The genie cleared away the dishes with another snap of his fingers and seated Ala with the lamp on the rug. Ala gasped as the rug rose from the ground and flew through the night air at great speed, carrying her back to her home and depositing her gently before her mother’s door.
“There, little mistress,” said the genie. “You’re home. Now what about a real miracle or two? I haven’t exercised my powers for much too long a time. How about a nice fifty-room white-marble palace with a hundred Circassian slaves, a stable full of racehorses, a dress spangled all over with diamonds? What’s your pleasure? Wouldn’t you like to become a rich aristocrat, maybe even a princess?”
“No. I don’t want to be a princess. Aristocrats do nothing but oppress and steal from the poor to finance their own frivolous pleasures and unnecessary extravagances.”
“My, you’re a sententious bore,” the genie said. “Where do you get off, with such a holier-than-thou attitude? Every master I ever had has gone for the palace and the slaves and all the ruling-class perks.”
“I want something more useful. I want to eliminate war. I want you to vaporize every single weapon in this entire country and in all of the neighboring countries, so that men will have no more means to fight and harm others.”
The genie rolled up his eyes. “I’m not used to this,” he complained. “My masters always wanted me to kill some enemy or other, and set them up as top dogs. Peace is a little out of my line.”
“Well, if you can’t manage it—”
“Bite your tongue, little mistress! I am the genie of the lamp. I can do anything.” The genie clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and strained. “There. It’s done. What’s your next bizarre behest?”
“Turn all the tax collectors into sheep, and their escorts into sheepdogs.”
Again the genie strained, then told her it was done.
“Turn all the aristocrats’ jewels into loaves of bread, and distribute them among the poor.”
That, too, was done.
“Now turn all the palaces and all the hovels alike into modest but comfortable middle-sized houses, so that all the country’s wealth is fairly distributed among its citizens.”
“You’re asking a poor genie to change an entire society,” the genie protested. “It’s an immense job.”
“Well, if you’re not up to it—”
“Never!” he cried. “I can do anything!” With that, he strained more than ever. His eyeballs popped, his tongue stuck out, his face turned purple. Ala saw her mother’s wretched hovel change before her eyes into a pleasant white-painted cottage with a flower garden and picket fence. Other houses along the alley underwent similar changes, while the towering walls of the king’s palace suddenly shrank out of sight.
The genie sank panting to the ground. “I’m exhausted,” he said. “You have taken my last ounce of strength. I can do nothing more for a long while. Dismiss me, mistress; I have no more magic left.”
“Go, then,” said Ala Dean.
The genie slowly inserted himself back into the lamp. As he disappeared, she heard his voice saying faintly, “If you want anything, just rub.”
The next day, chaos reigned. The nobles were terrified at the magical disappearance of their palaces and jewels. They screamed for the soldiers, who tried to arm themselves with pitchforks, rakes, and hoes, but there were not enough of these to go around. The king’s counselors feared a people’s revolution, or else a campaign of retaliation from surrounding kingdoms that had been looted in the past. Everyone breathed easier when it was found that none of the neighbors had any weapons either. In time, military leaders found nothing left to do and took up new lines of work.
Fear of revolution dissolved when it was found that the people’s resentments had been soothed by their new circumstances. Common folk even extended neighborly assistance to former aristocrats, showing them how to till their fields and take care of their modest properties. Previously divergent classes adjusted themselves into a classless nation, where people didn’t feel obliged to put others down for their own aggrandizement.
Ala Dean and her mother were honored by their neighbors. Ganga Dean was no longer forced to sew day and night for her living. She worked a comfortable eight-hour day and enjoyed putting thought and creativity into her designs. Ala went to work on a dairy farm, run by a man who had formerly been a duke. Eventually, she married the dairyman’s son and lived happily ever after.
