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[quarrel]

One of my favorite stories from the 1,001 Nights is of the fisherman who finds a corked bottle in his fishing net. Maybe that’s not entirely clear — there are literally a hundred variations on this story within the Nights. The one I’m talking about is where the man uncorks the bottle and the genie threatens to kill him.

The genie was trapped in that bottle for 1,800 years. For the first hundred years, he swore he would grant a wish to whoever freed him. For the next hundred, he swore to God he would grant two wishes. A hundred years later, he was praying to God every day, promising he would grant three wishes. A hundred years later — and for fifteen-hundred long years — every day he cursed God through his teeth and promised he would kill whoever freed him.

The lowly fisherman, with a sudden spark of shrewdness, convinces the genie that it would be proper to not kill an innocent man without answering a simple question. The genie obliges: the question is this: how did the genie fit in the bottle? The answer is that he can bend space and time readily; the fisherman asks for a demonstration. The genie returns to the bottle. The fisherman corks it.

Now the genie begs and pleads. He offers ten wishes, a hundred wishes. The fisherman says he does not trust the genie. The fisherman promises he will throw the bottle back into the water. Then he will erect a fence around the lake. He will warn all fishermen about the genie. He will put up signs saying not to trust the genie in the bottle at the bottom of this lake.

The genie begs and pleads. He prays to God. The fisherman does not listen. He urges the fisherman to tell the whole story. He says that he should let other fisherman judge for themselves whether they should believe that the genie is purely evil. The genie implores the fisherman to tell others how he begged, and of the wondrous offers he made, because only now has he truly repented. The fisherman sees this final wheedle as another sinister plot — as the most perverse type of subversion. He tells the genie he will in fact tell the whole story, including the part about his own suspicion that these final words of the genie are just yet another sinister plot. He casts the bottle back into the lake and does exactly as he said he would do.

—Tim Rogers, insertcredit.com