A Syrian merchant, seeing that a traveler had just taken a nasty tumble from his camel, hurried over to see if the fellow was okay.

Evidently not: the Cilician Turk lay there on the ground, on his back, spread eagle, talking to the sun and making odd statements, such as "The little pricks have it coming to them!" and "Who are you?" and "Oy, gevalt!" and "So this is the Third Heaven!"

A small crowd gathered around Saul, to watch. "Look at him!" one person said. "Dead drunk. At this hour. Disgusting rotter!"

"He fell off his camel," explained the Syrian merchant.

"He looks Jewish," said another. "But he has a northern accent."

Saul quieted down and just lay there for a while, staring at the sky as if he were lost in a trance.

Suddenly, he stood up!

The crowd backed off a bit. "He's okay," said one.

But Saul had a wild look in his eyes. He screamed out with great horror: "I can't see, I can't see!"

"He can't see," said one bystander. "He's gone blind."

"Oh, my!" said a Syrian lady. "He must have hit his head."

With arms outstretched directly in front of him and taking little mincing steps, Saul walked in the exact opposite direction from his camel, saying, "Gamel, gamel!" (Here, camel, camel!) and "Karka Kartali!" (which was the camel's name). A well-endowed gentlewoman tried to get out of his way but she was not quick enough. Saul's outstretched fingers collided with her bosom, which I promise you was a complete accident: Saul of Tarsus was the sort of man who would sooner wet his pants or fondle a viper than put his open hands all over a Gentile woman's "zaftik melons," as one bystander called them (Acts 28:1-6; 1 Cor. 7:1).

"Did you see what I just saw?" asked Saul.

"I thought you couldn't see," said the totally stacked Damascene gentlewoman.

"Did you not see a light in the sky as bright as the sun?" asked Saul.

A Syrian shepherd – an Arab – said, "That is the sun, you stupid Jew!"

"No, I mean, before I went blind. Did you not see him?"

"See who?" asked the Damascene gentlewoman.

"Jesus."

"Sorry," said the woman. "Haven't seen him."

"Did you not overhear my conversation with him?" asked Saul. But Saul was now talking to thin air. The buxom gentlewoman had turned and left to chase her toddler. Poor blind Saul didn't realise that she was gone. "Did you not hear – "

"Yes, we heard you," said the Syrian merchant. "But I don't see your friend." He looked around quizzically at the other bystanders. "What does he look like?"

A Jewish basket-trader, trying to be helpful, said, "I have a brother-in-law named Jesus the Haberdasher! He lives down in Samaria. Runs a little shop down there."

The small crowd of bystanders soon lost interest and dispersed, not realizing that they had just witnessed, in that one quiet moment, the single most critical event in the entire doomed history of Western Civilization: the conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle.

(A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil: six months later, a hurricane devastates the Gulf coast of the United States.)

(Some overly circumcised Cilician knucklehead falls off his camel outside Damascus: say goodbye to astronomy, athletics, botany, classical literature, dance, drama, erotic art, hygiene, intellectual integrity, lovesongs, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, zoology, and the whole humanist shebang, to be replaced by fifteen centuries of cultural darkness.)

(No, I'm being unfair. Something's gained when something's lost. Paul's conversion did not lead only to the Fall of Rome and the Dark Ages, a.k.a. the Christian Blackout. Paul's conversion also led to the divine sciences of apologetics, biblical theology, Christology, cosmonogy [not to be confused with humanist cosmology], didactics, dogmatics, ecclesiology, epistemology, eschatology, homiletics, Mariology, pneumatology, protology, sacramentology, soteriology, and the total depravity of man.)

Well, one thing leads to another. The Syrian merchant, who was headed into Damascus anyway, to sell some intricately carved spears he had picked up from a Babylonian arms dealer, offered to escort Paul into the city. He helped Paul back onto his camel, Karka Kartali, and took a loose rein and led them into town, so that Saul of Tarsus could begin life anew, blind and born again.

Along the way, Paul started to tell the Syrian merchant all about Christianity, and about the story of the resurrected Messiah.

"Oh, yeah," said the merchant, "I think I heard about that. What a load of superstitious south-of-the-border ssheeps**t!"

"That's what I used to think," said Paul, staring vacantly into space, "before I found the Lord."

– L.

(To be continued!)