The life of Nicholas Said, engagingly recounted in Dean Calbreath’s biography, proves the aphorism that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.
Briefly told, this saga begins in the ancient African kingdom of Borno, which, in the 1830s, encompassed parts of modern-day Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. A young man born Mohammed Ali ben Said was, according to award-winning investigative journalist Dean Calbreath, “born to be a fighter.” Young Mohammed was kidnapped by slave-trading Tuaregs and sold to
