A wealthy merchant, resting along his journey, eats some dates and throws away the stones. A fearsome djinn appears in a rage, saying that one of the date stones struck and killed the djinn’s son. Although the merchant protests that he didn’t do it on purpose, the djinn is intent on killing him. Finally the merchant swears to return to this place in one year, if he can have that time to set his affairs in order and say goodbye to his loved ones.

One year later, he returns to the same spot to wait for death. There he meets three old sheikhs, one with a gazelle, one with two dogs, and one with a she-mule. The djinn arrives, and the sheikhs offer that each of them will tell a story to convince him to spare the merchant.

The first shaykh, who has a gazelle, explains that the gazelle is actually his wife (and cousin), transformed.

Their marriage produced no children, so he took a concubine who bore him a son. The wife became jealous, and used witchcraft to turn his concubine into a cow and his son into a calf, and gave them to a herdsman. At the Great Feast, the cow was slaughtered, but gave no meat. The herdsman’s daughter, who had some magic skills, recognized that the calf was an enchanted human and lifted his curse. She married him and turned the evil wife into a gazelle.

The second shaykh has two greyhounds, which are actually his brothers. When their father died, they were all left money to open a shop. The first brother went traveling but returned a destitute beggar; the same occurred with the second brother. The narrator helped them open new shops. Finally, they all went traveling together. On their trip, the narrator met a lovely woman and brought her with him, but his brothers grew jealous and threw them overboard. The woman revealed herself to be a jinniyya and saved them both, but turned the brothers into dogs. They will be restored after ten years of this punishment.

The third shaykh has a she-mule that is actually his wife under a spell. He once caught his wife having an affair with a black slave, so she turned him into a dog. As a dog, he became friends with a butcher, whose daughter realized that he was a human under a curse. She disenchanted him and told him how to magically transform his wife into a she-mule.

Comments:

Jianing: This is pretty good, but you should describe more on how this myth connects to sustainability.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s mainly about the myth.

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