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A comparison of the dialogue of the scene demonstrates how closely Bolt's screenplay follows Wilson's script. In the film, as Ali approaches, Lawrence asks: "Turks?" Tafas answers "Bedu," and Lawrence asks: "Who is he?" In Wilson I s script, the exact exchange occurs, except Lawrence says "You know him?" instead of "Who is he?" After Tatas is murdered in the film, the following exchange occurs between Lawrence and Ali. Bolt's script reads:
Ali: He is dead.
Lawrence: Yes. Why? Ali: This is my well.
Lawrence: I have drunk from it. Ali: You are welcome.
Lawrence: He was my friend. Ali: That?
Lawrence: Yes, that.
Ali: This pistol yours? Lawrence: No, his.
Ali: Then I will use it. Your friend was a Hazimi of the Beni Salem.
Lawrence: I know.
Ali: I am Ali of the Beni Harish. Lawrence: I have heard of you.
Ali: So, what was a Hazimi doing here?
Lawrence: He was taking me to see Prince Feisal.
Ali: You have been sent from Cairo? Lawrence: Yes.
Ali: I have been in Cairo for my schooling, I can both read and write. Lord Feisal already has an Englishman. What is your name?
Lawrence: My name is for my friends. None of my friends is a murderer.
Ali: You are angry, English. He was nothing. The well is everything. The Hazimi may not drink at our wells. He knew that. Salaam.
This dialogue, like the scene, does not occur in Seven Pillars. It is a Wilson invention used to dramatize the divisiveness of the various Arab tribes when Lawrence arrived in Arabia. Wilson's script reads:
Ali: He is dead.
Lawrence: What was he to you?
Ali: A blood enemy. Of the Hazimi tribe. I am Ali of the Harith.
Lawrence: He was an Arab patriot. He fought Turks.
Ali: And so do L But my people have been fighting the Hazimifor a hundred years. Have you traveled far?
Lawrence: From Cairo.
Ali: I have never seen Cairo. Have you far to go?
Lawrence: To the camp of Prince Feisal.
Ali: I will take you. [Lawrence gestures to Tafas's corpse] Believe me, English-he was worthless.
Lawrence: He was a man. And therefore precious.
Ali: Is a man so precious to you Christians, when millions die in blood feuds you call wars?
Lawrence: I'll ride alone.
Ali: You will not find Feisal's camp without a guide. There are no other wells. If you get lost...
Lawrence: I won't get lost.
Ali: God be with you, English!
Much of the rest of the film uses altered dialogue and scenes taken directly from Wilson's screenplay and which do not occur in Seven Pillars. Several other sequences perhaps suffice to demonstrate this use at a detailed level. One sequence occurs after the taking of the Turkish fortress at Aqaba, when Lawrence must cross the Sinai Desert to report the Arab victory to British Headquarters in order to get needed arms and money to carry on the revolt. In Seven Pillars, Lawrence makes the expedition with a band of eight bodyguards. In the film, as in Wilson's screenplay, Lawrence travels instead with two Arab youths. The first, Daud, dies when he is swallowed up by quicksand (in Lawrence's account, Daud dies from exposure long afterward) and the second, Farraj, accompanies Lawrence Cairo.
Lawrence's encounter with General Allenby in Cairo is a pivotal sequence in story because the meeting determines whether Lawrence will remain liaison officer to Feisal's forces in Arabia. The encounter is hardly dealt with in Seven Pillars. By contrast, the episode occupies twenty pages in both the Wilson and Bolt scripts and is substantially prefigured by Wilson. In the film, the sequence begins comically with Lawrence, in soiled Arab robes, bursting into the British officers' club and ordering a lemonade, over the objections of his fellow officers, for his young Arab companion. In Seven Pillars, Farraj did not accompany Lawrence to Cairo, nor would Lawrence have taken a child with him on such an important mission. But Wilson uses the scene in order to comment upon British racism, and Bolt keeps it intact.
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