A Djinni Named Conscience
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However, the djinni, strange as it was, kept silent throughout this ugly scene, and it seemed to the merchant that Abd-al-Rashid’s silence was an understanding one. It may be even said, approving.
Nevertheless, it didn’t save Jammal from Abd-al-Rashid’s importunity during the next days. Who could have thought there were so many ordinary deeds that Conscience may consider improper?! And after a week, when the merchant was about to go to sleep after a day of work, the djinni appeared before him once again and sat down opposite to him. “It’s time to sum up,” announced the villain. “So, during this week you have been unfaithful to your wives twice; and it wouldn’t be so bad if you were only unfaithful – I’m a male too, I’m able to understand you! But you have spent on wenches the money that has been put aside for gifts to Fatima, Rubike and Balah, and this is truly very bad! You have bribed the mayor Abdullah, and in doing this you’ve humiliated yourself and encouraged him for further extortion; you’ve cheated on your customers, you’ve refused to loan the needy weaver Omer Chitian, you’ve been foul-mouthed, you’ve hit your junior wife on her back with a chibouk... By the way, do you know why your wives are so quarrelsome? Because they desire your love and care! How often do you share bed with each of them? Shame on you, Jammal – to avoid your faithful wives while wasting your strength and money on loose women!”
The merchant thought it best to remain silent, having decided it would be better to wait till the end of this moralising talk and then to fall asleep quietly. It wouldn’t do any good to argue with the djinni. Then again, what kind of a quiet sleep could it be?! After the troubles that had fallen on him, impersonated in his Conscience, Jammal began suffering from insomnia.
“In addition, you have committed an especially shameful deed: you’ve taught your own son to lie to customers! You have no conscience, Jammal, I have to say!”
“Now I have. You...” muttered the merchant sleepily.
“Don’t sleep!” roared the djinni so that the merchant jumped up in his bed from unexpectedness. “I haven’t told you everything yet! You’re right: I’m your Conscience. And it seems you have never had any other one. So, if you have a conscience now, you must be gnawed with remorse and conscience-smitten.”
The djinni was silent for a long time, pondering. “No, I don’t think I’ll be gnawing you,” drawled Abd-al-Rashid at last, still reflecting. “Yet to smite... to smite you would be worthwhile. I’ll beat you just a little for a start. Do you agree?”
“Hey, stop it! Don’t you dare beating me!” Jammal got anxious and for some reason began wrapping himself with the blanket: thus children try to hide from non-existent monsters that lurk in the dark room. “Get out, in the name of Allah!”
Yet neither the blanket nor the repeated Word of Liberation helped.
“Alas,” the djinni sighed heavily.
After the first blow in the ear Jammal fell from his bed head over heels. He tried to resist the vile djinni, to kick him back with his leg, and at once got one more slap and after it – a telling stroke under his ribs...
The master’s scream alarmed the entire house immediately.
The servants and wives came running in and, to their astonishment, found the merchant moaning on the floor. Jammal was gripping either at his face or at his waist, and to the anxious question: “What’s wrong with you, oh master?” he began groaning and cursing djinn and some pugnacious conscience, while alternating screams and foul words. To the timid suggestion to call for a doctor he ordered everyone to get out so unambiguously that the perplexed household had nothing else to do.
“Stop screaming,” advised the djinni to the moaning merchant when they remained alone in the room once again. “They may think you’ve gotten crazy. Just stand it, all right? Only a couple of blows more. It’s your own fault: you don’t want to do it out of your own good will, so maybe at least beating will affect you...”
With this the Slave of Justice sadly, but quite painfully struck the merchant on his back with his huge fist twice. Jammal gritted his teeth, refraining from screaming – indeed, it would be the last straw, in addition to all his troubles, to gain the reputation of madman!
In the morning, having examined his body that was aching after yesterday’s beating, the merchant, strange as it was, didn’t discover bruises or grazes, or any other traces of the punishment. It appeared that he should keep silent about the beating, and if the djinni decided to beat him again he was to tolerate it without a word. There were no traces! While people have long tongues... Jammal was not worried in vain. Soon the rumours of his oddities began spreading all over the city, and after that even if the merchant behaved quite normally those around him would certainly notice in his behaviour the signs of madness. Customers passed Jammal’s shop by, acquaintances avoided meeting him and when he invited them to visit they would refuse on various definitely invented excuses.
In his grief the merchant tried to go on a spree of drinking and revelling – in vain. A lot of people witnessed how Jammal, without any visible reason, spilled upon himself one after the other three cups of wine, forbidden by the Prophet, and then broke a big jug of the aforementioned drink, spattering with it all those assembled. And when the merchant tried to visit one dancer girl he knew, he disgraced himself much more: in the most crucial moment, when the clothes were thrown off, the Slave of Justice said plaintively: “Sorry, but I cannot allow this!” and hit the merchant straight in his crotch with all his might.
Jammal’s life became veritable hell. His faint attempts to defend himself led to nothing: the djinni was much stronger and what more – fought like a shaitan! Thus a month passed, then another one. The merchant grew thin and hollow-cheeked from such a life, notwithstanding that the djinni didn’t beat him as frequently any more and sometimes would even cheer him up: “Hold on, my friend! You are on the right way! Soon your torments will bear fruit!”
“Of course! If you beat up a man twice a day, even Iblis himself will gain the fruits of righteousness!” thought the merchant in his mind, dreaming secretly to get rid of the hated djinni. Finally he made a decision. First of all Jammal visited the renowned exorcist who lived at the south outskirts of Vlera.
“A charlatan,” announced Abd-al-Rashid confidently scarcely had they stepped at the threshold. “He doesn’t see me at all.”
“He’ll drive you away without looking at you!” objected the merchant in a whisper. Without much hope, however.
The djinni only snorted contemptuously in response.
Abd-al-Rashid proved to be right: the exorcist cavorted around till he fainted, smoked the entire house with stinky incenses, and yet the merchant returned home together with his Conscience. Nevertheless, now Jammal was clutching straws. He visited all the sorcerers, quacksalvers and hermits in the area, turned to a mullah, to a doctor... And he saw they didn’t believe him. They pretended, trying to draw as much money as they could out of the insane simpleton. The merchant no longer needed the djinni’s acrimonious comments to understand this.