The Genie of the Lamp

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Now I know it sounds very corny, but when I saw the tarnished old Arabic oil-lamp in an antique shop, I just had to buy it in case it was Aladdin’s. Don’t worry, I told myself how silly I was being. I’m not really a superstitious man at all, quite a cynic of things spiritual on the whole, but perhaps it was my self-denied belief that such magic does exist which caused it to actually happen. I remember that I carefully avoided rubbing the lamp until I got home. By that time I had looked inside the thin brass oval vessel several times by lifting its poorly-fitted hinged lid and there was definitely no room for any physical genie - no false bottom or anything. The picture-books and movies had led me to expect a spiral whirl of purple smoke to emanate from the lamp, out of which a huge genie would appear but, when I did start polishing the lamp with a proper yellow duster, there was nothing to see before I was startled by a deep voice from behind me: “What is thy command, O master?”.

Janet Harris on Gromet's Plaza Archive

The Genie of the Lamp