Tag: folklore

What if you had a magic pearl tree?

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I’ve been writing short, folkloric-feeling or fairy-tale-ish stories for a book I’m working on. The stories are Arab-inspired, people-centered, and hopefully, tell their own tale, even within the context of the larger story.

Here’s one story I wrote. Only problem is, I know I wrote it, but it reminds me of a story I heard or read growing up. But I CAN’T FIND THE STORY. I’m hoping it’s deja vu only, and I’m not stealing someone else’s work. It may be an old Persian fairy tale.

TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS IF YOU RECOGNIZE THIS STORY.
If you don’t recognize it, tell me what you think of it.

THE OLD MAN AND THE PEARL TREE

The pearl tree stood alone in the center of a poor man’s garden. 

It dropped iridescent pearls every morning, but if the man got too close, branches whipped out to slap him. Pearls at his feet, and not one to sell in the markets. 

Still, the man tried every so often to snatch just one pearl. But each effort left him with a welt across the face and a gash on his arm. 

One day, the man grew so angry he decided to cut down the tree. He took an axe to its roots, dashed them into pieces, and gathered the pearls. One basket, two, then three were filled with the pearls. 

The tree lay in ruin, however, its once proud trunk a stump in the garden. Its branches lay scattered about, hacked into pieces. 

The man smiled to himself, thinking of all the riches he would buy. New teeth to replace the ones he sold for a bit of coin to buy his food. New shoes to protect his rough bare feet from being cut on stones along the road. A new house, with a roof that didn’t leak. And, most of all, a wife. A beautiful one, to be dressed in jewels and dresses fit for a rani.

But when the man checked on his baskets later in the day, he found nothing but ash. He pulled at his thin hair, ripping it out in clumps. 

And in the midst of his bawling, a knock sounded at his door. 

He snatched the door open, finding the kingdom’s prince standing at his door. 

“I have heard tales of a magic tree that drops pearls instead of leaves. Do you know of this tree?”

“Why do you ask”, said the man.

“I wish to plant it in my own gardens. I will pay handsomely for it.”

The old man glanced behind the prince, at the severed pieces of the pearl tree. 

“You did this?” the prince said, following the man’s gaze. 

The man nodded, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Stupid, stupid man,” the prince said. “Do you know what you’ve done? That tree, those pearls, they are the dead. The souls of our dead. Without that tree, the dead cannot pass to the next life. They will become ghouls, wandering the earth, wreaking havoc on it.”

And just as the man hacked at the tree, the prince’s soldiers cut down the man. They gathered the pieces of the tree, hoping upon hope that there was some magic in the world that could heal it. 

Copyright (C) 2020 by Rania Hanna

A jinn stole your wife. What would you do?

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I’ve been writing short, folkloric-feeling or fairy-tale-ish stories for a book I’m working on. The stories are Arab-inspired, people-centered, and hopefully, tell their own tale, even within the context of the larger story.

This one is called Breekh and features a wife stolen by a jinn from right under her husband’s nose.

Tell me in the comments what you think!

BREEKH

There was a man and a woman, married for years who were wise to believe in the evil eye. They knew spirits that were made of smoke, not flesh, roamed the earth, looking for ways to cause mischief. 

The man’s name was Pot, and the woman’s name was Kettle. They both wore small blue beads on their clothes to protect them from the evil eye, which was the magic of the spirits, but could be cast by unwitting humans with ill, or at least, unkind, intention.

One day, the man grew tired of his wife’s talking, and wished her to stay silent. The woman was hurt her husband did not want to listen to her, and felt lonely as she drew water from their deep well. 

A jinn by the name of Breekh was passing by the well, invisible to the human eye. 

After a while of silence, the woman continued her story, trying to get her husband’s attention. But the husband, who wanted nothing but silence, cursed out at his wife, “Ya nan al Breekh!” he said, “Damn you, Breekh!” And in that moment, the man cast the evil eye on his wife without knowing it. Breekh, the jinn, heard this, and thus he was summoned.


The man did not know why he called out Breekh instead of his wife’s name, but he ignored the thought and sat brooding on why he married this woman in the first place. 

“It was her beauty,” he thought, “Her beautiful mouth blinded me to the tongue inside it. If I had known I would know no silence, I’d have never married her. What I wouldn’t do for silence.” 

What the man and woman didn’t know, though, was that in the jinn language, Breekh meant Kettle. 

The jinn stole the wife away from the man, forcing her into a world made of fire and smoke and ash. A world where the earth erupted in plumes of flames, and spewed molten rock on the cities below the fiery mountain. 

The jinn locked the woman in the belly of the mountain, leaving her to sweat and her body to shrivel in the heat. 

The man cursed himself for his foolishness, and he called upon the old sheikhs, who drew on their powers against the evil eye. And though the woman noticed the blue bead she wore glowing, the spell would not break. Breekh held her captive for years, until Kettle became the molten earth itself. She became the fiery mountain, and that is why the great mountain in the distance is called the Kettle of Fire. 

The man lived his days in solitude, but it was not a peaceful one. He was lonely, and missed the sound of his wife’s voice. He cursed himself until his dying breath for giving up the one person who loved him enough to want to talk to him. 

Copyright (C) 2020 by Rania Hanna

The King with one Daughter

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I’ve been writing short, folkloric-feeling or fairy-tale-ish stories for a book I’m working on. The stories are Arab-inspired, people-centered, and hopefully, tell their own tale, even within the context of the larger story.

This one is called The King with One Daughter and features a king who loses his only child despite his best efforts.

A powerful king had one daughter. His wife’s birth of their daughter was hard on her slight body, and after giving birth she found she could never conceive again. But the king was wise enough to know that a daughter was the same as a son and could rule just as well as any man. So he trained his daughter to rule, for when he and the queen died, she would take their place. 

But the king loved his daughter with his every breath, with his soul, his heart, his blood. And he kept her locked in her room, wanting for nothing of the world’s riches. Guards posted at her door each hour of every day and every night, to keep the girl safe. 

No one was allowed in or out of the room without being searched. The room was the highest in the castle, with walls that could not be scales, for they were covered in magical thorned ivy that no man or being could get through. 

But there was a hole in the wall, in the corner of the girl’s room, a thin one only a snake could get through. And one day, a snake slithered in through the hole and up the girl’s bed as she slept. 

Its fang dripped with poison, and as the girl shifted in her sleep and hit the snake with her arm by accident, the snake grew angry. It bit her, and poison coursed through her veins all through the night as the rest of the castle, save her guards, slept. 

When the king and queen awoke, and summoned their day to the morning meal, her maidservants found her blue and cold in her bed. 

The king cursed himself for being so foolish. For in trying to keep his child safe from the world, he failed to keep her safe in his own home. 

Tell me in the comments what you think!

Copyright (C) 2020 by Rania Hanna