"In a small Kurdish village, there was an old fisherman named Siad Qadim. He and his wife, Eden lived alone and childless in a small hut right up against the small village lake.
One day, Siad was in his small boat fishing on that lake. He did this every day, but rather than catching his usual haul of small tasteless fish, on this day Siad caught something extraordinary. He just didn't know it yet.
When his net produced a large green bottle with a cork stopper, Siad was disappointed. Even Siad knew that you couldn't eat a bottle. The fisherman sighed, bemoaned his misfortune, and was about to throw the bottle back when an idea wiggled into his head. Siad shook the bottle and heard a welcomed sloshing sound.
Siad grinned with all 14 of his teeth. For you see, Siad was quite sure the bottle had liquor in it. Siad had not had alcohol in ages. It was bad for his constitution, so his wife kept it away from him.
Now feeling two decades younger, Siad began an intense battle against the bottle. It was hard. Siad's fingers were wet. His hands weren't as strong and nimble as they used to be and to cap it off, the stopper was on there tight as anything, but lucky for Siad, time was on his side. After several minutes of fiddling and swearing, the fisherman managed to pry the stopper off with a loud pop!
It was a great victory for Siad, but he barely got a chance to celebrate because smoke immediately started to billow out of the bottle. The stuff rose up in the air to form..."
A genie.
"A large green floating fish."
What? I blinked. Multiple times.
The sultan's eyes twinkled. "The Jinni fish spoke, 'I am the Jinni of the bottle. Tell me what you wish and it is yours.'
Siad was overwhelmed by the oddness of all this, so he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. 'I wish I had caught a normal fish.'
As this was a time before wishes had rules, the genie granted the wish without fuss or guile. The fisherman's small net was filled with one seemingly normal fish which was several sizes larger than Siad's usual catch.
Siad's eyes too grew large at the sight of this miracle and he wasted no time wishing for more things."
The sultan paused. "This part goes on for a while so I'll summarize. Siad wished for everything he could think of. He eventually became a young and hardy sultan with a palace filled with countless servants and treasures, more food and liquor than anyone could ever consume, a son perfect in every way that mattered, and his wife restored to her former maidenly beauty.
The Jinni fish gave Siad all this and more. Yet no matter what our newly minted sultan wished for, he was left feeling hollow and quite unhappy.
On the seventh day of this, Siad's wife, Eden, asked him if she might suggest a wish. Siad had ignored her requests before, too intent on his own desires, but as he was tired and thoroughly stumped, he finally decided to listen to her.
Siad said, 'Of course, wife,' like this was the first and not the fortieth time she had made this request. 'What do you wish?' Siad asked.
Eden had seen her husband over the course of the week making wish after wish and she had watched the genie carefully. She understood the difference between the real things the genie stole from elsewhere and the things the genie made from pure magic. She saw that most of their new land, wealth, servants, and even Siad's beloved son were not natural but things of sand, glass, and fire.
How she knew this is a question up for debate. It is actually quite..."
At this point, Sultan Hamed went on an extended dissertation on the many theories, but at last, he said, "Regardless of the reason, Eden understood things better than her poor husband and was able to make a wish that was so simple and fundamental that it is honestly still one of the best wishes a person can make..."
The sultan paused once again and gave me an expectant look.
I knew what he wanted, but I couldn't quite believe it. Did he think me a child?
I kept the boredom and annoyance out of my voice as I asked, "And what did she wish for, Sultan Hamed?"
The sultan smiled, "Ah well, as I said, it was quite simple really. She wished for knowledge. She told her husband that 'I wish, Siad, that you knew what you wanted to wish for.'
Siad was impressed for it never would have occurred to him to ask such a thing. Siad quickly repeated her wish to the genie and the genie granted it. However, it was then that Siad cried out in deepest despair. Do you know why?"
I did my best not to sigh. Considering the type of story this was, there was really only one answer I could think of. "Did he realize that he needed to undo his wishes?"
