Servants and Super-Servants

I

IT was in the Far East that Aladdin, Gift of God, appeared and asked for a job. I was nailing up a box of specimens — pheasants which I had found in the North — when he walked in, bowed with gentle, melancholy dignity, and informed me that he was A. Deen, best of servants.

I was not inclined to believe this; but his personality defeated every objection. Not that he was prepossessing in appearance. He was small, though young and straight, with brown eyes, a chocolate skin, and an extraordinary moustache, — ragged, with a decided droop at the corners of his mouth. His personality, however, was an independent possession. It was impressive, persuasive. He had an almost theatrical appreciation of this fact. He used no other argument, offered no further evidence.

I needed a good servant. I wanted time in which to estimate him. I asked his name.

He told me, but I did not know then and I do not know now. It might have been Háladdin, yet it was not unlike Jamaldeen. ‘Gentlemen call me A. Deen,’ he added.

I qualified at once, and no doubt acquired caste in his eyes by saying, ‘A. Deen, get me a hammer and nails.’

‘Going, master,’ he said, and bowed so that I was enormously impressed with the seriousness of the service I had demanded.

Such was Aladdin’s personality.

When he returned in a few minutes from some Chinese junk-shop, he brought with him a spike six inches long and a hammerlet which would hardly have driven home the smallest tack. I thanked him. I was well pleased. I was so well pleased that I packed them at once with my pheasants and shipped them home.

A. Deen stood by and assured me that he was indispensable to my trip, or to any trip for that matter. He was quiet about it, but he was firm. He mentioned the salary which he would consider, with assurances that he was a competent person. He insisted on this. So I gave him a pheasant and kept a discreet watch to see how he would deal with it. He made a perfect skin.

‘ You are engaged, Deen,’ I said. But I had been saddled with bad servants and I knew what it meant, so I said to myself, ‘A. Deen for politeness — but this is Aladdin, Gift of God.’

And this proved to be far more than an etymological truth. For Aladdin was not only trustworthy, capable, loyal — a super-servant in the fullest sense: he was the living incarnation of all the best points in his people. It was through him that I saw them and learned to know something of the significant things in their lives. One cannot in a short time, or in any length of time, discover the habits, the motives, and the thousands of emotions which govern a community or a tribe of people, but one can gather unlimited information about the particular thoughts, motives, hatreds, good and evil tendencies, which govern one individual. The chip from the diamond is always a diamond no matter how small the facets or what specialized combination of colors it may chance to throw off in the sunlight.

So Aladdin was worth in many ways the price he had put on his head: a modest enough price for the West, but a somewhat pretentious one for the East.

It was from Aladdin that I learned some of those subtleties and niceties which exist between master and servant. This is a complex relation wherein each person is for a long time on probation. In civilization the difficulties are minimized, but in camp and on long mountain and jungle trips it is a test which involves strength, good temper, tact — all the elements of real diplomacy. It is a bond as intimate as friendship, with strange inequalities and reservations. It has laws, conventions, and mysterious boundaries. These are absolute.

It was Aladdin who showed me the gulf between servants and super-servants. This is a chasm as deep as the racial chasm between two tribes who live side by side, but with two codes of conduct, two sacred standards of government, of morality, of individual faith.

In civilized countries, there are good and bad servants, and this is the end of the matter. But in savage or semi-barbarous countries, there are servants and super-servants, and this is but the beginning of many things. Aladdin, himself, was the exceptional individual who was filled with a desire to separate himself from the laziness and sloth of his people, to break away from them, to see and to learn at any cost. He was moved by that inexplicable leaven which operates in any tribe or community to save one individual from the monotonous, careless existence which holds so many others chained to one faith, to one narrow, insignificant daily routine. It requires courage for him to put aside his caste, to overthrow his traditions, and humbly and modestly to make himself useful to the first white traveler who will give him something more than money for his service. It is not a brave, adventurous moment when John Perkins, butler at large in London, tenders his recommendations at the servant’s door of some plutocratic mansion — he is true to his caste, his training, and his instincts. But it is an eventful hour when Aladdin, Singhalese Malay boy, Mohammedan, presents himself with proper obeisance to a white man from over the seas and asks for a passport to the world.

So Aladdin, servant, was the superior Singhalese of his village. I found there no other person of his clan whose ideals and visions and desires were not well within the circle of his caste. Ancestry had set a high wall around every Singhalese child and man and woman who passed me in the streets. Each one walked as his father and his father’s father had walked before him; talked, idled, worked, and played with the mannerisms and mentality of his great grandfather.

