Abu al-Qasim and the Slippers That Always Came Back (from One Thousand and One Nights)

In the old city of Baghdad, there lived a merchant named Abu al-Qasim. He was not a bad man. But he was the most careful man with money that anyone had ever met. He never bought anything new if he could fix something old.

And the oldest thing he owned was a pair of slippers.

Oh, those slippers! Once, long ago, they had been fine leather slippers. But Abu al-Qasim had worn them every single day for twenty years. Whenever a hole appeared, he sewed on a patch. Whenever a patch wore out, he sewed a patch on the patch. Now the slippers were more patches than slipper. They were lumpy and bumpy. They were heavy as two bricks. And when he walked, they went clomp, clomp, clomp down the street.

The children of Baghdad would giggle when they heard him coming. "Here come the slippers!" they would whisper. "And Abu al-Qasim is inside them!"

His friends told him, "Abu al-Qasim, you are not poor. Please buy yourself some new slippers."

But Abu al-Qasim always said, "Why buy new ones? These still work perfectly well."

One day, Abu al-Qasim went to the public bathhouse to wash. He left his slippers by the door with everyone else's shoes. When he came out, a kind judge was also leaving. The judge had a beautiful new pair of red slippers. In the steam and the bustle, Abu al-Qasim did not look closely. He slipped his feet into the red slippers and walked home, thinking, "How light my feet feel today!"

The judge came out and found only a lumpy, bumpy, patched-up pair of slippers by the door. Everybody in Baghdad knew whose slippers those were. Soon, there was a knock on Abu al-Qasim's door.

"I am terribly sorry," said Abu al-Qasim, very red in the face. He gave back the red slippers, and he paid the judge a little fine for the trouble. Then he carried his old slippers home. "These slippers cost me money today," he grumbled. "I will get rid of them."

So he walked down to the river Tigris and threw them into the water. Splash! "There," he said. "Goodbye, slippers."

But the next day, a fisherman pulled in his net. Inside it, tangled with the fish, was a heavy, lumpy pair of slippers. The nails in the patches had torn a big hole in his net. "Everybody knows whose slippers these are," said the fisherman. He walked to Abu al-Qasim's house and tossed them in through the open window.

Inside the window was the shelf where Abu al-Qasim kept his jars of rosewater, which he was going to sell at the market. The heavy slippers landed on the shelf. Crash! Tinkle! Every jar broke. The whole house smelled like a rose garden, but the rosewater was gone.

Abu al-Qasim sat down on the floor and held his head. He had to pay the fisherman for a new net, too. "These slippers!" he said. "I must get rid of them for good."

That night, he dug a hole in the garden to bury them. But his neighbor heard the digging. "What is he doing out there in the dark?" the neighbor wondered, and he called the night watchman. Abu al-Qasim had to explain everything to the watchman, and the watchman laughed so hard that he had to sit down. Abu al-Qasim did not bury the slippers after all, because he was too embarrassed.

The next morning, he walked far out of the city and dropped the slippers down a drain by the road. "Now they are gone," he said.

But the slippers were so big and so lumpy that they blocked the drain. Water backed up and flooded the street. The workers who came to fix the drain pulled out a big, soggy, patched-up pair of slippers. "Everybody knows whose slippers these are," they said, and they brought them back to Abu al-Qasim. He had to pay the workers for their trouble, too.

Now Abu al-Qasim was really worried. He put the slippers on his roof to dry in the sun while he thought about what to do. But a neighbor's playful puppy saw them. It thought they were a wonderful toy. It grabbed one in its mouth and ran across the rooftops. Then it dropped the slipper, and the slipper fell, plop, onto a basket of eggs at the market below. Every single egg cracked.

Abu al-Qasim paid for the eggs. He walked home slowly. He sat down on his doorstep with the slippers in his lap. He looked at them for a long time.

"I kept you because I did not want to spend money on new slippers," he said quietly. "But you have cost me a fine for the judge. A new net for the fisherman. A shelf of rosewater. Payment for the workers. A whole basket of eggs. You have cost me more than a hundred new pairs of slippers."

Just then, the children who used to giggle at him came walking by. They saw him sitting sadly on the step. One little girl sat down beside him. "Are you all right?" she asked.

Abu al-Qasim told her the whole story. The children tried very hard not to laugh, and then they laughed anyway. And then, to his own surprise, Abu al-Qasim laughed too. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks.

"Well," he said, wiping his eyes, "I think it is time for new slippers."

The very next day, Abu al-Qasim went to the shoemaker and bought a new pair of soft, comfortable slippers. His feet felt as light as feathers. He bought some new sweets for the children, too.

And the old slippers? He did not throw them away again. He filled them with soil and planted bright red flowers in them. He put them by his front door, where everyone could see.

And whenever anyone in Baghdad held on to something old for far too long, their friends would smile and say, "Remember Abu al-Qasim's slippers."