It was a curious feeling to go up the shallow cedar steps and enter the place where he had spent so much of his childhood. The smell of it, the cedarwood and the spices and the hairy, oily scent of carpets, was so familiar that if he shut his eyes, he could imagine he was ten years old again, playing behind a roll of carpet while his father bargained with a customer. But with his eyes open, Abdullah had no such illusion. His father’s first wife’s sister had a regrettable fondness for bright purple. The walls, the trellis screens, the chairs for customers, the cashier’s table, and even the cashbox had all been painted Fatima’s favorite color. Fatima came to meet him in a dress of the same color.

“Why, Abdullah! How prompt you are and how smart you look!” she said, and her manner said she had expected him to arrive late and in rags.

“He looks almost as if he were dressed for his wedding!” Assif said, advancing, too, with a smile on his thin, bad-tempered face.

It was so rare to see Assif smiling that Abdullah thought for a moment that Assif had ricked his neck and was grimacing with pain. Then Hakim sniggered, which made Abdullah realize what Assif had just said. To his annoyance, he found he was blushing furiously. He was forced to bow politely in order to hide his face.

“There’s no need to make the boy blush!” Fatima cried. That, of course, made Abdullah’s blush worse. “Abdullah, what is this rumor we hear that you are suddenly planning to deal in pictures?”

“And selling the best of your stock to make room for the pictures,” added Hakim.

Abdullah ceased to blush. He saw he had been summoned here to be criticized. He was sure of it when Assif added reproachfully, “Our feelings are somewhat hurt, son of my father’s niece’s husband, that you did not seem to think we could oblige you by taking a few carpets off your hands.”

“Dear relatives,” said Abdullah. “I could not, of course, sell you my carpets. My aim was to make a profit, and I could hardly mulct you, whom my father loved.” He was so annoyed that he turned around to go away again, only to find that Hakim had quietly shut and barred the doors.

“No need to stay open,” Hakim said. “Let us be just family here.”

“The poor boy!” said Fatima. “Never has he had more need of a family to keep his mind in order!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Assif. “Abdullah, some rumors in the Bazaar state that you have gone mad. We do not like this.”

“He’s certainly been behaving oddly,” Hakim agreed. “We don’t like such talk connected to a respectable family like ours.”

This was worse than usual. Abdullah said, “There is nothing wrong with my mind. I know just what I am doing. And my aim is to cease giving you any chance to criticize me, probably by tomorrow. Meanwhile, Hakim told me to come here because you have found the prophecy that was made at my birth. Is this correct, or was it merely an excuse?” He had never been so rude to his father’s first wife’s relations before, but he was angry enough to feel they deserved it.

Oddly enough, instead of being angry with Abdullah in return, all three of his father’s first wife’s relations began hurrying excitedly around the emporium.

“Now where is that box?” said Fatima.

“Find it, find it!” said Assif. “It is the very words of the fortuneteller his poor father brought to the bedside of his second wife an hour after Abdullah’s birth. He must see it!”

“Written in your own father’s hand,” Hakim said to Abdullah. “The greatest treasure for you.”

“Here it is!” said Fatima, triumphantly pulling a carved wooden box off a high shelf. She gave the box to Assif, who thrust it into Abdullah’s hands.

“Open it, open it!” they all three cried excitedly.

Abdullah put the box down on the purple cashier’s table and sprang the catch. The lid went back, bringing a musty smell from inside, which was perfectly plain and empty apart from a folded yellowish paper.

“Get it out! Read it!” said Fatima in even greater excitement.

Abdullah could not see what the fuss was about, but he unfolded the paper. It had a few lines of writing on it, brown and faded and definitely his father’s. He turned toward the hanging lamp with it. Now that Hakim had shut the main doors, the general purpleness of the emporium made it hard to see in there.

“He can barely see!” said Fatima.

Assif said, “No wonder. There’s no light in here. Bring him into the room at the back. The overhead shutters are open there.”

He and Hakim took hold of Abdullah’s shoulders and pushed and hustled him toward the back of the shop. Abdullah was so busy trying to read the pale and scribbly writing of his father that he let them push him until he was positioned under the big overhead louvers in the living room behind the emporium. That was better. Now he knew why his father had been so disappointed in him. The writing said:

These are the words of the wise fortune-teller: “This son of yours will not follow you in your trade. Two years after your death, while he is still a very young man, he will be raised above all others in this land. As Fate decrees it, so I have spoken.”

My son’s fortune is a great disappointment to me. Let Fate send me other sons to follow in my trade, or I have wasted forty gold pieces on this prophecy.

“As you see, a great future awaits you, dear boy,” said Assif.

Somebody giggled.

Abdullah looked up from the paper, a little bemused. There seemed to be a lot of scent in the air.

The giggle came again, two of it, from in front of him.

Abdullah’s eyes snapped forward. He felt them bulge. Two extremely fat young women stood in front of him. They met his bulging eyes and giggled again, coyly. Both were dressed to kill in shiny satin and ballooning gauze—pink on the right, yellow on the left one—and hung with more necklaces and bracelets than seemed probable. In addition, the pink one, who was fattest, had a pearl dangling on her forehead, just below her carefully fizzed hair. The yellow one, who was only just not fattest, wore a sort of amber tiara and had even frizzier hair. Both wore a very large amount of makeup, which was, in both cases, a severe error.

As soon as they were sure Abdullah’s attention was on them—and it was; he was riveted with horror—each girl drew a veil from behind her ample shoulders—a pink veil on the left and a yellow on the right—and draped it chastely across her head and face. “Greetings, dear husband!” they chorused from beneath the veils.

“What!” exclaimed Abdullah.

“We veil ourselves,” said the pink one.

“Because you should not look at our faces,” said the yellow one.

“Until we are married,” finished the pink.

“There must be some mistake!” said Abdullah.

“Not in the least,” said Fatima. “These are my niece’s two nieces who are here to marry you. Didn’t you hear me say I was going to look out for a couple of wives for you?”

The two nieces giggled again. “He’s ever so handsome,” said the yellow one.

After a fairly long pause, in which he swallowed hard and did his best to control his feelings, Abdullah said politely, “Tell me, O relatives of my father’s first wife, have you known of the prophecy which was made at my birth for a long time?”

“Ages,” said Hakim. “Do you take us for fools?”

“Your dear father showed it to us,” said Fatima, “at the time he made his will.”

“And naturally we are not prepared to let your great good fortune take you away from the family,” Assif explained. “We waited only for the moment when you ceased to follow your good father’s trade—this surely being the signal for the Sultan to make you a vizier or invite you to command his armies or maybe to elevate you in some other way. Then we took steps to ensure that we shared in your good fortune. These two brides of yours are closely related to all three of us. You will naturally not neglect us as you rise. So, dear boy, it only remains for me to introduce you to the magistrate, who, as you see, stands ready to marry you.”