Robed figure resembled character from nativity scene

All that was missing was the camel. The half-lit scene of the large man wearing full Palestinian-style head-dress and robes standing by a stable beside a remote road in La Gomera, Canary Islands, the clear cobalt sky and a single star behind him, could have been a tableau for a Christmas night at Bethlehem, and the man one of the three kings.

He certainly looked authentic, a real Arab. The stable, supported by rough-hewn posts and roofed with broken terracotta tiles, could have been a stable 2000 years ago.

As my pal and I drove past, I wondered what a man in full Arab dress was doing in in the proverbial middle-of-nowhere, on this island that where there are almost no Arab immigrants whatsoever, and whose last north African visitation was the Mountain Berbers, the Guanches, who arrived on the islands, then unpopulated, around the 10th century.