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Aladdin, still in a state of astonishment at all he saw and at what he had just heard the magician say about this treasure, which was to make him happy for evermore, got up, forgetting what had just happened to him, and asked: ‘Tell me then, uncle, what do I have to do? Command me, I am ready to obey you.’ ‘I am delighted, my child, that you have made this decision,’ replied the magician, embracing him. ‘Come here, take hold of this ring and lift up the stone.’ ‘But uncle, I am not strong enough – you must help me,’ Aladdin cried, to which his uncle replied: ‘No, you don’t need my help and we would achieve nothing, you and I, if I were to help you. You must lift it up all by yourself. Just say the names of your father and your grandfather as you hold the ring, and lift. You will find that it will come without any difficulty.’ Aladdin did as the magician told him. He lifted the stone with ease and laid it aside.
When the stone was removed, there appeared a cavity about three to four feet deep, with a small door and steps for descending further. ‘My son,’ said the magician to Aladdin, ‘follow carefully what I am going to tell you to do. Go down into this cave and when you get to the foot of the steps which you see, you will find an open door that will lead you into a vast vaulted chamber divided into three large rooms adjacent to each other. In each room, you will see, on the right and the left, four very large bronze jars, full of gold and silver – but take care not to touch them. Before you go into the first room, pull up your gown and wrap it tightly around you. Then when you have entered, go straight to the second room and the third room, without stopping. Above all, take great care not to go near the walls, let alone touch them with your gown, for if you do, you will immediately die; that’s why I told you to keep it tightly wrapped around you. At the end of the third room there is a gate which leads into a garden planted with beautiful trees laden with fruit. Walk straight ahead and cross this garden by a path which will take you to a staircase with fifty steps leading up to a terrace. When you are on the terrace, you will see in front of you a niche in which there is a lighted lamp. Take the lamp and put it out and when you have thrown away the wick and poured off the liquid, hold it close to your chest and bring it to me. Don’t worry about spoiling your clothes – the liquid is not oil and the lamp will be dry as soon as there is no more liquid in it. If you fancy any of the fruits in the garden, pick as many as you want – you are allowed to do so.’
When he had finished speaking, the magician pulled a ring from his finger and put it on one of Aladdin’s fingers, telling him it would protect him from any harm that might come to him if he followed all his instructions. ‘Be bold, my child,’ he then said. ‘Go down; you and I are both going to be rich for the rest of our lives.’
Lightly jumping into the cave, Aladdin went right down to the bottom of the steps. He found the three rooms which the magician had described to him, passing through them with the greatest of care for fear he would die if he failed scrupulously to carry out all he had been told. He crossed the garden without stopping, climbed up to the terrace, took the lamp alight in its niche, threw away the wick and the liquid, and as soon as this had dried up as the magician had told him, he held it to his chest. He went down from the terrace and stopped in the garden to look more closely at the fruits which he had seen only in passing. The trees were all laden with the most extraordinary fruit: each tree bore fruits of different colours – some were white; some shining and transparent like crystals; some pale or dark red; some green; some blue or violet; some light yellow; and there were many other colours. The white fruits were pearls; the shining, transparent ones diamonds; the dark red were rubies, while the lighter red were spinel rubies; the green were emeralds; the blue turquoises; the violet amethysts; the light yellow were pale sapphires; and there were many others, too. All of them were of a size and a perfection the like of which had never before been seen in the world. Aladdin, however, not recognizing either their quality or their worth, was unmoved by the sight of these fruits, which were not to his taste – he would have preferred real figs or grapes, or any of the other excellent fruit common in China. Besides, he was not yet of an age to appreciate their worth, believing them to be but coloured glass and therefore of little value. But the many wonderful shades and the extraordinary size and beauty of each fruit made him want to pick one of every colour. In fact, he picked several of each, filling both pockets as well as two new purses which the magician had bought him at the same time as the new clothes he had given him so that everything he had should be new. And as the two purses would not fit in his pockets, which were already full, he attached them to either side of his belt. Some fruits he even wrapped in the folds of his belt, which was made of a wide strip of silk wound several times around his waist, arranging them so that they could not fall out. Nor did he forget to cram some around his chest, between his gown and his shirt.
Thus weighed down with such, to him, unknown wealth, Aladdin hurriedly retraced his steps through the three rooms so as not to keep the magician waiting too long. After crossing them as cautiously as he had before, he ascended the stairs he had come down and arrived at the entrance of the cave, where the magician was impatiently awaiting him. As soon as he saw him, Aladdin cried out: ‘Uncle, give me your hand, I beg of you, to help me climb out.’ ‘Son,’ the magician replied, ‘first, give me the lamp, as it could get in your way.’ ‘Forgive me, uncle,’ Aladdin rejoined, ‘but it’s not in my way; I will give it you as soon as I get out.’ But the magician persisted in wanting Aladdin to hand him the lamp before pulling him out of the cave, while Aladdin, weighed down by this lamp and by the fruits he had stowed about his person, stubbornly refused to give it to him until he was out of the cave. Then the magician, in despair at the young man’s resistance, fell into a terrible fury: throwing a little of the incense over the fire, which he had carefully kept alight, he uttered two magic words and immediately the stone which served to block the entrance to the cave moved back in its place, with the earth above it, just as it had been when the magician and Aladdin had first arrived there.