Nearly everyone in the kingdom lived more happily ever after except the genie, whose powers had been so overstrained by changing a whole society that he never created another palace. All he could do was entertain at children’s birthday parties and pull live pigeons out of hats. Sometimes he tried to harangue people with tales of the wonders that he used to perform in his glory days, but no one really wanted to listen. In the end, he retired into his lamp and learned to be content with making just a little light in a dark world.
TWELVE
This tale recalls the descent of Babylon’s goddess Ishtar (Sumerian Inanna) to the underworld to resurrect her lover, Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi), who may have been biblically reincarnated as doubting Thomas. Ishtar gave up a garment at each of the seven underworld gates, met her dark twin sister, Ereshkigal (here combined with Kali, India’s dark Goddess), and was hung from a hook to be reduced to bones. The priestess’s dance depicting these events apparently descended to the biblical story of Salome and her mother, Herodias (Arodia), who may have been the elder priestess or priestess-queen ceremonially mated to the king (Herod). We know that the worship of Ishtar and Tammuz was prevalent in Palestine, and women annually wailed for Tammuz in the Jerusalem temple (Ezek. 8:14).
Still she danced…
Once upon a time there was a beautiful priestess named Shaloma, who loved a prince named Thamus. In those days it was the custom for a man of royal blood to be chosen by lot, each year, to go underground to the Land of Death, so that crops would grow well from the earth and the people would be saved from a season of dearth. When spring came and the lot was drawn, Shaloma was appalled to learn that it fell on her lover. “You mustn’t go, you mustn’t,” she pleaded with Thamus.
“It’s my duty,” he answered. “How can I not go? My only other choice is to flee into exile and live like a peasant in a foreign land. Princes must be above such cowardice.”
Shaloma wept and raged, but Thamus was adamant. Others had gone before him, he said, and were honored like gods for their willing self-sacrifice. He too wished to be honored like a god. “Is that more important than being with me?” Shaloma asked him.
“It’s more important than anything,” said Thamus. “As a holy woman, you know that very well. I must do my duty for the people, and in return they will worship me forever.”
Seeing that nothing could change his mind, Shaloma went to her mother, Arodia, a powerful fairy queen, and laid the problem before her. “Thamus is determined to go through the sacrificial ceremony and enter the underworld,” she said. “What can I do to prevent it?”
“Nothing,” Queen Arodia told her. “You should not prevent it. After all, the people believe they would starve without it. Let the ceremony be performed, then go after him yourself and bring him back.”
“How can I do that?”
“I’ll tell you, but I must warn you that it won’t be an easy task.”
“I don’t care, I’ll do anything.”
“Then listen carefully. After the ceremony, you must go into the temple wearing seven of your very best jeweled robes, one over the other. The outermost one must be red, the next orange, the third yellow, the fourth green, the fifth blue, the sixth purple, and the innermost one black. In the central chamber of the temple, before the deities, you must dance until you fall into a trance. In this state you will pass through the seven gates of the underworld. Each of the seven gatekeepers will demand one of your garments as payment, so you will arrive naked in the land of death. You must also carry coins to pay the ferrymen of the undergrou
nd rivers, of which there are three. You must meet Kgali the queen. She will tell you what to do to retrieve Thamus. More than that I can’t say, because I haven’t been there myself. I tell you only what is written in the secret books, which only those of fairy blood can read.”
Shaloma thanked Queen Arodia and hastened to her wardrobe to choose seven of her lightest, filmiest robes, which would least hamper her dancing. When she tried them all on, one over the other, she felt like one enveloped in a cloud.
The fatal day arrived. Prince Thamus was dressed in royal purple and mounted on a white mule. He was conducted to the temple enclosure by a splendid procession, with much banging of cymbals, blowing of horns, and waving of palm branches. In the center of the enclosure stood the giant tree, shorn of its boughs, where he was hung up by his hands and made to bleed.
He endured everything bravely and made the correct verbal responses to the ritual questions while Shaloma wept at the foot of the tree. So did her maidservants and other women, because the tradition said women’s wailing was necessary to help waft the prince into the underworld.
