One Thousand and One Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

jinni shouted, “Then you can be assured, fisherman, that I will not be so generous as to ask you how you would like to die.”
    “Hurry up then, and tell me your story,” the fisherman said. “Be quick, for my soul has dropped to my feet in fright.”
    The jinni began his story. “I am one of the rebellious jinnis who disobeyed God. I was dragged before the prophet Suleiman who asked me to submit and surrender to him. When I declined he imprisoned me in that jar and sealed it with the name of the Almighty and Magnificent. Then he gave the jar to one of the obedient jinnis, who carried me and threw me in the sea. Before I had completed two hundred years inside that wretched jar I swore an oath that if someone were to release me I would make him rich. But nothing happened and I remained trapped in the jar. After another two hundred years had passed I vowed to myself in my loudest voice, in the hope that the waves would carry my pleas, that whosoever should release me from my prison would receive all the treasures of the Earth. But still no one came to my rescue and another hundred years passed and another and another and I remained, cooped up in the same position in that jar. I found myself screaming and raving and shouting and declaring to the whole world and to myself that whosoever set me free I would subject tothe worst death imaginable and then you arrived, and released me from the jar. And so now I am obliged to fulfil my promise.”
    The fisherman nearly fainted, but he pleaded with the jinni, “Forgive me, jinni, for setting you free. I was only trying to fish, so that my wife and children will not die of hunger. Jinni, if you forgive me, then God will forgive you; if you strike me, then God will strike you down.”
    But the jinni interrupted the fisherman, saying, “I must kill you, it is the best reward that I can grant you for setting me free. Now hurry up and choose the manner of your death.”
    The fisherman thought to himself, “I am a human being; God has given me reason and made me superior to this jinni. I must use my cunning to defeat his demonic wiles and barbarism.”
    He turned to the jinni, saying, “Jinni, do with me what you will, kill me in any way you wish.”
    But just as the jinni took one giant step towards him, the fisherman said quickly, “Jinni, before I die, I should like to ask you something.”
    “Go ahead and ask then.”
    “Tell me, in the name of the Almighty, were you really inside that jar? Are you sure you weren’t playing a trick on me?”
    “Of course I was inside it!”
    “But how? This jar is not big enough for even one of your giant feet.”
    “So you don’t believe me?” said the jinni.
    “No, to be perfectly honest, I don’t,” the fisherman replied. “I’ll never believe it unless I see it with my own eyes.”
    But a rooster crowed, dawn broke and Shahrazad fell silent, sighing to herself. “Oh King!” her sister, Dunyazad, said from under the bed. “What a beautiful and amazing story!”
    “If the King spares me and lets me live, then I shall tell you tomorrow night what became of the fisherman and the jinni,” said Shahrazad.
    “I shall let her live and hear the rest of the story tomorrow night and then I shall kill her,” Shahrayar said to himself.
    Shahrazad held her breath with great anguish and fear, awaiting the King’s verdict, as if the sword might fall upon her neck at any moment, while Dunyazad peeked out from beneath the bed, panting and panicking.
    This moment seemed to stretch out into a century, but finally Shahrayar left his bedroom, without calling for his Vizier, the father of Shahrazad and Dunyazad, to order him to have his daughter put to death. Instead he went and sat on his throne, to order and forbid, and the two sisters clung to each other, embracing and weeping, hardly able to believe that their plan had worked, even for one night. Dunyazad touched her sister’s face, amazed that she was still alive. When the Vizier