The Golden Fish — The Child's Garden

We had reached the point in our story of the golden fish, last time, where the poor fisherman Abu Abdallah came back from the sea, where the fish had given him a new hut. And we told how his wife, Umm Abdallah, was not pleased, and how she met him with screaming and insults.

Why? That is what we wanted to know. And the answer is that Umm Abdallah was greedy: nothing would content her. She asked Abu Abdallah to go back a fourth time to the sea, to ask the fish this time to change her from a peasant woman into a great princess, with servants and retainers and motorcars and horses and all the rest. Abu Abdallah was astonished, but he did not want to trouble her mind, for he was sensible and obedient. So he went back to the shore, sad and downcast, and cried out as usual, "My little golden fish, my little golden fish!" And the fish answered him: "Yes, my dear friend, what do you want? I am ready to give you everything you ask." So Abu Abdallah said to her: "Do not blame me, my dear fish. What am I to do? Umm Abdallah is still not satisfied; she wants to become a princess. And if she does not become a princess, I am afraid she will take offense and divorce me. Ah, my little fish, if you only knew how she screamed and shrieked and raged at me..."

The little fish answered him: "Never you mind, Abu Abdallah. Go back home, and you will find your wife has become a great princess, just as she asked."

The fisherman went back home, and he had hardly drawn near it when he found it had become a great palace, surrounded by gardens, with servants guarding it on every side. And when he entered through the iron gate into the courtyard of the palace, he saw Umm Abdallah in a gown of red silk, with jewels and pearls gleaming on her breast and on her head, and around her maidservants in beautiful white dresses. So he said to her: "Good day to you, Umm Abdallah. And here you are, become a princess... What more can you want?"

Umm Abdallah laughed in his face, and turned to one of the servants and called to him, pointing to her husband Abu Abdallah: "Take this one to the stable, to look after my horses. I never want to see him again after today..."

And so it was that the servants and everyone in the palace began to laugh at him and make fun of him, because he was wearing plain clothes, such as poor fishermen wear. And his wife Umm Abdallah, who had now become a princess, began to laugh at him too, and to drive him out, as if he were less than a servant.

There was nothing for Abu Abdallah to do but go back to the fish; he wept before her and told her of his state. And toward evening he drew near the palace, and found that it had become again, as it was before, a wretched hut — and Umm Abdallah, in her tattered clothes, with her long stick, sitting on the ground.

And such was the reward of greed.