"Undo!" The sultan exclaimed. Then the man started to laugh. "Undo his wishes...Allah deliver us." He kept on hooting with joy.
I bristled. This was the second time today he'd outright laughed at me and I did not appreciate it!
I struggled to keep the umbrage out of my voice as I said, "It is a common solution in many tales."
"True, true," the sultan conceded after he calmed down from his ill-gotten mirth. "There are many stories where that might be a solution, but in Agrabah, we don't abide by such wishful thinking as it were. A genie's wishes cannot simply be 'undone'. No, no, magic is not that forgiving, Prince Dhiren. That is why Siad cried out.
He realized that ancient truth: Magic, like all things in life, has a cost. A genie's power does not come from nothing as you and many others seem to believe. No indeed. The power comes from life itself. With each wish Siad had made, he sacrificed a portion of his life energy, a portion of his soul. And when the genie had used up most of Siad's life, the genie had borrowed from Siad's wife for all married people share a wedded soul.
That energy had enabled the genie to do much, but it was now at an end. Siad and Jinni fish both knew that Siad's next wish would be his last.
Siad summoned his son. The child was his heart and quite literally housed a piece of his soul. Then Siad said his goodbyes and told his wife and child that he loved them very much. After this was done, Siad made his final wish.
Invoking ancient genie magic, Siad said, 'I wish for your freedom Jinni in exchange spare my wife and child a soulless death.'
The Jinni fish happily granted Siad's wish. Some might even suppose that this was the genie's plan all along for it is a rule of thumb that every natural-born genie wishes to be free.
With the last of Siad's life energy, the genie worked their magic. First, the Jinni fish drew out the remaining energy from all of Siad's wealth, servants, and other magical possessions, reducing the land around them to dust and sand. Then the genie distributed the energy to the boy and his mother.
In a perfect world where undoing magic was simple and possible, this would have been enough to save both. But as I said, that is wishful thinking indeed. It takes energy to make, sustain, and destroy, so by the end of this process there was only enough to save one person.
The genie, of course, saved his creation, but don't get too excited. The boy became truly alive for one miraculous instant before he died and his soul went to heaven.
As for the fisherman's wife, Eden, it was she who took the genie's place in the bottle for someone needed to after all and it was a convenient way to fulfill Siad's wish.
Finally, there was Siad's fate. The sight of his failures: the blackened landscape of his now barren kingdom, the limp body of his dead son, and the green bottle slowly drawing in his wife so that she could become an inhuman immortal servant for future greedy souls was the last thing Siad saw before his energy was completely extinguished and he found out what it meant to die a soulless death.
And as bad as that all sounds, trust me when I say it was the beginning of Siad's suffering. A soulless death is not something any mortal is prepared to deal with, but I'll spare you the gruesome details.
This is where Siad's story ends. Some folk say that he was the very last person to ever receive near-infinite wishes. The reason for this goes back to Eden, but that's a complicated story for another time, I think.
For today, we will stop here. After all, there's plenty of food for thought in this tale, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes," I agreed. Leave it to the sultan to turn a perfectly benign folktale into something so morbid.
Spare me the gruesome details?
Hardly, but it did not matter. This time, I was ready.
After that tragic and vastly unsettling conclusion, the point of the story seemed clear enough. I said, "Siad's story was one of unmitigated greed for worldly possessions and status. Even at the very end, Siad was blind to his only true treasure, his wife. Had Siad thought to love and consult with her earlier, things might have ended more happily."
There. The sultan had wanted me to value Jasmine over riches? It was already done. He need not have bothered with such an unpleasant tale. Perhaps now we could go back to the horses and call it an afternoon.
The sultan, however, was not done quite yet. He said, "Listen to your wife is a fine moral if you like that sort of thing, but that's not at all what I had in mind."
Of course, it wasn't. "And what did you have in mind, your highness?"
