22A light rain stopped falling, allowing Ahmed Al-Malmasi to stroll to the courtyard of the Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon. He was dressed in a charcoal grey Canali suit and a crisp light blue cotton Eton shirt. There was something about its mother-of-pearl buttons that uplifted him.
The museum was one of his favorite cultural locations. Not as well-known and therefore typically not as crowded as The Louvre or The Hermitage, it housed many iconic and transformative works of art by the masters and lesser heralded. Al-Malmasi walked passed a Rodin sculpture to stand in front of Leon-Alexander Delhomme’s statue Democritus Meditating on the Seat of the Soul. Al-Malmasi was transfixed by the sculpted skull Democritus had been pondering since the creation of the piece. What marveled him more than
