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Aladdin followed his mother’s advice and ate and drank slowly, a little at a time. When he had finished, he said to his mother: ‘I would have been very cross with you for so readily abandoning me to the mercy of a man who planned to kill me and who, at this very moment, is quite certain either that I am no longer alive or that I will die at first light. But you believed him to be my uncle and so did I. How could we have thought otherwise of a man who overwhelmed me with both affection and gifts and who made me so many other fair promises? Now, mother, you must see he is nothing but a traitor, a wretch and a cheat. In all the gifts he gave me and the promises he made he had but one single aim – to kill me, as I said, without either of us guessing the reason why. For my part, I can assure you that I didn’t do anything to deserve the slightest ill treatment. You will understand this yourself when you hear my faithful account of all that happened since I left you, right up to the time he came to execute his deadly plan.’
Aladdin then began to tell his mother all that had happened to him since the previous Friday, when the magician had come to take him with him to see the palaces and gardens outside the city, and what had happened along the way until they came to the spot by the two mountains where the magician’s great miracle was to take place. He told her how, with some incense cast into the fire and a few words of magic, the earth had opened up, straight away, revealing the entrance to a cave which led to a priceless treasure. He did not leave out the blow he had received from the magician, nor how, once the magician had calmed down a little, he had placed his ring on Aladdin’s finger and, making him countless promises, had got him to go down into the cave. He left out nothing of all that he had seen as he passed through the three rooms, in the garden and on the terrace from where he had taken the magic lamp. At this, he pulled the lamp from his clothes to show to his mother, together with the transparent fruits and those of different colours which he had gathered in the garden on his return and with which he had filled the two purses that he now gave her, though she did not make much of them. For these fruits were really precious stones; in the light of the lamp which lit up the room they shone like the sun and glittered and sparkled in such a way as to testify to their great worth, but Aladdin’s mother was no more aware of this than he was. She had been brought up in very humble circumstances and her husband had never been wealthy enough to give her jewels and stones of this kind. Nor had she ever seen such things worn by any of her female relatives or neighbours. Consequently, it is not surprising that she should regard them as things of little value – a pleasure to the eye, at the very most, due to all their different colours – and so Aladdin put them behind one of the cushions of the sofa on which he was seated. He finished the account of his adventures by telling her how, when he returned to the entrance to the cave, ready to come out, he had refused to hand over to the magician the lamp that he wanted to have, at which the cave’s entrance had immediately closed up, thanks to the incense which the magician had scattered over the fire that he had kept lit and to the words he had pronounced. Aladdin could not go on without tears coming to his eyes as he described to her the wretched state in which he found himself after being buried alive in that fatal cave, right up to when he emerged and returned to the world, so to speak, as the result of having touched the ring (of whose powers he was still unaware). When he had come to the end of his story, he said to his mother: ‘I don’t need to tell you any more; you know the rest. That was my adventure and the danger I was in since you last saw me.’
Aladdin’s mother listened patiently and without interrupting to this wonderful and amazing story which at the same time was so painful for a mother who loved her son so tenderly despite all his faults. However, at the most disturbing points when the magician’s treachery was further revealed, she could not prevent herself from showing, with signs of indignation, how much she hated him. As soon as Aladdin had finished, she broke out into a thousand reproaches against the impostor, calling him a traitor, trickster, murderer, barbarian – a magician, an enemy and a destroyer of mankind. ‘Yes, my son,’ she added, ‘he’s a magician and magicians are public menaces; they have dealings with demons through their spells and their sorcery. Praise the Lord, Who wished to preserve you from everything that his great wickedness might have done to you! You should indeed give thanks to Him for having so favoured you. You would have surely died had you not remembered Him and implored Him for His help.’ She said much more besides, all the while execrating the magician’s treachery towards her son. But as she spoke, she noticed that Aladdin, who had not slept for three days, needed some rest. She made him go to bed and went to bed herself shortly afterwards.
That night Aladdin, having had no rest in the underground cave where he had been buried and left to die, fell into a deep sleep from which he did not awake until late the following day. He arose and the first thing he said to his mother was that he needed to eat and that she could not give him a greater pleasure than to offer him breakfast. ‘Alas, my son,’ she sighed, ‘I haven’t got so much as a piece of bread to give you – yesterday evening you ate the few provisions there were in the house. But be patient for a little longer and I will soon bring you some food. I have some cotton yarn I have spun. I will sell it to buy you some bread and something else for our dinner.’ ‘Mother,’ said Aladdin, ‘leave your cotton yarn for some other occasion and give me the lamp I brought yesterday. I will go and sell it and the money I get will help provide us with enough for both breakfast and lunch, and perhaps also for our supper.’
Taking the lamp from where she had put it, Aladdin’s mother said to her son: ‘Here it is, but it’s very dirty. With a little cleaning I think it would be worth a little more.’ So she took some water and some fine sand in order to clean it, but no sooner had she begun to rub it than all of a sudden there rose up in front of them a hideous jinni of enormous size who, in a ringing voice, addressed her thus: ‘What do you want? Here am I, ready to obey you, your slave and the slave of all those who hold the lamp in their hands, I and the other slaves of the lamp.’
But Aladdin’s mother was in no state to reply; so great was her terror at the sight of the jinni’s hideous and frightening countenance that at the first words he uttered she fell down in a faint. Aladdin, on the other hand, had already witnessed a similar apparition while in the cave, and so, wasting no time and not stopping to think, he promptly seized the lamp. Replying in place of his mother, in a firm voice he said to the jinni: ‘I am hungry, bring me something to eat.’ The jinni disappeared and a moment later returned, bearing on his head a large silver bowl, together with twelve dishes also of silver, piled high with delicious foods and six large loaves as white as snow, and in his hands were two bottles of exquisite wine and two silver cups. He set everything down on the sofa and then disappeared.
This all happened so quickly that Aladdin’s mother had not yet recovered from her swoon when the jinni disappeared for the second time. Aladdin, who had already begun to throw water on her face, without effect, renewed his efforts to revive her, and whether it was that her wits which had left her had already been restored or that the smell of the dishes which the jinni had brought had contributed in some measure, she immediately recovered consciousness. ‘Mother,’ said Aladdin, ‘don’t worry. Get up and come and eat, for here is something to give you heart again and which at the same time will satisfy my great hunger. We mustn’t let such good food grow cold, so come and eat.’
