Aladdin Updated, by Peter Morford

Aladdin was feeling his age.  Not surprising really because he was crossing a parched desert which stretched for miles in every direction. He staggered step by painful step, hoping he was heading south where he thought there would be an oasis. His camel had died two – or was it three? days ago. He had drunk all his water and eaten all his figs. The merciless sun had burned his bald head and dazzled his myopic eyes. Still he plodded along, slipping in the loose sand of dunes, covering his face against the occasional dust blows.                                                                                 

            He fell heavily, face first, into the sand. He couldn’t breathe until he had pushed himself into a kneeling position. He scrabbled in the sand to push himself up.  There was something just below the surface which wasn’t sand.  He smiled for the first time that day. He recognised the shape and the texture.  It was his old lamp, lost with his good luck, many years before.   He rubbed it clean. There was a loud popping noise and a puff of smoke.

            “How can I serve you, O Master?” the genie said.

            Now Aladdin was an unselfish man.  He thought of the greater good of mankind.

            “I require three wishes,” he said.

           “That’s most irregular, O Master. I usually grant only one.  But as it’s been a long time… What is your command O Master?”

             “That all human diseases cease to be.”

         There was flash of blue lightning and a great crack of thunder.

            “It is done, O Master.”

             Aladdin felt the life returning to his limbs and he could see the distant mountains clearly. His newly-restored hair was sheltering him from the sun.

            “And your second wish, O Master?”

            “That all poverty be abolished.”

            Another flash and boom.

            “It is done, O Master”

            Aladdin felt the thickness of his wallet, now filled with hundred dollar bills, credit cards and tickets to the pantomime.

            “And your third and final wish, O Master?”

            “I want the weather to be under Man’s control, so that the deserts bloom.”

            Yet another flash and bang.

            “It is done O Master. Farewell.”

            The sky clouded over and he felt the first drops of rain.  And the second.  And the third until the downpour was a monsoon.  Green shoots miraculously appeared as water gushed down the dunes.  He was soon up to his ankles, his knees, his waist.  He climbed but the water rose faster.

Aladdin, RIP.