T. E. Lawrence to R. V. Buxton

[Karachi]

10.5.28.

Karachi has been bad, lately: and I have asked Sir Geoffrey Salmond to take me away to some squadron up-country. It's not our Section Officers who are concerned. I like the puzzled honesty of F/Lt. Angell, my immediate C.O.: and he is very decent to me. But higher up they panic, apparently, over my mere existence in their camp.

Moving is no fun. For nearly a month the new camp gapes at me, expecting me to belie my ordinary shape by doing something extraordinary: and I grow red all over, and my spine trickles damply. I know it is silly: but people's eye-sight tickles one's skin nearly as perceptibly as their fingers or their breath would tickle. And scrutiny at such defencelessly close-quarters as our barrack-life imposes, hurts a good deal.

Also the beginning again from the bottom to make onself a nest in people's estimation is tiring. And I have to leave behind my books, and the electric bath-heater which I've been able to rig up out of local material and ingenuity. It was a good bath-heater: gave me 14 gallons of bath-hot water in a half-hour, for the cost of a unit of electric current. I have had two baths every day this financial year. Hot water is very near Heaven. You know Karachi is a chilly place. [90 lines omitted]