The magician, whose saintly dress concealed a wicked heart, was then led into the room of the twenty-four windows. When he saw the princess, he said to her: ‘May all your hopes and desires be fulfilled,’ and he began to launch into a long string of wishes and prayers for her health and prosperity. Under the cloak of great piety, he used all the rhetorical skills of the impostor and hypocrite he was to ingratiate himself into the princess’s favour, which was all the more easy to achieve because the princess, in her natural goodness of heart, believed everyone was as good as she was, especially those who retreated from the world in order to serve God.
When ‘Fatima’ had finished her long harangue, the princess thanked her, saying: ‘Lady Fatima, I thank you for your prayers and good wishes; I have great confidence in them and hope that God will fulfil them. Come, sit yourself beside me.’ ‘Fatima’ took her seat with affected modesty. ‘Holy lady,’ the princess went on, ‘there is something I ask you to grant me – please don’t refuse it me – which is that you stay with me and tell me about your life, so that I can learn by your good example how I should serve God.’ ‘Princess,’ replied ‘Fatima’, ‘I beg you not to ask me something I can’t consent to, without being distracted from and neglecting my prayers and devotions.’ ‘Don’t worry about that,’ the princess reassured her. ‘I have several rooms which are not occupied. Choose the one you like and you shall perform all your devotions there as freely as if you were in your cell.’
Now the magician’s only aim had been to enter Aladdin’s palace, for he could more easily carry out there his pernicious plan under the auspices and protection of the princess than if he had been forced to go back and forth between the palace and the holy woman’s cell. Consequently, he did not put up much resistance in accepting the princess’s kind offer. ‘Princess,’ he said to her, ‘however much a poor wretched woman like myself has resolved to renounce the pomp and grandeur of this world, I dare not presume to resist the wishes and commands of so pious and charitable a princess.’ In reply, Badr rose from her seat and said to the magician: ‘Get up and come with me, and I will show you the empty rooms I have, so that you may choose.’ The magician followed the princess, and from among all the neat and well-furnished apartments she showed him he chose the one which he thought looked the humblest, saying hypocritically that it was too good for him and that he only chose it to please her.
The princess wanted to take the villain back to the room with the twenty-four windows to have him dine with her. The magician realized, however, that to eat he would have to uncover his face, which he had kept veiled until then, and he was afraid that the princess would then recognize that he was not the holy woman Fatima she believed him to be, and so he begged her earnestly to excuse him, telling her he only ate bread and some dried fruit, and to allow him to eat his modest meal in his room. She granted him his request, replying: ‘Holy lady, you are free to do as you would do in your own cell. I will have some food brought you, but remember I expect you as soon as you have finished your meal.’
After the princess had dined, ‘Fatima’ was informed of it by one of her eunuchs and she went to rejoin her. ‘Holy lady,’ the princess said, ‘I am delighted to have with me a holy lady like you, who will bring blessings to this place. Incidentally, how do like this palace? But before I show you round it, room by room, tell me first what you think of this room in particular.’
At this request, ‘Fatima’, who, in order better to perform her part, had affected to keep her head lowered, looking to neither right nor left, at last raised it and surveyed the room, from one end to the other; and when she had reflected for a while, she said: ‘Princess, this room is truly wonderful and so beautiful. Yet, as far as a recluse such as myself can judge who does not know what the world thinks is beautiful, it seems to me that there is something lacking.’ ‘What is that, holy lady?’ asked the princess. ‘Tell me, I beseech you. I myself thought, and I have heard other people say the same, that it lacked nothing, but if there is anything it does lack, I shall have that put right.’
‘Princess,’ the magician replied, with great guile, ‘forgive me for taking the liberty but my advice, if it is of any importance, would be that if a rukh’s egg were to be suspended from the middle of the dome, there would be no other room like this in the four quarters of the world and your palace would be the wonder of the universe.’ ‘Holy lady, what sort of bird is this rukh and where can one find a rukh’s egg?’ Badr asked. ‘Princess,’ replied ‘Fatima’, ‘this is a bird of prodigious size which lives on the summit of Mount Qaf. The architect of your palace will be able to find you one.’
After she had thanked the so-called holy woman for what she believed to be her good advice, the princess conversed with her on other things, but she did not forget the rukh’s egg, which she intended to mention to Aladdin as soon as he returned from hunting. He had been gone for six days and the magician, who was well aware of this, had wanted to take advantage of his absence, but Aladdin returned that same day, towards evening, just after ‘Fatima’ had taken her leave of the princess to retire to her room. As soon as he arrived, he went up to the princess’s apartments, which she had just entered, and greeted and embraced her, but she seemed a little cold in her welcome, so he said to her: ‘Dear princess, you don’t seem to be as cheerful as usual. Has something happened during my absence to displease you and cause you worry and dissatisfaction? For God’s sake, don’t hide it from me; there’s nothing that were it in my power I would not do to make it go away.’ ‘It’s nothing, really,’ replied Badr, ‘and I am so little bothered by it that I didn’t think it would show on my face enough for you to notice. However, since, contrary to my intentions, you have noticed a change in me, I won’t hide from you the cause, which is of very little importance. Like you,’ she continued, ‘I thought that our palace was the most superb, the most magnificent, the most perfect in all the world. But I will tell you now about something that occurred to me when I was looking carefully around the room of the twenty-four windows. Don’t you agree that it would leave nothing to be desired if a rukh’s egg were to be suspended from the middle of the dome?’ ‘Princess,’ replied Aladdin, ‘it is enough that you should find it lacks a rukh’s egg for me to agree with you. You shall see by the speed with which I put this right how there is nothing I would not do out of my love for you.’
