So spoke Shahrazad, and the King listened, and this is what she told him:
There was once a fisherman, old and poor, with a wife and three children to feed. He had one simple rule he kept without fail: each day he would cast his net into the sea four times, and no more. One afternoon he took himself down to the shore, set his basket on the sand, tucked up his shirt, waded in, and cast his net wide. He waited until it had settled to the bottom, then began to haul it in — but it was heavy and stubborn and would not come. He waded ashore, drove a stake into the ground, made the rope fast, stripped off his clothes, and dived in to work the net free from below. He struggled and pulled until at last it broke the surface — and what he found inside was a dead donkey, which had torn the mesh nearly to pieces.
He looked at it with heavy eyes and said: "There is no power and no strength save in God, the most Glorious and Great." Then, sighing, he muttered, "A strange kind of daily bread."
And in his weariness he spoke these lines aloud, as fishermen sometimes do when no one is listening:
O toiler through the glooms of night, in peril and in pain —
Your toiling stint for daily bread comes not by might and main!
See how the fisherman seeks his catch, afloat upon the sea,
While stars still burn in tangled skeins across the midnight plain.
He plunges through the buffeting waves, the spreading net his hope,
And hauls it in at break of day with aching back and strain —
To bring back one small fish at last, whose throat the hook has caught,
To sell to a man who slept in warmth and rose without a pain.
Praise God, who gives to this one all, and leaves that one in need,
And sends one man to catch the fish — and another man to eat.
He repaired his net as best he could and cast again, saying under his breath: "God is generous, and I trust in Him."
This cast was heavier than the first. He hauled and strained, thinking: surely there are fish in this one. But when he pulled the net ashore he found nothing inside it but a large earthen pitcher filled to the brim with sand and mud. He stood there a long moment, looking at it, and then said these words:
Lay off, O troubles of the world — forgive, if you'll forgive at all:
I set out to earn my daily bread, and earned nothing but a fall.
No craft brings me what I need; no Fate gives out its share to me —
The sky lifts fools into the stars while the wise man's face is pale.
He asked God's forgiveness for his complaints, threw the pitcher aside, cleaned his net, and waded in for the third cast. This one brought him nothing but broken crockery and shards of glass. He looked up at the sky and spoke again:
Your daily bread is locked away — no key unlocks the box.
No pen you write, no path you walk, no wisdom breaks the locks.
Joy and bread are what God sends; no striving earns them here —
This ground is bitter, barren soil; that ground bears golden stocks.
The shafts of time strike down the good and raise the small and base;
So come then, Death — for life itself is not worth any knocks,
When falcons fall into the mud and mallards fill the sky,
And great souls go in rags while fools are dressed in gilded frocks.
He raised his eyes toward heaven. "O God," he said plainly, "You know that I cast my net only four times each day. Three casts are done, and You have given me nothing yet. For this last cast, O God, please give me my daily bread."
He threw the net a fourth time with great care and let it sink and settle. When he drew it in, it would not come — it had caught on something at the bottom. He struggled and cursed under his breath, stripped off his clothes again, dived down and worked the net free, and hauled everything up onto the beach. There he opened the mesh and found inside it a copper jar, roughly the shape of a cucumber, sealed at the mouth with a cap of lead bearing a stamped seal: the seal ring of the prophet Sulayman, son of David, on whom be peace.
The fisherman's heart leaped. "If I sell this in the brass market, it might fetch ten gold pieces." He lifted the jar and shook it; it was heavy. "I wonder what's inside. I'll open it and see, then sell it." He worked at the lead cap with his knife, loosening it little by little until it came free. He tilted the jar and shook it — but nothing came out. It was empty.
He marvelled at that. Then he marvelled again — for from the mouth of the jar there began to rise a slow coil of smoke, pale at first then thickening and darkening, spiralling up into the sky, spreading along the ground. He stumbled back and watched as the smoke grew denser and taller, and then it condensed and took shape — and the shape was a Jinni.
He was enormous. His head reached the clouds; his feet were planted on the earth. His head was like a dome, his hands like pitchforks, his legs like ship's masts, his mouth a dark cave. His teeth were boulders; his nostrils, water-jugs; his eyes, two blazing lanterns; and his expression was one of ancient fury and contempt.
The fisherman's knees buckled. His teeth chattered. His mouth went dry. He stood there not knowing whether to run or fall down.
The Jinni looked at him, and then intoned slowly: "There is no god but God, and Sulayman is the Prophet of God." Then, lowering his thunderous eyes to the fisherman, he added: "Do not fear, O Apostle of God. I will never disobey you again."
The fisherman blinked. "O great Marid," he said, his voice thin and unsteady, "did you just say Sulayman the Apostle of God? Sulayman has been dead for eighteen hundred years. We are living in the last days of the world now. What is your story? Who are you? And how in God's name did you come to be inside that jar?"
When the Jinni heard these words, he looked at the fisherman for a long moment. Then he said, in a quieter voice: "Good news for you, O fisherman."