After Thamus had not moved for a long while, the ritual leaders announced that his spirit had gone to the underworld. He was removed from the tree and carried to a shiny new tomb. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Shaloma went to the central chamber of the temple. In the space surrounded by towering, frowning statues of the deities, before the royal throne, she began to dance.
She danced until her feet were tired, her breath came in gasps, and she was covered with sweat under her seven filmy gowns. Still she danced, until blackness grew at the edges of her perception. The outlines of the temple chamber began to flicker and fade before her eyes. In their place, she saw fitful glimpses of a vast abyss opening at her feet, an unfathomable deep into which a path went spiraling downward. Her dancing feet took her onto the path, while the rest of her went along almost reluctantly, unable to stop the rhythm of the dance.
At the first gate she was halted by a red-skinned creature dressed entirely in scarlet, with long red-lacquered claws on his hands and crimson horns on his head. The gate itself was painted as red as fresh blood and studded with red stones: rubies, garnets, carnelians. The rocks around it were rusty red sandstone and cinnabar.
The gatekeeper stood in her way and said, “You are of the living. You can’t pass into the land of the dead without paying a price.”
“I can pay the price,” Shaloma said. She took off her outermost robe and held out the thin veillike material embroidered with its gems. The gatekeeper took it and opened the gate. She passed through and found herself on the bank of a thickly flowing red river—a river of blood.
A small ferryboat was drawn up to the bank. A hooded figure, draped in crimson, stood with one skeletal hand on the oar and the other reaching out, palm up. Shaloma suppressed a shudder, entered the boat, and placed a coin in the skeletal hand. Immediately the ferryman pushed off and rowed her across the blood river. She endured the trip, trying not to breathe the overwhelmingly cloying smell of blood.
On the other bank, the sands were orange and hot. She followed a curving path through rock walls to the second gate, which was painted bright orange with the likeness of flames and studded with fire opals. Torches burned on each side of it. The gatekeeper wore a saffron robe and a crown of burning candles. He stopped her by waving a burning brand before her, saying, “You are of the living. You can’t pass into the land of the dead without paying a price.”
“I can pay the price,” said Shaloma, taking off her second garment. The gatekeeper took it and opened the gate. She passed through and was almost suffocated by the heat. She was in a land of fire. Small fires burned in holes in the rock all around her. She stood on the bank of a river of red-hot lava. A rusty iron ferryboat was drawn up on the shore, manned by an artificial creature made of metal in the shape of a man. It held out its hand, and Shaloma gave it a coin. It ferried her across the burning river. During the trip, the iron boat became too hot to touch. Shaloma might have been burned, had not her five layers of clothing protected her skin. As it was, she breathed the hot air only with difficulty.
The other bank was ocher yellow mud from which grew huge, rank, buttery gold sunflowers that nodded their heads at her and squirmed on their stems as if sentient. The third gate, made of yellow gold, was emblazoned with the rayed image of the sun and surrounded by fluttering clouds of brilliant yellow butterflies. The gatekeeper’s yellow robe was covered by more of these insects, so he seemed a tower of rustling, flickering yellow wings.
Again Shaloma was challenged, and she gave the butterfly-covered gatekeeper her third garment. She was beginning to feel a little freer in her movements as she passed through the golden gate into a landscape made entirely of sulfur (brimstone), brilliant yellow in color and quite beautiful but raising such a stench that Shaloma could hardly breathe. Holding her nose, taking shallow breaths through her mouth, she followed the curving path between stinking sun-yellow pinnacles and giant crystals of pure sulfur.
The next gate was a towering monument made entirely of rich green malachite, studded with emeralds. The gatekeeper was a green giant clothed entirely in vegetation, his bearded face peeking out of a spreading corona of green leaves. This green man informed her that she must pay the price to enter the land of the dead, and received her fourth garment.
