Which foreign royal from a kingdom so rich as to bankroll an entire house of worship down south did not actually set foot on the ground to check out his completed golden-domed gift?

Nosy Tarsee heard from sources close to the project that the benevolent one, who opened his coffers rather lavishly for the minarets and the marble, had every intention of gracing the structure’s opening in person.

The compound was primped up, the welcome party assembled, the local dignitaries pressed and ready in their best barong and malong. Word on the ground was that the security detail had done a dry run of the motorcade route from the airstrip.

But when the hour came, so Nosy Tarsee’s sources revealed, the monarch’s aircraft did something no one in the welcoming party expected: it just circled. Once, twice, low enough, apparently, for those craning their necks below to confirm the plane’s markings.

The domes, still catching the afternoon light, were said to have been the whole point of the exercise. But all they got was a good long look from a few thousand feet up, to take in what all that funding had built.

And then, without so much as a dip of the wing in salute, the plane banked and flew away. There was no motorcade. No ribbon-cutting. No handshake with the mayor who’d probably rehearsed his welcome speech one too many times.

Nosy Tarsee was told the mood among the reception committee ranged from bewildered to mortified.

Some who were there chalked it up to a last-minute security concern; others insisted there never was to be a landing at all, just an aerial inspection dressed up by local expectation into something grander.

Either explanation, Nosy Tarsee noted, said something about how differently a gesture can be read depending on which side of the tarmac you were standing on.

The official record, for what it’s worth, stays tidy and diplomatic — just grateful mentions of the sultan’s generosity, and none of the awkwardness.

But that’s how it often goes with blind items and benefactors: the plaque tells one story, and the people who were actually on the ground that day tell quite another.