On the six hundred and forty-seventh night, Scheherazade said: “Hear, O King, of a woodcutter who spoke two words to a mountain, and of the servant who heard the oil jars breathe.”
In a village beyond Baghdad lived Ali Baba, a poor woodcutter. His brother Qasim counted coins all day. Ali Baba counted blessings, which, he liked to say, weighed less but warmed a house far better.
One morning forty horsemen filled a lonely ravine. Ali Baba hid in a cedar. Their captain faced a bare cliff and cried, “Open, Sesame!” The rock split like a ripe fig. The men entered with empty sacks and rode out with sacks that clinked. When the mountain sealed itself, Ali Baba whispered the same two words.
Gold That Fits in Two Hands
The cave glittered with coins and gems. He took only two small bags of gold, enough to mend his roof and feed his neighbours, then hurried home. His wife borrowed a scale from Qasim’s house. A gold coin stuck to the pan. Qasim’s wife saw it, and that night Qasim wrung the secret from his brother.
Qasim rode to the cliff with ten mules. He shouted the two words and piled sack upon sack until he could barely walk. At the door his mind went blank. He cried out barley, wheat and rye. The rock stayed shut. He was still shouting when the forty returned and bound him among his own greedy bags.
The Jars That Breathed
At dusk Ali Baba found his brother shaken but alive and led him home. The captain, however, marked the house. That evening a merchant asked to store forty jars of oil in the courtyard until morning.
Morgiana, Ali Baba’s sharp-eyed servant, went to refill a lamp and heard a whisper from a jar: “Is it time?” Another answered, “Not yet.” She sealed every lid with warm pitch and woke Ali Baba, who called the night watch. By dawn the thieves had fled, never again trusting that mountain with their gold.
Qasim gave half his hoard to the poor. Ali Baba kept only what his two hands had first carried. And Morgiana, who had listened when others slept, was welcomed as a daughter of the house.
Scheherazade smiled at the King. “Greed, my lord, fills the arms until they cannot find the door. A modest portion remembers the way out, and a servant who listens is worth more than forty jars of gold.”
And as dawn touched the curtains, she fell silent, promising another wonder for the coming night.
