Once upon a time and a long time ago, when the Turks were keeping Ramazan, with a hole in the pot and a hole in the pan: There was an old woman many years a widow, and she had a one and only boy. All day from the very moment the sun showed himself to the hour when he sank in glory this boy used to shoulder his loads of wood to win his bread and to support his old mother. This went on a long time.
Then one day on his way to the mountain to cut wood he heard the voice of a crier who had been sent out by a Jew to make a proclamation along the roads: ‘Whoever is fit to serve me for a day or two, to him will give as much money as he wants.’ These words struck pleasantly on his ears, for he was thinking of his poverty and of his unlucky plight. Full of joy he ran off to his mother to ask her blessing. His mother did not stand in his way, and so he went to the Jew and took his money, which he handed over to his mother. Then he went off with the Jew. This Jew had ships and yet more ships at his service, and when the lad came to his house he took him down to the shore. They embarked in one of the ships, the others following behind. They had a very fine little trip; before their eyes on the one side there were mountains, high and all covered with greenery; on the other there were vineyards and trees and fields, all to rejoice their hearts.
After a long voyage they found themselves below a very lofty mountain: its feet were washed by the foam of the sea and its head was hidden among the high white clouds. When they came there the Jew said to the widow’s son that he must go up to the top of the mountain and there do what he was told to do. To the boy this seemed very strange and he asked him how he should do this. The Jew then bound weapons round his waist and sewed him up in the skin of an animal and gave him his instructions. When the boy was aware that the eagles had lifted him and carried him to the top of the mountain, then he should rip the skin open with his knife and come out; whatever he found up there he must throw down to the Jew.
Thus he was told and thus he did. The birds of heaven came and lifted him up and brought him up on the mountain. Then with his sword he ripped open the skin and came out; and what did he see? Wherever he cast his eyes, diamonds in millions, jewels of gold and sapphires, all among myrtle bushes and rose trees drenched in musky fragrance. All your mind can fancy you would have seen in that place; instead of stones and pebbles, jewels of gold and diamonds scattered here and there, and on the rose trees before you not dewdrops but the quivering of pearls. When the youth saw all this he was amazed; he bit his lips and crossed his hands as though in awe to walk over all this brilliance and all these great treasures. Suddenly he heard the Jew shouting to him from below; then he began to gather up the jewels and to throw them down with both hands, as many as he could.
The Jew loaded his ships and sailed away, while the boy shouted to him from the mountain and asked what he was doing; the Jew made no answer. Again he shouted to him; there was no voice or any to hear him. Left there all by himself, he walked about on the mountain in despair. The diamonds and the pearls were very fine, but what could you do with them? He had neither food to eat nor a drop of water to drink. By this time too he began to lament; he thought of his poor mother, deserted and alone. Then tired as he was, his eyes red and shining with tears, he stretched himself in the shade of a tree to get a little sleep.
As he lay there his head was resting on a stone —a diamond perhaps or a lump of sapphire—and it seemed to him that the stone moved. Then he thought there might be some creature —who can say?—underneath, and he raised the stone. Under it he saw a descent with steps leading downwards. He went down and down, forty, then fifty steps, I don’t know how many, and then at the bottom he came to a palace. In this place to which he had come he could see no living creature, neither a man nor anything else. He was so hungry that he looked this way and that to find something to eat. He saw a cupboard, and opened it and found a morsel of bread. He ate and abated his hunger a little. Then he went further on and looking this way and that he saw an ogre; the ogre was blind. At first he was afraid and began to tremble, but when he saw he was blind he took courage; yet he did not say anything to the ogre. He wanted to let the ogre know, but he was afraid and could not think how to address him.
Well, the ogre was sitting down, and he came up quietly behind him: I beg your pardon, but he shouted out ‘Father!’ The ogre answered: ‘And how are you my son?’ The boy said: ‘Born this very moment.’ Then the ogre believed him and called to him and began to caress him as though he were really his son. Then he put into his hands forty keys and bade him open the rooms, thirty-nine of them; but there was one he must not open. The boy went to and fro and opened all the rooms, and in them he found every gift of God to man, but that one room which the ogre had told him not to open he did not open. Still, after some days had passed he began to be curious and to say to himself: ‘But indeed why should I not open that room? There must be something fine there and the ogre is jealous and does not want me to see it.’
