In a city a long way from Baghdad there was a boy called Aladdin. He was a tailor’s son, and his father died early. His mother raised him by spinning thread and selling it.
Aladdin learned no trade. He played in the street with the other boys and came in when the sun went down. His mother said so many times, and nothing changed.
One day a stranger stops in front of him. He gave Aladdin’s father’s name and said he was that man’s brother. He had been away in distant countries a long time and had come home.
The Man Who Said He Was an Uncle
He buys Aladdin good clothes. He said he would set him up with a shop. Aladdin and his mother came to believe him.
A few days later he takes Aladdin out of the city. They crossed hill after hill until there was nobody anywhere. There he gathered dry branches and lit a fire.
He threw something into it and the ground shook. Where it split, a stone slab with a ring in it came into view. The hand that opened it had to be Aladdin’s, he said.
The Ground Opens
Under the slab a stairway went down. Below there was a garden, he said, and a lamp at the back of it. Bring only that lamp and touch nothing else.
Before sending him in, the man puts a ring on his finger. He did not say why he was giving it. Aladdin goes down the stairs.
Below there really was a garden. The fruit on the trees was shining like glass. Aladdin took the lamp, and on his way back he filled his clothes with that fruit.
At the foot of the stairs he holds out his hand. The man above did not take it. He spoke first. Send the lamp up before anything else.
After the Door Closed
The fruit in his clothes meant Aladdin could not free his hand. Pull me up first, he says. The man above repeated the same words.
That is where Aladdin first felt something was wrong. Which came first, getting him out or getting the goods, had caught on something. When he held out, the slab above closed.
Alone in the dark, Aladdin sat a long time. He wept, and wrung his hands together, and in that the ring was rubbed. There was light, and something stood there and asked what he wanted.
Send me home, he said. He opened his eyes in his own yard. All he had was one old lamp and the fruit inside his clothes.
The Lamp His Mother Cleaned
In that house the lamp was just an old thing for a while. One day when there was no food left, his mother decides to sell it. She rubbed it with a cloth to get a better price.
The marid appears where she stood. The greater kind among the jinn goes by that name in our telling. He would do whatever the one holding the lamp told him, he said.
The first thing his mother asked for was food. What came to the table that day, that house had never seen. From then on their circumstances change.
Aladdin learns then what the fruit in his clothes had been too. What he had taken for glass was jewels. What he had done was go down some stairs as told.
A Palace Up in One Night
Some years on, Aladdin sees the princess of that city. Her name was Badr al-Budur. He asks his mother to go to the king and say what he wants.
A dish of jewels set before the king opened that door. Aladdin asks the marid, and a palace goes up in one night. The people of that city saw a building in the morning that had not been there.
The marriage is made and he becomes the king’s son by marriage. The boy who had played in the street was master of a palace. Getting there had taken him not years but months.
And the palace, the clothes, the table all came out of one place. Whatever the one holding the lamp says gets done. What happens if that lamp leaves his hand, nobody has asked yet.
Today, Borrowed Power
Count what Aladdin did by his own strength in this chapter and it is not much. He went down the stairs, he picked up the lamp, and he did not hand it over. Everything after that came out of the lamp.
Say he did nothing at all, though, and that is not right either. The decision not to give the goods up first was his. That one thing saved him.
Only, borrowed power makes a man look like the owner. Living in a palace and being able to raise one are different, and from outside they look the same. Give it a while and the man living inside starts confusing them too.
The difference between borrowed and held does not show until it is lost. Aladdin has not lost it yet. Part four opens here, and in the next chapter he loses that lamp.