“Lawrence's chief lieutenant in Arabia was the old Bedo in the centre of this group. His name is Auda Abu Tayi. He is the fiercest, wittiest and most hospitable old pirate in the Arabian Desert — and the biggest liar east of Suez. He has the reputation of having killed 87 men in hand-to-hand personal combat. When Shereef Hussein started the revolution old Auda Abu Tayi and his followers charged down across the desert to Mecca and swore on the Koran that they would make the Shereef's enemies their enemies. They sat down to a banquet in honour of the occasion, and while they were dining Old Auda happened to recall that he had a set of Turkish false teeth in his mouth. So he jumped up, rushed out of the tent and smashed them on a rock, and when Lawrence came down from Egypt Old Auda's mouth was giving him so much trouble that Lawrence had to send back to Cairo for a British dentist to come down and make a special set of Allied teeth for this old Bedouin.”
-Lowell Thomas
“With Lawrence in Arabia” (1919)
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