The Fisherman and the Jinni

Once upon a time there was a fisherman so old and so poor that he could barely feed his wife and three children. Every day he went fishing very early, and he had made it his rule never to cast his nets more than four times a day.

One morning he set out while the moon was still shining and came down to the shore. He took off his clothes and cast his nets, and as he dragged them toward the beach he felt something very heavy in them. He thought he had caught a big fish, and his heart lifted. But a moment later he saw that there was no fish in the nets at all, only the body of a dead donkey, and he was bitterly disappointed.

The donkey had torn his nets in several places. He mended them, still smarting over such a bad haul, and cast them a second time. Again, as he pulled them in, they felt heavy, and he thought they must be full of fish. But all he found was a big basket full of mud and rubbish, and he was more upset than ever.

“O Fortune,” he cried, “stop playing these games with me! I am only a poor fisherman, and I can hardly keep my family alive!”

With that he threw the rubbish away, washed the mud out of his nets, and cast them for the third time. This time he brought up nothing but stones, shells, and mud. He was close to despair.

Then he cast his nets for the fourth time, the last time that day. Once again they were so heavy that he was sure there must be a fish in them, and it was hard work to haul them in. There was no fish. Instead he found a jar of yellow brass, so heavy that it seemed full of something. Its mouth was stopped with lead, and the lead was stamped with a seal. The fisherman was delighted.

“I’ll sell it to the man who melts down old metal,” he said, “and with the money I’ll buy a sack of wheat.”

He turned the jar this way and that, and shook it to hear whether anything rattled inside. He heard nothing. Still, because of the seal stamped on the lead, he thought there must be something precious in it. To find out, he took his knife, and with a little trouble he pried the lid open. He turned the jar upside down, but nothing fell out, and that surprised him very much.

He set it down in front of him and was looking at it closely when a thick smoke began to pour out, so thick that he had to step back a pace or two. The smoke rose up to the clouds and spread over the sea and the shore in a heavy fog, and the fisherman stared at it in wonder.

When all the smoke was out of the jar, it drew itself together into a dark mass, and out of that mass there rose a jinni twice as tall as the tallest giant. At the sight of such a terrible creature the fisherman wanted to run, but he was shaking so hard with fear that he could not take a single step.

“Great king of the jinn,” cried the jinni, “I will never disobey you again!”

At these words, the fisherman found his courage.

“What are you saying, great jinni?” he asked. “Tell me your story, and how you came to be shut up in that jar.”

The jinni looked down at him proudly. “Speak to me more politely, fisherman,” he said, “before I kill you.”

“Kill me? But why?” cried the fisherman. “I have just set you free. Have you forgotten that already?”

“No,” answered the jinni, “but that will not stop me from killing you. I will grant you one favor, and only one: you may choose how you will die.”

“But what have I ever done to you?” asked the fisherman.

“I cannot treat you any other way,” said the jinni. “If you want to know why, listen to my story.

“I rebelled against the king of the jinn. To punish me, he shut me up in this brass jar and set his seal on its lid of lead, and the seal holds a spell strong enough to keep me from ever getting out. Then he had the jar thrown into the sea. In the first hundred years of my imprisonment I swore that if anyone set me free, I would make him rich, and his family too after he died. But the hundred years went by, and no one set me free. In the second hundred years I swore that I would give all the treasures of the world to the one who rescued me. But no one came.

“In the third hundred years I promised to make my rescuer a king, to stay always at his side, and to grant him three wishes every day. That century passed like the other two, and I stayed just where I was. At last I grew furious at being a prisoner for so long, and I swore that if anyone ever let me out, I would kill him at once and allow him only one thing: to choose how he would die. So you see, since you are the one who has freed me today, choose how you will die.”

The fisherman was filled with misery. “What bad luck that it was I who freed you!” he said. “I beg you, spare my life.”

“I have told you already,” said the jinni, “that it cannot be done. Choose quickly. You are wasting time.”

But the fisherman had begun to think of a plan.

