out there right now.’
When is it not, I thought to myself.
‘Don’t forget the weather,’ he carried on. ‘Even if you set off in September, it’ll be forty-plus degrees in the Gulf. There’s a hell of a lot of nasties out there, too. Snakes, scorpions and camel spiders. The desert is full of them. Oh, and don’t forget the wolves, hyenas and rabid dogs.’
Simon sat there in silence, listening to Dave’s analysis.
I’d thought of all those things, and they all worried me, but none of his points were even valid if I couldn’t afford to set off in the first place.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘This is all very well, but at the moment, it’s all academic. We won’t even have the chance to get chased by pirates or shot at by ISIS if there’s no money in the pot, so I won’t blame you if you’re not interested.’ It was my last chance to back out, and one that nobody could really argue with.
‘We can do it if we all invest,’ said Si. ‘We’ll all chip in.’
Damn it. Now I had no excuses left.
It was time to start doing my homework. I’d asked Dave and Simon to start looking into the more practical logistics like visas and permits, while I concentrated on figuring out how the hell I’d navigate the complexities of a culture so different to my own. Like my previous journey, I thought that the best place to start was with those who had gone before. I was cheered by the fact that plenty of explorers had been to the region and left a great raft of literature on the subject. I re-read Richard Burton’s stories of reckless heroism and Freya Stark’s incredible tales of a brave woman in a man’s world. Isabella Bird and Gertrude Bell would make most modern men wither in their boots with their exploits in the sand. I trawled through Herodotus and Ibn Battutah and took inspiration from the tales of Arabian Nights.
There were the great but obscure journals of Doughty and Philby, which gave me food for thought on the practicalities of crossing deserts and dealing with hostile sheikhs. There was Captain Shakespeare, who’d been the first to cross Arabia in a car, only to get his head cut off meddling in tribal politics, and who could forget that hawk-nosed throwback to the Victorian era, Wilfred Thesiger, whose classics Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs will forever take the reader back to an age before oil changed everything.
But above them all loomed the greatest of all the old Arabists, and one of the most controversial and mysterious British explorers of all time. T.E. Lawrence, known to posterity as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, was my childhood hero. For as long as I could remember, I’d dreamt of visiting the Hejaz railway, where he spent two years fighting a guerrilla campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. As far as dead mentors go, he was as alluring as he was dangerous.
I’d read Seven Pillars of Wisdom after watching the film Lawrence of Arabia as a child. It’s a doorstep of a book and despite it being on numerous academic reading lists, I suspect few people can claim to have ever finished it. It’s a cautionary tale that must be taken with a pinch of salt. Lawrence was an undoubtedly great man, whose love for the Arabs was unconditional and real, but rarely reciprocated. He was a visionary and yet he was very much a man of his time. He was a player and a pawn, innocent and guilty, a walking contradiction, much like the people he loved to study. He was the embodiment of Arabia itself. Simple yet complex, pure and deadly, holy and yet immovably material. He, like the place, was an enigma.
Spurred on by tales of derring-do and comforted somewhat by having the backing of good friends, I was ready to embark on the biggest adventure of my life. And so on 14 September 2017, sixteen years and three days after the Twin Towers came down, I got on a plane and flew to Kurdistan on the edge of Arabia.