"Good news?" said the fisherman. "Why?"
"Because you are about to die."
The fisherman stared at him. "You deserve to lose God's protection for that piece of good news, you contemptible creature. I freed you from that jar. I pulled you out of the deep sea. I brought you up onto dry land. And this is your thanks to me?"
The Jinni shrugged one vast shoulder. "Choose only how you wish to die. That is the one favour I will grant you."
"What crime have I committed?" the fisherman cried. "What have I done to deserve this?"
"Listen," said the Jinni, "and I will tell you."
"Speak then, and speak quickly — for my breath is already short with fright."
The Jinni settled himself and began.
"Know, O fisherman, that I am one of the Jinn who rebelled — I sinned against the prophet Sulayman, son of David, peace be upon them both, and against my companion Sakhr al-Jinni. Sulayman sent his minister Asaf, son of Barkhiya, who seized me against my will and brought me in chains to stand before the prophet like a suppliant. When Sulayman looked at me, he commanded me to embrace the true faith and submit to his authority. I refused. So he took this copper jar, shut me inside it, sealed the mouth with lead stamped with the Great Name, and had his servants carry me to the sea and drop me into its deepest part.
"There I remained for a hundred years. During that first century I said to myself: Whoever sets me free, I will make him rich beyond imagining, for ever and ever. But no one came.
"The second hundred years passed. I said: Whoever frees me, I will reveal to him all the hidden treasures of the earth. Still no one came.
"Three more centuries went by, making five hundred years in darkness. Then I swore in my rage: Whoever frees me, I will grant him three wishes — whatever he asks. And still no one came.
"Then, at last, my patience broke completely — and I swore the worst oath of all: Whoever releases me from this day forward, I will kill him. And I will let him choose the manner of his death, as my one gift to him.
"You, O fisherman, have released me. So choose."
The fisherman stood very still and thought carefully, because he was a man to whom God had given — if not wealth, and if not luck, and if not a particularly good net — a reasonably clever mind. And he thought: This is a Jinni who acted only from malice and stubbornness. I am a man. Let me use my wits.
"Before I choose," said the fisherman slowly, "I need to ask you one thing — and I invoke the Most Great Name, the Name that is engraved upon the seal ring of Sulayman son of David, upon which be peace. Will you answer me truly?"
At the mention of the Great Name, the Jinni felt a tremor pass through his vast body. His voice softened slightly. "Ask," he said. "But be quick."
"My question is this," said the fisherman. "This jar." He held it up, turning it in the sunlight. "It is, as any man can see, no bigger than my two hands. How did you — all of you, your head and your hands and your legs that stretch to the horizon — how did you fit inside it? I won't believe you were ever inside it unless I see it for myself."
The Jinni looked at the small copper jar. He looked at the fisherman. "You don't believe I was inside it?"
"I find it impossible to believe," said the fisherman pleasantly. "Not until I see it with my own eyes."
And at this point in her telling, Shahrazad saw the light of dawn beginning to grow at the edge of the sky, and she paused in her story.
When it was the Fourth Night, her sister Dunyazad said to her: "Finish the tale, sister — I can't sleep until I know what happens!" And so Shahrazad continued:
The Jinni's pride was stung — for there is nothing a Jinni can bear less than to be doubted. Without another word he dissolved into smoke, and the smoke curled downward and narrowed and wound itself back into the mouth of the jar, slowly, all of it, until the last wisp was inside and the jar was silent.
The fisherman moved like lightning. He slammed the lead cap back onto the mouth of the jar and pressed it down hard, and shouted: "Now, O Ifrit — you choose what death you wish to die! Because I am going to walk to the shore and throw you back into the sea where you spent the last eighteen hundred years. And I am going to build myself a little shelter right here on this beach, and every fisherman who passes I will warn: in those waters lives an Ifrit who repays kindness with murder, and who rewards the man who saves him by offering him the choice of how to be killed!"
From inside the jar came the sound of the Jinni shifting and thundering. "Let me out! I was only joking!"
"You lied," said the fisherman. "You are the worst and most contemptible of the Ifrits, and a liar as well."
And he set off toward the water's edge.
"No! No!" called the muffled voice inside. "Stop — listen to me — open the jar and I will make you wealthy beyond anything you have dreamed."
"You are lying again," said the fisherman. He kept walking.
"I swear it!" The voice pleaded, softer now and somehow smaller. "Open the jar, fisherman. Let me out. I give you my word."
The fisherman stopped at the very edge of the water, with the waves lapping at his feet. "My case with you," he said to the jar, "is like the case of King Yunan with the sage Duban."
"And who were King Yunan and the sage Duban?" came the voice from inside. "What was their story?"
"Sit still and listen," said the fisherman, "and I will tell you."
And so the fisherman, standing at the edge of the sea with the copper jar under his arm, began to tell the story of King Yunan — and within that story, as you will hear, there were other stories inside it, like rooms opening into rooms, which is the way the world has always been arranged.