“If I must die,” he said, “then before I choose how, I ask you on your honor to tell me one thing truly. Were you really inside that jar?”

“Yes, I was,” answered the jinni.

“I really can’t believe it,” said the fisherman. “That jar couldn’t hold even one of your feet. How could the whole of you have fit inside? I won’t believe it unless I see you do it with my own eyes.”

At once the jinni began to turn himself back into smoke. As before, the smoke spread over the sea and the shore, and then it gathered itself together and began to flow back into the jar, slowly and steadily, until nothing at all was left outside. Then a voice came out of the jar.

“Well, you doubting fisherman, here I am inside the jar. Do you believe me now?”

The fisherman did not answer. He snatched up the lid of lead and clapped it down tight on the jar.

“Now, jinni,” he cried, “it’s your turn to beg for mercy, and your turn to choose how you will die! No, wait. Better still, I’ll throw you back into the sea, right where I fished you out. Then I’ll build a house here on the shore to warn every fisherman who comes to cast his nets, so that none of them is ever foolish enough to haul up a wicked jinni like you, who swears to kill the man who sets him free.”

At this, the jinni struggled with all his might to get out, but the spell on the lid held him fast. So he tried cunning instead.

“If you take off the lid,” he said, “I will reward you.”

“No,” answered the fisherman. “If I trust you, I’m afraid you will treat me the way a certain Greek king treated the physician Douban. Had he spared the physician, the king would not have died as he did. It’s the same with you. Now I’m going to throw you into the sea.”

“My friend,” said the jinni, “don’t do such a cruel thing! Don’t treat me the way Imma treated Ateca.”

“What did Imma do to Ateca?” asked the fisherman.

“Do you think I can tell you stories while I am shut up in here?” the jinni replied. “Let me out, and I will make you rich.”

The hope of never being poor again was too much for the fisherman, and he gave in.

“If you promise me that, I’ll open the lid,” he said. “I don’t think you would dare to break your word.”

The jinni gave his promise, and the fisherman lifted the lid. Out poured the smoke, and as soon as the jinni had taken his own shape again, the very first thing he did was kick the jar far out into the sea. The fisherman was terrified.

But the jinni laughed. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I only did it to give you a fright. I mean to keep my word. Take your nets and follow me.”

He set off walking ahead, and the fisherman followed with his nets, not quite trusting him. They passed by the town, climbed a mountain, and went down the other side into a wide plain, where a large lake lay between four hills.

When they reached the lake, the jinni said to the fisherman, “Cast your nets and catch some fish.”

The fisherman did as he was told. He expected a good catch, because he could see plenty of fish in the water. But imagine his astonishment when he saw that they were of four different colors: some were white, some red, some blue, and some yellow. He caught four, one of each color. He had never seen fish like them. He could not stop admiring them, and he was delighted to think how much money they would bring him.

“Take these fish to the sultan,” said the jinni, “and he will give you more money for them than you have ever had in your life. You may come and fish in this lake every day, but take care never to cast your nets more than once a day, or harm will come to you. Follow my advice carefully, and it will serve you well.”

As he said this, he stamped his foot on the ground. The ground opened, and as soon as he had sunk out of sight, it closed again.

The fisherman made up his mind to obey the jinni in every detail, so he did not cast his nets a second time. Instead he walked into the town and went to the palace to sell his fish.

When the sultan saw the fish, he was amazed. He looked at them one after another, and when he had admired them long enough, he turned to his grand vizier.

“Take these fish,” he said, “and give them to the clever cook the Emperor of the Greeks sent me. I think they must taste as good as they look.”

The vizier carried them to the cook himself. “Someone has just brought these four fish to His Majesty,” he told her. “He wants you to cook them.”

Then he went back to the sultan, who told him to give the fisherman four hundred gold pieces. The fisherman had never held so much money at once in all his life, and he could hardly believe his good luck. He went straight home and gave his family everything they needed, and he spent the rest of it wisely.