Now this magician was certainly not the brother of Mustafa the tailor, as he had proudly claimed, nor, consequently, was he Aladdin’s uncle. But he did indeed come from Africa, where he was born, and as Africa is a country where more than anywhere else the influence of magic persists, he had applied himself to it from his youth, and after forty years or so of practising magic and geomancy and burning incense and of reading books on the subject, he had finally discovered that there was somewhere in the world a magic lamp, the possession of which, could he lay hands on it, would make him more powerful than any king in the world. In a recent geomantic experiment, he had discovered that this lamp was in an underground cave in the middle of China, in the spot and with all the circumstances we have just seen. Convinced of the truth of his discovery, he set out from the furthest part of Africa, as we have related. After a long and painful journey, he had come to the city that was closest to the treasure, but although the lamp was certainly in the spot which he had read about, he was not allowed to remove it himself, he had ascertained, nor could he himself enter the underground cave where it was to be found. Someone else would have to go down into it, take the lamp and then deliver it into his hands. That is why he had turned to Aladdin, who seemed to him to be a young boy of no consequence, just right to carry out for him the task which he wanted him to do. He had resolved, once he had the lamp in his hands, to perform the final burning of incense that we have mentioned and to utter the two magic words that would produce the effect which we have seen, sacrificing poor Aladdin to his avarice and wickedness so as to have no witness. The blow he gave Aladdin and the authority he had assumed over him were only meant to accustom him to fear him and to obey him precisely so that, when he asked him for the famed lamp, Aladdin would immediately give it to him, but what happened was the exact opposite of what he had intended. In his haste, the magician had resorted to such wickedness in order to get rid of poor Aladdin because he was afraid that if he argued any longer with him, someone would hear them and would make public what he wanted to keep secret.
When he saw his wonderful hopes and plans for ever wrecked, the magician had no other choice but to return to Africa, which is what he did the very same day, taking a roundabout route so as to avoid going back into the city he had left with Aladdin. For what he feared was being seen by people who might have noticed him walking out with this boy and now returning without him.
To all appearances, that should be the end of the story and we should hear no more about Aladdin, but the very person who had thought he had got rid of Aladdin for ever had forgotten that he had placed on his finger a ring which could help to save him. In fact it was this ring, of whose properties Aladdin was totally unaware, that was the cause of his salvation, and it is astonishing that the loss of it together with that of the lamp did not throw the magician into a state of complete despair. But magicians are so used to disasters and to events turning out contrary to their desires that all their lives they forever feed their minds on smoke, fancies and phantoms.
After all the endearments and the favours his false uncle had shown him, Aladdin little expected such wickedness and was left in a state of bewilderment that can be more easily imagined than described in words. Finding himself buried alive, he called upon his uncle a thousand times, crying out that he was ready to give him the lamp, but his cries were in vain and could not possibly be heard by anyone. And so he remained in the darkness and gloom. At last, when his tears had abated somewhat, he descended to the bottom of the stairs in the cave to look for light in the garden through which he had passed earlier; but the wall which had been opened by a spell had closed and sealed up by another spell. Aladdin groped around several times, to the left and to the right, but could find no door. With renewed cries and tears, he sat down on the steps in the cave, all hope gone of ever seeing light again and, moreover, in the sad certainty that he would pass from the darkness where he was into the darkness of approaching death.
For two days, Aladdin remained in this state, eating and drinking nothing. At last, on the third day, believing death to be inevitable, he raised his hands in prayer and, resigning himself completely to God’s will, he cried out: ‘There is no strength nor power save in Great and Almighty God!’
However, just as he joined his hands in prayer, Aladdin unknowingly rubbed the ring which the magician had placed on his finger and of whose power he was as yet unaware. Immediately, from the ground beneath him, there rose up before him a jinni of enormous size and with a terrifying expression, who continued to grow until his head touched the roof of the chamber and who addressed these words to Aladdin: ‘What do you want? Here am I, ready to obey you, your slave and the slave of all those who wear the ring on their finger, a slave like all the other slaves of the ring.’
At any other time and on any other occasion, Aladdin, who was not used to such visions, would perhaps have been overcome with terror and struck dumb at the sight of such an extraordinary apparition, but now, preoccupied solely with the danger of the present situation, he replied without hesitation: ‘Whoever you are, get me out of this place, if you have the power to do so.’ No sooner had he uttered these words than the earth opened up and he found himself outside the cave at the very spot to which the magician had led him.
Not surprisingly, Aladdin, after so long spent in pitch darkness, had difficulty at first in adjusting to broad daylight, but his eyes gradually became accustomed to it. When he looked around, he was very surprised not to find any opening in the ground; he could not understand how all of a sudden he should find himself transported from the depths of the earth. Only the spot where the kindling had been lit allowed him to tell roughly where the cave had been. Then, turning in the direction of the city, he spotted it in the middle of the gardens which surrounded it. He also recognized the path along which the magician had brought him and which he proceeded to follow, giving thanks to God at finding himself once again back in the world to which he had so despaired of ever returning.
When he reached the city, it was with some difficulty that he dragged himself home. He went in to his mother, but the joy of seeing her again, together with the weak state he was in from not having eaten for nearly three days, caused him to fall into a faint that lasted for some time. Seeing him in this state, his mother, who had already mourned him as lost, if not dead, did all she could to revive him. At last Aladdin recovered consciousness and the first words he addressed to her were to ask her to bring him something to eat, for it was three days since he had had anything at all. His mother brought him what she had, and, placing it before him, said: ‘Don’t hurry, now, because that’s dangerous. Take it easy and eat a little at a time; eke it out, however much you need it. I don’t want you even to speak to me; you will have enough time to tell me everything that happened to you when you have quite recovered. I am so comforted at seeing you again after the terrible state I have been in since Friday and after all the trouble I went to to discover what had happened to you as soon as I saw it was night and you hadn’t come home.’
