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Napoleon House opens door to much

Dr. Shahar Madjar

The other day, I sat at Napoleon House in the French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana. I arrived in the Big Easy for a medical conference.

But before the conference started, and after it ended, and during lunch breaks, even a doctor must eat. Hence Napoleon House, a restaurant in the heart of the French Quarter that specializes in Cajun food. The food was spicy and finger-licking good.

The waiter, Jordan, immediately knew that I am from Haifa, Israel. “This is quite a guess; how did you know?” I asked. “I majored in history,” he told me, smiling. “I just know stuff.”

I asked, “Why is the restaurant called “Napoleon House’? And Jordan said, “I also know that you will love our bread pudding.”

At the Napoleon House, at the bar, I noticed a statue of Napoleon standing among bottles of liquor. The walls were covered with pictures of Napoleon. In one of the pictures, the emperor is posing in a position of power, stretching his arm and pointing at a future battlefield. There is always another land to conquer, another battle to win.

This is not the first time that the life-story of Napoleon intersected with my own. When I was 8, I wanted to ride horses. My mother said: “over my dead body.” My father said: “It is important to us, as a family, that you maintain the integrity of your skull and the brain that resides within. Never drive a vehicle with less than four wheels,” he warned me, “and never ride an animal with more than two legs.” I insisted. Thus, on a Saturday morning, our family arrived at a ranch on Mount Carmel. I was assigned a horse. The horse looked sad and lonely, but, at the same time, not particularly interested in company. As I sat in the saddle, I also noticed that she, the horse, did not suffer from excessive motivation. Lack of ambition, you might call it. She trotted slowly and cautiously, and was limping when she picked up the pace. I was disappointed, of course, and sour, for I immediately realized my mother’s plot. “I want another horse,” I said. My mother said: “This horse’s name is Desiree. Desiree was named after the beautiful, passionate lover of Napoleon Bonaparte. If a Desiree was good enough for Napoleon, a Desiree should surely be good enough for you.”

On another occasion, when I was about 10, my cousin, Avi, took me on a sailboat trip from Haifa to Acre. We left at about noon. The boat was small with a tall sail and a smaller one at the front. The Mediterranean Sea was calm. The sun stood perfectly above us and the wind brought a pleasant mist, carrying the smell of salt and fish. We arrived in Acre in the early afternoon. We had an early dinner at a restaurant along the dock: fresh, salty, charcoal-grilled fish, freshly-baked pita bread, and smooth, lemony hummus. Avi asked me, “Did you know that Napoleon, the French emperor, a man who ruled much of the world, was dealt his first military defeat here, in Acre, just a few steps away from where we sit now?

(In 1799, the French army sieged the Ottoman city of Acre. Acre was surrounded by a wall. Its defenders, the stubborn troops of Jezzar Pasha, fought fiercely. Napoleon’s forces were hungry, cold and stricken by plague. (About) 2,300 French soldiers were killed and 2,200 were wounded or fell ill. After two months of bitter battle, Napoleon’s troops withdrew to Egypt.)

We sailed back to Haifa, as the sun, red hot, dipped into the water. The waves intensified, and the wind blew hard against the boat. Meanwhile, on the shore, my mother waited, frantically pulling on her gray hair. In despair, she then called the navy. And a search-crew, the bravest of men, embarked on a mission to find the lost little boy and his cousin, just as we arrived, after dark, at the Haifa Bay.

Back in New Orleans, on my way out of Napoleon House, I noticed a plaque attached to the wall on the left side of the entrance door. It explained everything Jordan, the history-major waiter, refused to say: “Girod House; Erected in 1814 by Nicholas Girod … [who] was the mayor of New Orleans … and it is said that he offered his house as a place of refuge for Napoleon Bonaparte in a plot to rescue him from exile.”

Napoleon’s empire collapsed in 1815. He was exiled first to Elba, then to the island of Saint Helena. If any attempts were made to save him from exile and transfer him to New Orleans to Girod House, these never materialized.

There is a urological twist to Napoleon’s story as well: The emperor’s penis was cut off by his doctor during an autopsy in 1821. It was given to a Corsican priest. In 1977, a urologist from New Jersey bought the then shriveled, dry, and pretty small penis in an auction in Paris for $3,000, and kept it under his bed. Later, his daughter, who inherited the relic, refused an offer of $100,000. Napoleon’s penis is on the Time’s list of the Top 10 Famous Stolen Body Parts.

Editor’s note: Dr. Shahar Madjar is a urologist at Aspirus and the author of “Is Life Too Long? Essays about Life, Death and Other Trivial Matters.” Contact him at smadjar@yahoo.com.

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