The Town Herald

The netpaper about Elftowners, by Elftowners, for Elftowners.

The Three Wishes

Retold by [Blue Highway]


It happened once upon a time in the old Persian town of Isfahan.
The slender silhouettes of numerous minarets were painted against the blue velvet of the darkening sky. The copper-plated domes of the many mosques, with their lucious courtyards and fountains, decorated with geometrical mosaic figures, were a feast for the eyes. Salesmen were sitting behind huge piles of tomato's, onions and exotic fruits, baskets filled with fresh herbs, tiny chrystal bottles of perfume, and velvet and silk by the yard, recommanding their merchandise. A heavy fragrance of flowers, mixed with the smoke of woodfires where kebabs were being roasted, filled the air. The whole town breathed an athmosphere of luxury, wealth, and the famous Arabian mystery.
In a poorer quarter of town, where the houses were greyish and crooked, built of wood, the holes filled with dried manure and plaster...where the less well-to-do citizens had to walk a long way to the nearest waterpump, and could hardly afford a little oil to keep a lamp burning, an older couple was having an evening meal, a watery lentil soup.
The man had spent his day begging for copper coins at the entrance of the biggest mosque, while the woman had been roaming the streets of Isfahan, digging through the dirt and garbage, in search for anything edible and valuable, or at least good enough to be sold. One of the treasures she had found today was an old and busted oil lamp that had known better days before it was thrown in the mud and forgotten. She pulled it out from under her clothes, and used a tip of her skirt to rub off the dirt.
Immediately, a strange light filled the little room, and in a sudden puff of glittering smoke, a Genie appeared. Overwhelmed by fear, the woman dropped the lamp, and both she and her husband moved backward quickly, their horrified eyes fixed upon the fearsome creature, until they felt the walls against their backs. They trembled and shivered all over their body, paralyzed, not able to move or even scream.
But the Genie spread its ghost-like arms in a hearty gesture of good will, and when it spoke, it's voice was low and deep and awesome.
It proclaimed: "Fear not! I will do you no harm, indeed, you are my saviours! For centuries I've been imprisoned inside this lamp, captivated by the curse of an evil sorceror, and finally now, I'm free!! You deserve to be rewarded, and the reward has to be an appropriate one... We Genies have a great power of magic. I will grant you three wishes. Three wishes to be made before midnight, and to be fulfilled immediately!"

In the eyes of the man, fear was suddenly replaced by the malicious shining of greed...he looked at his plate filled with watery lentil soup, rubbed his stomach, and said: "Lentil soup...lentil soup, every day...no meat in it, no salt, not even an onion...how can it be expected to fill the stomach and warm the blood of a hardworking man...I wish I had a huge lamb-chop, brown and crisp outside and juicily-pink inside!"

Another "puff!"...and a lamb-chop was on his plate, hot, spicey and spreading a scent that made his mouth water. With two big steps he was back at the table, grabbing at it with gluttonous fingers, already anticipating its flavour to caress his palate.

"You idiot!!!", his wife shouted behind him, and the hand with the lamb-chop in it froze on it's way to the man's mouth...
"You bastard!! You greedy ne'er-do-well!! You stupid fool, carrying your brains inside your stomach!! What do you think you are doing??? Look what you've wished for!!! Look!! All our life, we have lived in poverty. We don't have a decent house, we don't have nice clothes, we hardly have anything to eat...we have NOTHING!!! We could have wished for GOLD, for Allah's sake...and all you can think of is an abominable LAMB-CHOP..?? How could you be so thoughtless!! I wish...I wish...that this lambchop would be growing on your NOSE!!!"

A chuckle could be heard coming from the clouds of radiant smoke leaving the nozzle of the magic lamp, and "puff..!", the second wish was fulfilled...



In great horror, the woman stared at her husband's bearded, lined, and now deformed face, the huge lamb-chop dangling from the middle of it. She buried her own face in her both hands, moaning, wailing, crying in remorse about what she had just wished for... The man squinted at the strange object blurring his sight now, got very pale, and suddenly didn't feel hungry anymore... His hand reached for the big knife that was on the table to cut the stale bread they usually had with the lentil soup. His fingers surrounding the handle, he raised the knife... His wife shrieked, and tried to push herself yet closer against the wall, convinced that he was going to cut her throat with it after what she had done... But the man grabbed the lamb-chop with his other hand, and with one hew of the flickering blade he cut the cursed piece of roasted meat off his nose...just to see another lamb-chop grow from it again immediately... He cut the new-grown one off too, and another, and another...he cut like a possessed one, until finally he sank down on his chair, completely exhausted, his face dripping with cold sweat, staring at a towering heap of lamb-chops, squinting at the one still dangling from his nose...

For a moment, all that could be heard was the silence of horror and despair...and then, the silence was disturbed by the voice of the muezzin on top of the minaret of the nearby mosque, splitting the velvet night with his piercing voice, calling the faithful to midnight prayer...
Midnight...the Genie had said that the three wishes had to be made before midnight... The woman turned her head toward the smoke, towards the place where she expected the Genie's grinning face to be, looked at him spitefully, then looked at the deformed face of her husband...a face that she loved, the face of a man that through the many years of marriage she had learned to appreciate in spite of his flaws and weaknesses... And with a sigh, hardly audible, she muttered: "I wish my husband's nose to be back to normal..."
...puff...!

For a couple of seconds, the Genie listened to their stifled sobbing and moaning, and then he said:
"Man, woman...behold...truly you have been given a great reward for freeing me from the magic lamp... Not richnesses like gold and gems...but the awareness of the terrible consequences of your own greed, as a warning for life...and enough lamb-chops to invite the whole neighbourhood for an abundant meal tonight... Bon appétit..."

And in a whirl of smoke, it disappeared into the Isfahan night.





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