So at last he found he could no longer refrain and he opened the door. Inside he saw a beautiful garden, so fine that it dazzled his eyes. In it you would have seen brought together the choicest trees in all the world, and in the midst of all that greenery and among the branches, swaying under the weight of the lovely fruits decking them, there was built a marble cistern all white and shining. As the youth stood gazing at this garden not knowing where to look first, three doves came flying there, most beautiful doves: what can I say they were like? And just fancy! When the doves came near, at the edge of the cistern, they put off their plumage and turned into three girls all of them as fresh as flowers; at the sight of them even the Patriarch would have lost his head; so what of this boy, a fine young fellow? Then the doves entered the cistern swimming about all at their ease and thinking that there was no one looking at them. And how were they to know that the boy was at the door secretly looking at them? You would have seen his eye shining while a hot burning tear ran down his cheek. And how otherwise? This is what love is: cunningly it enters the heart and all unawares.
So he was looking at the girls, at all three of them, and the three pleased him well, yet it was at the youngest he cast his eye most often, for his heart told him that she was the most beautiful. As he was gazing at them, suddenly they were no more; they picked up their plumage and put it on, and to his astonishment the youth saw these beautiful girls disappear from before him, and in their place three doves flying up into the sky. Imagine his sorrow! He shut the room and went back to the ogre grieved and downhearted. The ogre asked him what was the matter that he was sitting like that half-crying. ‘What can I say?’ said the boy. ‘This is what happened. I opened the door and I saw.’ so he told him all the story. ‘Well; I am sorry, but can you be astonished that I am sad and that my heart cannot endure it?’
When the ogre heard this he was sorry for him, and told him to go in the morning where the girls were swimming and take note where they left their plumage; he must take the plumage of the one who pleased him and hide it, for if she saw him she would snatch the plumage and fly away. So next day he went as the ogre had told him and took the plumage of the youngest girl, and then went back to his own place. The other two girls when they had bathed put on their plumage and at once there they were, flying right up to the sky. The third girl looked about her and sought to find her plumage, but with no success: so she stayed there. Then the boy came out and approached her. She begged him to give her the plumage and promised that she would not go away. He said nothing and would not let her have it; in this way he took her for his wife.
Some time passed and the two lived together happily and had two children. Then the man, the son of the widow, told the ogre the story of how he came to be up on the mountain, and the ogre asked him if he would like to go back to his mother. On hearing this he was full of joy and said farewell to the ogre, who gave him plenty of money and opened a way for him through the mountain; so the boy went through it with his children and his wife, whom he loved as he did his eyes. They walked on and on until they came to the place where his old mother lived. Imagine the joy of the old woman when she saw her son and with him his wife, a goddess, and their two children full of grace and charm: you would have said they were little angels. After some time he gave the plumage to his mother and bade her hide it carefully lest his wife should chance to find it: if she did he would lose her.
His mother hid the plumage in some easy place, so that some days afterwards when the young man was away, somehow, I don’t know how, his wife managed to find it. Then right off she took the plumage; one feather she gave to one of the children and one to the other. Then she went up on the tiles of the roof and called aloud to her mother-in-law: ‘Bid my husband take a pair of shoes of iron and a staff of iron and go off to find me, where all is green and all is red, and five white towers amongst it.’ When she had said this, she took flight and was lost to the old woman’s eyes. When the youth came home and found his wife not there, he began to weep and would not be comforted: his mother came and told him all that his wife had said when she flew away. Then all day and all night he pondered how he could find his wife, for he did not know where the place was where she had told his mother he must go.
He searched here and he searched there but he could find out nothing. So he made up his mind to go back to the ogre whom he held as his father; in case somehow or other he might know where the doves were to be found, the doves who used to bathe in the garden and turn into women. So he went again to the Jew just as he had done the first time when they had gone to the foot of the mountain, but this time he did not throw down diamonds to him or anything else, but just left him there confused and confounded. Then he went down the stairs to the ogre; he greeted him and told him all that had happened and questioned him about the command his wife had left for him. The ogre gave him the shoes and the iron staff and told him to start off and he would find a way to come to his sweetheart’s palace.