Aladdin left the princess at once and went up to the room of the twentyfour windows; there he pulled out the lamp, which he always carried with him wherever he went, ever since the danger he had run into through neglecting to take this precaution, and rubbed it. Immediately the jinni stood before him and Aladdin addressed him, saying: ‘Jinni, what this dome lacks is a rukh’s egg suspended from the middle of its dome; so I command you, in the name of the lamp I am holding, to repair this deficiency.’
No sooner had Aladdin uttered these words than the jinni uttered such a terrible cry that the room shook and Aladdin staggered and nearly fell down the stairs. ‘What, you miserable wretch!’ cried the jinni in a voice which would have made the most confident of men tremble. ‘Isn’t it enough that I and my companions have done everything for you, but you ask me, with an ingratitude that beggars belief, to bring you my master and hang him from the middle of this dome? For this outrage you, your wife and your palace, deserve to be reduced to cinders on the spot. But it’s lucky you are not the author of the request and that it does not come directly from you. The man really behind it all, let me tell you, is the brother of your enemy, the African magician, whom you destroyed as he deserved. This man is in your palace, disguised in the clothes of the holy woman Fatima, whom he has killed. It’s he who suggested to your wife to make the pernicious demand you have made of me. His plan is to kill you – you must be on your guard.’ And with these words, he disappeared.
Aladdin did not miss a single of the jinni’s final words; he had heard about the holy woman Fatima and he knew all about how she supposedly cured headaches. He returned to the princess’s apartments, saying nothing about what had just happened to him, and sat down, telling her that he had been seized all of a sudden with a severe headache, upon which he put his hand up to his forehead. The princess immediately gave orders for the holy woman to be summoned and, while she was being fetched, she told Aladdin how she had come to be in the palace where she had given her a room.
‘Fatima’ arrived, and as soon as she appeared, Aladdin said to her: ‘Come in, holy lady, I am very glad to see you and very fortunate to find you here. I’ve got a terrible headache which has just seized me and I ask for your help, as I have faith in your prayers. I do hope you will not refuse me the favour you grant to so many who suffer from this affliction.’ On saying this, he stood up and bowed his head, and ‘Fatima’ went up to him, but with her hand clasping the dagger she had on her belt underneath her dress. Aladdin, observing her, seized her hand before she could draw it out and, stabbing her in the heart with his own dagger, he threw her down on the floor, dead.
‘My dear husband, what have you done?’ shrieked the astonished princess. ‘You have killed the holy woman!’ ‘No, my dear,’ replied Aladdin calmly, ‘I have not killed Fatima but a scoundrel who would have killed me if I hadn’t forestalled him. This evil fellow you see,’ he said as he removed his veil, ‘is the one who strangled the real Fatima – this is the person whom you thought you were mourning when you accused me of killing her and who disguised himself in her clothes in order to murder me. And for your further information, he was the brother of the African magician, your kidnapper.’ Aladdin went on to tell her how he had discovered all this, before having the corpse removed.
Thus was Aladdin delivered from the persecution of the two brothers who were both magicians. A few years later, the sultan died of old age. As he had left no male children, Princess Badr al-Budur, as the legitimate heir, succeeded him and transferred to Aladdin the supreme power. They reigned together for many years and were succeeded by their illustrious progeny.
‘Sire,’ said Shahrazad when she had finished the story of the adventures which had happened through the medium of the wonderful lamp, ‘your majesty will no doubt have seen in the person of the African magician a man abandoned to an immoderate passion, desirous to possess great treasures by wicked means, a man who discovered vast quantities of them which he could not enjoy because he made himself unworthy of them. In Aladdin, by contrast, your majesty sees a man of humble birth rising to royalty itself by making use of those same treasures, which came to him without him seeking them, but who used them only in so far as he needed them for some purpose he had in mind. In the sultan he will have learned how a good, just and fair-minded monarch faces many a danger and runs the risk even of losing his throne when, by a gross injustice and against all the laws of fairness, he dares, with unreasonable haste, to condemn an innocent man without wanting to hear his pleas. And finally, your majesty will hold in horror the abominations of those two scoundrel magicians, one of whom sacrifices his life to gain treasure and the other his life and his religion in order to avenge a scoundrel like himself, both of whom receive due punishment for their wickedness.’
