arabian-nights

Where are you going this hot day, Mis_ DeJong?__elina sat up very straight. __o Bagdad, Mrs. Pool.___o____here__ that? What for?___o sell my jewels, Mrs. Pool. And to see Aladdin, and Harun-al-Rashid and Ali Baba. And the Forty Thieves.__rs. Pool had left her rocker and had come down the steps. The wagon creaked on past her gate. She took a step or two down the path, and called after them. __ never heard of it. Bag____ow do you get there?__ver her shoulder Selina called out from the wagon seat. __ou just go until you come to a closed door. And you say __pen Sesame!_ and there you are.__ewilderment shadowed Mrs. Pool__ placid face. As the wagon lurched on down the road it was Selina who was smiling and Mrs. Pool who was serious.The boy, round eyed, was looking up at his mother. __hat__ out of Arabian Nights, what you said. Why did you say that?_ Suddenly excitement tinged his voice. __hat__ out of the book. Isn__ it? Isn__ it! We__e not really ____he was a little contrite, but not very. __ell, not really, perhaps. But __ost any place is Bagdad if you don__ know what will happen in it. And this is an adventure, isn__ it, that we__e going on? People in disguise in the Haymarket. Caliphs, and princes, and slaves, and thieves, and good fairies, and witches.___n the Haymarket! That Pop went to all the time! That is just dumb talk.

The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.

Such misplaced faith in a boy with a murderous past and a girl with treacherous intent.

Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons.