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The Nedous, Lawrence of Arabia and Shaikh Abdullah…..

DOWN  MEMORY LANE.

For Lahorites!

Not many are  aware any longer that the present Avari Hotel in Lahore 
stands on  the site of a magnificent hotel, the Nedous, built at the turn of  the 
last century by Harry Nedous, an Austro-Swiss hotelier. The  Nedous family 
had arrived in India at the turn of  the last century and invested their savings in this hotel – 
later there were  hotels in Srinagar and Poona.

Harry Nedous was the  businessman; his brothers, Willy and Wally did not 
articipate much  in the enterprise; his sister, Enid, took charge of the 
catering and her  pâtisserie at the hotel was considered ‘as good as anything in  
Europe’.

Tariq Ali in his book Bitter Chill of  Winter makes a startling revelation 
to add to the  Nedous’ history: Col T.E.  Lawrence, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was 
not the lifelong bachelor he has  been made out as. He went through a brief 
marriage in Lahore. This was revealed  to Tariq Ali by a senior civil 
servant from Kashmir who had been told by  Benji Nedous, the brother of the 
bride. Ali said,  ”While Lawrence was stationed in India he used to go to the 
city of Lahore like  many other officers, to relax. It was known as the Paris 
of the East and the  Nedous family had a hotel there that was popular with 
soldiers  wanting to rest and drink and so on, and that is where he met  her.”

“Akbar Jehan was the daughter of Harry  Nedous, and Mir Jan, a Kashmiri 
milkmaid. Harry  Nedous first caught sight of Mir Jan when she came to deliver 
the  milk at his holiday lodge in Gulmarg. He was immediately smitten,  but 
she was suspicious. ‘I might be poor,’ she told him later that week, ‘but I  
am not for sale.’ Harry pleaded that he was serious, that he loved her,  
that he wanted to marry her. ‘In that case,’ she retorted  wrathfully, ‘you 
must convert to Islam. I cannot marry an unbeliever.’ To her  amazement, he 
did so, and in time they had 12 children (only five of whom  survived). 
Brought up as a devout Muslim, their daughter Akbar  Jehan was a boarder at the 
Convent of Jesus and Mary in the hill  resort of Murree. Non-Christian parents 
often packed their  daughters off to these convents because the education 
was quite good and the  regime strict, though there is evidence to suggest 
they spent much of their time  fantasising about Rudolph Valentino.

In 1928, when a 17-year-old Akbar  Jehan had left school and was back in 
Lahore, a senior figure in  British Military Intelligence checked in to the 
Nedous Hotel on the  Upper Mall.

Colonel T.E. Lawrence, complete with Valentino-style  headgear, had just 
spent a gruelling few weeks in Afghanistan destabilising the  radical, 
modernising and anti-British regime of King Amanullah. Disguised as  ‘Karam Shah’, 
a visiting Arab cleric, he had organised a black  propaganda campaign 
designed to stoke the religious fervour of the more  reactionary tribes and thus 
provoke a civil war. His
mission  accomplished, he left for Lahore.

Akbar Jehan must have met  him at her father’s hotel. A flirtation began 
and got out of control. Her father  insisted that they get married 
immediately; which they did. Three months later,  in January 1929, Amanullah was 
toppled and replaced by a  pro-British ruler.

On 12 January, Kipling’s old newspaper in Lahore, the  imperialist Civil 
and Military  Gazette, published comparative profiles of Lawrence and  ‘Karam 
Shah’ to reinforce the impression that they were two  different people. 
Several weeks later, the Calcutta newspaper Liberty reported  that ‘Karam Shah’ 
was indeed the ‘British spy Lawrence’ and gave a  detailed account of his 
activities in Waziristan on the Afghan  frontier.

Lawrence was becoming a liability and the authorities told him  to return 
to Britain. ‘Karam Shah’ was never seen again.  Nedous insisted on a divorce 
for his daughter and again Lawrence  obliged. Four years later, Sheikh 
Abdullah  and Akbar Jehan were married in Srinagar.

The  fact of her previous marriage and divorce was never a secret: only the 
real name  of her first husband was hidden. She now threw herself into the 
struggle for a  new Kashmir. She raised money to build schools for poor 
children and encouraged  adult education in a state where the bulk of the 
population was illiterate. She  also, crucially, gave support and advice to her 
husband, alerting him, for  example, to the dangers of succumbing to Nehru’s 
charm and thus compromising his own  standing in  Kashmir.”