"Well," the sultan said, "there's a problem with this story and too many others, to be frank. Don't you find it odd that we never find out what Siad could have wished for to be truly happy? What say you, my boy? What would you have wished for if you had discovered the genie instead of Siad?"
Nothing.
I had seen enough of magic to last me a lifetime. If I found a genie, I would take heed from the original tale and stuff the being back in its bottle. Then I'd throw the damn thing out to sea and do my best to forget I'd ever encountered such a lying scheming creature.
Magic was dangerous. Moreover, it was full of lies, and ill-conceived shortcuts. Siad's story was a testament to that. That genie had peddled stolen and falsified goods and used Siad's very soul to do it. My experience with magic and otherworldly help was not much better. I was still dealing with the ramifications of all of the spells Jafar had used to "fix" problems and then there was my own curse. It wasn't pagan magic but it was beyond human comprehension and incredibly bothersome.
Even if I didn't have an innate bias against magic and the sultan's story to guide me, I knew what my answer should be. This was a test and it was a classic one at that. It brought me back to childhood. His highness knew I had access to limitless power literally and figuratively if I became the next sultan. He wanted to see if I was the type of person to let my greed overtake my good judgment.
I, of course, was not. I was a prince of Mujulaain and a Mujulaai prince knew better than to let his desires rule over him and subsequently, his kingdom. He let his good deeds sustain his happiness. That was how any royal should live.
Thus, I gave the sultan a gentle smile and said, "Genie wishes are tempting in their way and I understand why Siad was lured in. He was a poor fisherman near the end of his life, but I am a young and healthy prince. My current position gives me access to all of life's essentials and then some. I have wealth, status, security," sort of, "time, and the power to help many people. I am not without concerns of course," far too many if you asked me, "but they are problems to be solved, not wishes to be granted."
The sultan's eyebrows came together as he thought over my answer. His tone was carefully neutral as he asked, "Do you expect me to believe that?"
That was not the response I had been hoping for. My delivery must have been lacking and now he was doubting my sincerity. I would have to try again.
I adjusted my expression. Then, I spoke with as much earnestness as I could muster. "Of course, I expect you to believe me. It's the truth. Besides heirs, which I hope will come later, I will have acquired most everything I could want in this life once I marry your daughter.
I can imagine that if I became the princess's future husband, I would expect to deal with all sorts of issues that could easily be resolved using a genie wish. However, using my wishes that way would be ill-advised. Magic is, by its nature, unpredictable and dangerous. Its unchecked power could easily ruin all that I hold dear like with Siad.
Thus, the most prudent course of action to ensure the happiness and safety for myself, Princess Jasmine, and Agrabah is for me to resist the temptation of genie's magic and deal with my concerns using my own assets and abilities."
That should be explanation enough, but the sultan did not acknowledge my response. He stopped walking and turned to face me, forcing me to stop as well. Then, as was his way, the man changed the subject. He said, "Look around us, Prince Dhiren."
I obeyed. We were still on the same twisting tree-lined path we had been on for the last half-hour. It never seemed to end.
"We're alone," he said, simply.
I nodded. It was an ominous statement, but he was right. We were alone.
It was so quiet here. The only sounds to be heard were wind chimes and running water somewhere in the distance.
The sultan spoke again. "Jasmine has been telling me that there is more to you than this," he said, waving his hand at my person.
Ah.
So, he was insulting me.
Yet again.
My smile turned sharp and I reminded myself to breathe. Princes didn't throw insults or punches at their betrothed's father. No matter how much said father might deserve it.
"My daughter," the sultan said, his voice light and contemplative, "has never stopped trying to convince me to approve this marriage. Every time I get a moment alone with her, she is quick to remind me that she is in love with you, saying that you're so noble and smart and funny and whatever else a young lady thinks a suitor should be. With such unending and constant high praise, I would think it should be child's play to understand why she is so smitten with you, but try as I might..." he paused to give me a piercing look. "I still have no idea how she even tolerates you."