She passed through the gate into a lush jungle. Green growth sprang up so thickly that the path was obscured in many places. She found her way with difficulty, pushing aside the fronds. She had to cross a sluggish, shallow stream covered by a coat of poison-green algae. There was no ferry, but she found stepping stones made of the bright green feldspar that her teachers had called Amazon stone.
The fifth gate was made of the stone she had learned to call heavenly: brilliant blue lapis lazuli, gemmed with sapphires and aquamarines glittering like blue stars in an azure sky. The gatekeeper was a benevolent-looking blue-haired elf in a robe of ink blue satin. He gazed on her with a pitying expression as he issued the usual challenge and received her fifth garment. “Why would one of the living go voluntarily into death?” he asked.
Shaloma paid no attention. She hastened through the gate into a blue land, giving the impression of open spaces covered by bright blue sky and floored by steel blue rocks, in whose crannies grew clumps of bluebells, cornflowers, and blue gentians.
The sixth gate seemed to be carved from one enormous translucent crystal of amethyst, glowing in a dim purplish light. Its keeper was an unnaturally tall, slender figure muffled from head to foot in purple velvet, except for a thin hand with faintly lavender skin, silently extended to take her garment. The purple gatekeeper said nothing. He opened the gate to show her a landscape of permanent dusk, violet mists, and small streams meandering between banks of purple flowers.
There was nothing overtly menacing about the scene, but somehow Shaloma felt more reluctant to enter this purple gloom than she had felt at any of the other gates. She advanced timidly, looking about with wary glances, as if she expected the mists to solidify into terrifying shapes at any moment. Nothing appeared to frighten her, yet an unshakeable depression settled on her spirit as she followed the curving path.
Her despair intensified at the sight of the seventh gate, soaring up against a night sky like a wall of black obsidian, polished to a dark mirrorlike gleam. Set into pitch black rocks, it looked forbidding, impenetrable. She halted before it, seeing no gatekeeper.
Her pale body was visible now through the dark veiling of her last garment. Its thin folds did nothing to repel the chill that afflicted her—an icy, unearthly cold, as of outer darkness, utterly alien and far from all that was sunny, cheerful, or familiar. Shaloma involuntarily hugged herself and tried to rub the chill from her arms, with little success. She stood shivering before the gigantic black gate, waiting for what seemed an interminable time.
Suddenly the black soil in front of her rose up in a man-shaped column, developing a shiny, pitchy surface as it took a humanli
ke form. Its face was featureless, its arms and hands only roughly shaped. With one half-articulated limb it reached out toward her. Though she could see no mouth, it spoke, saying, “You are of the living. You can’t pass into the land of the dead without paying a price.”
“I can pay the price,” Shaloma whispered, not trusting herself to speak aloud lest her voice quiver too much. She removed her black veil and handed it to the black creature. Now she was naked, having nothing but her last coin held in her hand.
Ponderously, slowly, the huge obsidian gates parted just enough to admit her to the central abyss of the underworld. On the other side of the gate she came to a black river, widest and swiftest of the underground streams, slipping silkily along between its banks like an immense, silent black snake. A ferry stood on the shore, manned by a person so withered and gray with age that he resembled a giant spider. His skinny limbs were hardly more than twigs, yet when Shaloma paid him her last coin, he propelled the ferry with almost superhuman strength across the swift, oily black waters.
Once on the other shore, Shaloma paused in confusion. All around her drifted the dark, tenuous shades of the dead, sighing in thin voices, saying words that she could not quite understand. They seemed human, yet not human. They were like forms made of black smoke, or like shadows slipping silently over all obstructions, flitting back and forth, whispering about her among themselves.
She summoned up her courage and announced into the air, “I am here to see Kgali, queen of the underworld.” Her voice cracked a little but sounded strong against the background of hisses and whispers. The shades flicked aside to open a path before her. She went on, in the direction they indicated, until she came to a vast hall surrounded by crystal pillars on all sides.
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