“Mysterious, disconcerting, brilliant, wise, strategist, romantic, writer, nonconformist, visionary, bold, deeply contradictory…” I read and reread like a feverish litany the words of the prologue to the biography of Lawrence of Arabia by Richard Perceval Graves, the nephew of Robert Graves, under the vain illusion that they were referring to me, while I crossed the Retiro Park in its sunniest part and with 35 degrees in the shade. “The Hidjaz sun does not burn, but it blackens and slowly consumes everything that submits to it, from men to stones,” I said to myself, putting myself in the shoes of TE Lawrence. It was like crossing the Nefuz desert and I didn’t have the slightest shame in taking out of my bag the salacot that I had brought from home to sign at the Madrid Book Fair (the initiative was very successful in Sant Jordi) and putting it on in order to protect myself from what was falling. “I won’t rest until they know I have Aqaba,” I whispered to cheer myself up. People looked at me as I passed by, as if asking for explanations or perhaps for me to leave my helmet, but I limited myself to a smile and uttered some heartfelt phrases from the David Lean film or from The seven pillars of wisdomwhich I also carried in case someone didn’t want me to sign my book, finished off with the inexcusable—if you wear a salacot—“Dr. Livingstone, I suppose.”
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