So he went on and on, and on the way he found in a desert place two men who were quarrelling and shouting at one another. He went near and asked them why they were shouting, and they said: ‘Brother, see here! We have this carpet and this sword and this hat, and we don’t know how to divide them.’ The boy heard this and he thought to mock them as they sat there quarrelling about such trifles as these, so he said: ‘Be at ease; are these things worth the trouble of all this shouting and quarrelling?’
Then they explained to him that whoever put on the hat would become invisible; whoever stepped on the carpet and twitched it would be carried wheresoever was in his mind, and he who held the sword, however many men were facing him, he could cut them all down. He listened to all this as if it pleased him and bethought him how he could get possession of these things himself. So he said to the men: ‘I will make the division between you. I will throw my staff over yonder and you must run to get it, and whoever is the first to come to the staff, to him I adjudge these things; it is he who shall have them.’
While they were running to get the staff, the boy put on the hat and girded himself with the sword and stepped on the carpet: he had become invisible. The men looked this way and looked that: no, nothing indeed was to be seen. Then as soon as he was on the carpet, the boy told it to carry him, Where all is green and all is red and five white towers amongst it. Scarcely had he finished saying this, than, lo and behold! there he was where it was in his mind to go. There he left the carpet in a certain place and the sword with it and put on the hat so that he should not be seen when he went into the towers to find his wife and his children. He sought here and he sought there and at last he found his wife; she was in the stable among the straw with the fowls: her father had put her there when she came back to him. Then he went up to her and made himself known and told her that he would carry her off. She said: ‘We must tell my father and then we can go.’ Presently they heard her father coming down. She began to tremble, but he made a show of not heeding it and told her not to mind. So he then put on his hat and went out of sight, but without going away. Her father approached and asked her: ‘Who is hidden here? There is a smell of man’s flesh.’
Then she explained to him that it was her husband who had come to take her away. Her father asked if he could see him because he wanted to understand what kind of man he was. But she would not let him show himself, because she was afraid her father might kill him, for this is how things are: when a man is uneasy at heart he is always full of fear. Her father then said he would give her back to her husband, if he could level a mountain there and turn it into a garden. We might put it this way: his meaning in saying this to her was: ‘I will never give you back to him,’ for he could not believe—how could he?—that the man would succeed in so great a task.
In the meanwhile the wife consented to this, and when her father had gone away, she called for her husband and gave him a piece of tile and told him to throw it into such-and-such a well: from it he would see a crowd of men come out and they would do whatever he ordered them. So the youth went off as his wife had told him and threw the tile into the well, and behold! there flew out of the well—what can I say?—thousands of men. The boy gave them his orders: ‘By tomorrow morning I want this mountain levelled and in place of the mountain there must be gardens with trees and flowers of every kind.’
He had not even finished speaking when the men girt themselves up and set to work. In the morning her father rose and opened his window; what did he see? The mountain was not there and in its place there were gardens: but what gardens! With trees and flowers and jets of water. How can I tell you of such things? How tell of them and again how tell of them? Things not to be recounted. He did not well believe it and he rubbed his eyes and rubbed them again until at last he saw that it was no deception. Then he went to his daughter and said to her: ‘Well, this has been done. But now I demand that the garden be turned to sea, and in the sea ships.’ Again his daughter gave her husband the tile, and to make a long story short all was done as it had been done the time before, and the gardens which I told you of were all turned into sea with three-masted ships and row-boats and whatever you please.
Then when this had been done, the young man appeared before the king girt with his sword and by his side stood his wife. When her father and her mother saw the husband of their daughter they made a dash at him to devour him. But he lost no time and said: ‘O my little sword, slay them.’ And the sword slew them. So they were left safe, and he and his wife and his children went off, and on the carpet they went back to the ogre and from him to his mother’s house. Then his wife remembered how she and her sisters had taken out the ogre’s eyes and had hidden them away in a cave; so with the carpet they went and got the ogre’s eyes and went to the palace and restored them. Thus they abode there in all good health, and may our lot be even better.