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Father Yakouba smiled shyly.

It’s time for my afternoon nap now. Tell me, do you think you could do me a small favor when you return to Tripoli?

Anything at all, Father.

Do you think you could send me a bottle of Calvados? Would that be too much? It’s true we change our lives and banana beer is fine, but now and again I do recall a rainy day in Normandy.

They laughed together on that hot afternoon in a dusty courtyard in Timbuktu, laughed and parted and talked for several more weeks before Strongbow left to cross the Sahara once more, pausing again at Lake Chad to soak his feet at dusk and dawn.

In Tripoli, Strongbow arranged for the first of many shipments of Calvados to his new friend and also began that enthusiastic exchange of letters, later assumed to have been lost during the First World War, that was to become the most voluminous correspondence of the nineteenth century.

The following spring in Persia, during a cholera epidemic that killed seventy thousand people, Strongbow contracted a temporary and partial blindness that made it impossible for him to read books, but not lips. He made use of his time by having the Koran read to him so that he could memorize it. While convalescing he fasted and prayed and was subsequently ordained a Master Sufi when his eyesight returned.

But more important, at the beginning of that epidemic he had fallen in love with the mysterious Persian girl whose death was to haunt him for years. He only knew her for a few weeks, no more, before the epidemic carried her off, yet the memory of their tender love never left him. And it was while memorizing the Koran in his sorrow that he decided he would make a haj as Father Yakouba had suggested, when the time came, and that because of the gentle Persian girl it would be a sexual exploration into the nature and meaning of love.

Thus for many reasons Strongbow was, considered morbidly vain and pedantic by Englishmen in the Levant. The opinion was general and even universal, although it also had to be admitted that no one knew Strongbow at all.

Nor wanted to, as was made apparent at the lavish diplomatic reception given in Cairo in 1840 to honor Queen Victoria’s twenty-first birthday. The highest-ranking officials were there as well as the most important European residents in Egypt. Because of his imposing lineage Strongbow had to be invited, but of course no one imagined he would attend. A formal evening lawn party with reverent toasts to the queen was exactly what he could be expected to detest.

Yet Strongbow did appear, entirely naked.

Or rather, naked of clothes. As so often he wore his portable sundial strapped to his hip, a monstrously heavy bronze piece cast in Baghdad during the fifth Abbasid caliphate. But the huge sundial hung well to the side and its leather strap crossed his hips well above the groin, thereby concealing nothing.

Strongbow’s entrance was dignified, his step measured and even ponderous. He presented himself to the reception line and bowed his way gravely down it, then chose to position himself at the end of the garden in front of the orchestra, as conspicuous a spot as could be found.

There, alone and erect, he stood displaying his full figure of seven feet and seven inches without saying a word or moving a muscle, in one hand a bulging leather pouch, in the other his familiar and gigantic magnifying glass, which he kept close to his eye while gazing down on the waltzers.

For perhaps an hour he stood studying the dancers until he was evidently satisfied with his performance. Then he broke into a smile, laughed loudly and strode straight across the dance floor to the far side of the garden, where the wall was highest.

One leap carried him to the top of the wall. He shouted that he had once loved well in Persia and they could all go to hell, swung the sundial behind him and lingered a moment longer, dropping from sight with a whoop precisely as the clocks chimed midnight and announced the arrival of the queen’s birthday.

But so commanding was Strongbow’s presence and so bizarre his reputation, not one of the guests had seen his nakedness. All the comments made later had to do with his unpardonable rudeness in leaving at the moment he had, his raucous laughter and unseemly yelp upon doing so, his equally blatant reference to some obscene experience in Persia, his defiant exit over the wall instead of through a gate, the heavy bronze sundial he had once more insisted on wearing and tossing back and forth to impress people with his strength, and especially the great discomfort everyone had felt having that grotesquely large eye, two inches in diameter, staring down at them from its unnatural height.

Insofar as his attire or lack of it was concerned, it was assumed he had ignored propriety as usual and come in his normally outrageous costume, the massive greasy black turban and the shaggy short black coat made from unwashed and uncombed goats’ hair.

Outrageous behavior as usual, but that night in 1840 when he climbed over a garden wall wickedly flashing a smile and shaking his sundial and shouting about love, his nakedness unrecognized, was the last time anyone would ever see the giant in his guise as Strongbow.

The sundial and the gigantic magnifying glass were both remembered from that night but not the other article he had with him, the bulging leather pouch. In fact he had to walk many blocks to a poor section of the city before he met a blind beggar who could relieve him of it.

Or rather a miserable old man sitting in a squalid alley with a cup in his lap pretending to be blind. When Strongbow’s shadow approached the beggar began his whining chant, but when the apparition was closer the old man’s eyes jumped even though he had trained himself for years never to let them register a thing.

By Allah, whispered the astonished man.

Yes? said Strongbow.

The beggar gasped and turned his eyes away. Foolishly he held up his cup and struggled to find the cringing words of his profession.

God give thee long life, he mumbled at last, for as truly as I come hither, by Allah I am naked.

The voice trailed off hopelessly, the cup wavered in the air. Strongbow nodded and intoned the stately words used to turn away a beggar.

In God’s name go then with such a one for He will surely give thee garments.

Then he squatted and smiled and put his hands on the beggar’s shoulders. He drew close and winked.

Now that we have that out of the way, my friend, what is it you were about to say?

The beggar also smiled.

For forty years, master, I’ve sat on this very spot in a stinking loincloth repeating those same words to thousands and thousands of passersby. And now.

Yes?

And now I face a man who really is naked.

Strongbow laughed. He opened the leather pouch and a shower of Maria Theresa crowns poured into the beggar’s lap. The man gazed at the thick gold pieces in awe.

Bite one, said Strongbow. Timidly the beggar picked up a coin and bit it. His eyes widened. His hand was shaking so badly the coin clattered against his teeth.

They’re real?

Quite so.

A fortune. A man could retire and live like a king for the rest of his days.

And I prophesy you will.

They’re not to be mine?

Every last one.

But why, master?

Because I’ve been carrying them all night to give to someone blind enough to see the world as it is. Now on your way, beggar. Allah gives the blind man garments in abundance when he sees well.

Strongbow turned and marched down the alley laughing, the bronze sundial clinking against the stone walls. It was over. He was ready to begin his haj in earnest. Behind him a triumphant yell rose in the air.

A miracle, o sleeping Cairenes. God is great and Mohammed is His prophet.

4 Sinai 1836–1843