As Prince Feisal says, “The English have a great hunger for desolate places.” The desert of the film is empty and alienating, blisteringly hot, and devoid of life outside of the primary drama. It’s in the desert on the way to Feisal that Lawrence meets Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), who kills Lawrence’s traveling companion for drinking from his well. Ali’s entrance, from a speck in the distance to human being, uses the vastness of the setting to convey its high danger. The threat of sandstorms and random violence turns the open spaces into prisons.

Lawrence tells Ali that unless the Arabs are willing to grow, they will continue to be “a silly people… greedy, barbarous, and cruel.” Lawrence’s idea of the people he’s ostensibly helping grows, but those words linger in the viewer’s memory, quoted again and again by the Arab characters, eventually used against him.

Laurence convinces Feisal to lend 50 men for a land attack on the port town of Aqaba, knowing that its location by the sea would make it valuable for the British. Because of its location, the only defense is on the shore, with nothing on the landward side of town, surrounded as it is by the unforgiving Nefud Desert. Ali, an associate of Feisal, doubts that the desert can be crossed, but makes the journey anyway.