Aladdin was kind of a mess. Lazy, stole fruit, lied to his mom, dodged work. His dad was a tailor who worked himself to death. His mom wove cotton and sold it at market and kept them alive.
A guy showed up when Aladdin was sixteen. Called himself Uncle. Gifts, money, big smiles. Aladdin didn't have an uncle. But free stuff makes it easy to not ask questions.
The "uncle" was a sorcerer. He needed something from a cave that only Aladdin could get. He didn't care about the kid.
Desert. Fire. Magic words. The ground opens. Stairs going down.
"Go in. Don't touch the gold. There's a lamp at the end. Bring it to me."
Aladdin went. Walked past rooms of gold. In an underground garden, the fruit on the trees looked like colored glass. He stuffed his pockets.
Found the lamp. Dented, ugly.
Climbed back up. The sorcerer was reaching in.
"Give me the lamp."
"Pull me up first."
"The lamp."
The mask dropped. The sorcerer sealed the cave.
A few days in the dark. He rubbed the lamp without thinking. Smoke poured out, got bright. The Genie. Huge.
"I serve whoever holds the lamp. What do you want?"
Aladdin, sixteen, trapped underground, scared: "I want to go home."
Not money. Not revenge. Home.
He told his mom. She was freaked out by the lamp but it made food and they were hungry.
He should have stopped there.
But he saw the princess. One look.
He used the lamp. The colored glass turned out to be jewels. The Genie built a palace overnight. Aladdin showed up in silk. Married the princess.
Her name was Badroulbadour. Smart, sharp. Watched him the way you watch someone whose story doesn't add up.
The sorcerer tracked the lamp and came back as a lamp seller. "New lamps for old!"
Badroulbadour didn't know about the lamp. Aladdin never told her. Because telling her meant admitting all of this was built on a thing he found in a cave, not on him.
She traded it.
The sorcerer took the palace, the princess, everything.
Aladdin came home to empty ground.
He found her through a second genie from a ring he'd forgotten about. Smaller, weaker.
Badroulbadour handled it. She put poison in the sorcerer's wine, smiled while he drank it, and watched him die. Because Aladdin hadn't, so she did.
Lamp back. Palace back.
That night he sat looking at the lamp. Told her everything. The cave, the Genie, all of it.
She didn't leave.
"Then I need to know where this is at all times. And don't leave it by a window."
They used it less after that. His mom moved in. Brought her loom. Set it up by the window and kept weaving because a marble floor wasn't going to change who she was.
Goodnight to Aladdin.
Goodnight to the Genie. Nobody ever wishes him free.
Goodnight to Badroulbadour, who handled it.
Goodnight.