They were forever set apart. They were under the heel of some fixed unwritten law. Yet on their very doorstep a goodly share of the Eastern world parades up and down each day at dusk — it is a human tide that rises every time the sun sets along the seafront of the Galle Face Hotel. The flotsam and jetsam of the East is swept along before it. Beyond, the tropical colors in the western sky are inlaid with bands of gold — and out of the heart of the glow the cool salty breeze sweeps inward from the sea. Big breakers roll in unceasingly, and patient little bullocks tug forever at big, two-wheeled carts. The drive overflows with rickshaws, carriages, and motors filled with all the peoples of the East. They touch in the crowd, but the barriers of religion and of caste move on invisible feet beside them. Mohammedan women in latticed gharrys peer out discreetly at the chocolate and burnt-umber Tamil and Singhalese girls, at Bengali, Burmese, Javanese, and Chinese folk. A stray Ghurka makes a path for himself at one side. And everywhere, in doorways and on the turf, the Afghan money-lenders keep watch over the tide of life as it rises and falls. No face escapes them; their patience is endless. The costliest rickshaw may come to them on the morrow, the dirtiest Malay vender may return to them within the hour. For money is the axle of the wheel whereever there is a mint; and it is a profitable axle for the Afghans. The interest they charge is eighteen per cent.

It was from such a human ferment that Aladdin saved himself and went asking for a job. It was from this that he gained the courage to cut himself off from his people, to set aside their laws and make himself an outcast in his own land. For the Singhalese do not change, therefore they do not forget and cannot forgive. New blood has poured in from the outside, new laws and new faiths have claimed the driveway by the sea, but the Singhalese give no ground and do not stand aside. They watch and they wait, but they watch with peaceful, untroubled faces, and the tall, circular tortoise-shell comb that frames their head is the comb of their ancestors and is cherished accordingly.

II

It is only when I look back that I realize Aladdin’s rightful place among the many servants who worked with me on my trip. He stands so far in the foreground that I lose sight of those who are in line behind him. This is an unconscious injustice. But it was Aladdin who brought me to a fuller understanding of the men with whom I worked. My conscious mind was with my pheasants; I had little time to search out the individual and racial differences which separated those around me. It was Aladdin’s theatrical personality which was the necessary stimulant to set in order the long chain of contrasts which were placed before me daily. I thought of the servants and super-servants who had been with me before, watched those around me, speculated upon the character and kind of those who would go with me to the countries which lay at the last of my trip. I saw them all in the new perspective which Aladdin had supplied.

There was Cookie, whose rightful name was Mutt. He appeared at Kuching, Borneo. It was one evening at dusk when I was sitting on the veranda of the rest-house. The tropical night was cool, and behind me in the bungalow the eccentric China boy was pattering about softly from room to room, while I was circumspectly smiling over the news that a cable had come in from Singapore asking accommodations for seven hundred tourists. If I moved out, Kuching could furnish two rooms for this Caucasian horde — no more.

The air was heavy with the scent of nocturnal flowers, and the sounds that traveled with the light wind were the sounds of the East. The clang of gongs from a Chinese joss-house saluted the twilight; beyond, a noisy and colorful hubbub proclaimed a Malay wedding. A Sikh policeman called at intervals to another in the service and was answered in kind — a deep and resonant exchange of mysterious commonplaces. And far away, from the shadows, subdued, inevitable, minor, came the hollow rhythm of a Dyak tom-tom.

A dark figure moved in the pathway against the darker trees. It was Cookie hastening to salaam at the bungalow steps, to offer himself for faithful service. He said that he was a good cook, and he did not lie. But although he made a free comment on his character and his personal wares, he did not offer a full explanation. It was several days after his enrollment that an important fact appeared in a casual conversation. It seemed that Cookie had a habit of going mad at every full moon. At certain times he had been uncommonly violent and had been put in irons. Cookie’s gentle manner and epicurean sauces weighed against this tardy information; also, it was a late hour to find another cook more sane and equally competent. The lunar powers, too, favored him, for nightly no more than a slender crescent of silver showed through the dark branches. So the matter was put by with little comment. Although, as a matter of fact, as the moon waxed full, Cookie began to ail, and on the last few days of the return trip he was hardly able to sit up.

A more faithful servant I have never had; he possessed a kindly, gentlemanly disposition which interfered in no way with his cooking. His chief physical distinction was his carriage. On the platform which served in camp for a table and chairs, he hopped about for all the world like a great awkward hornbill, while his gaudy sarong twisted and flapped and fell in folds about him like a striped flag. Mentally, he was forever taken up with two great worries. First, there was my incurable foolishness in paying good money for such useless possessions as dead pheasants, civet-cats, and snakes; second, there was that ever-present task of finding proper eggs. The Dyaks from their love of high game have a habit of saving, of treasuring, every egg within reach until it becomes a decidedly improper food for a more civilized taste. This troubled Cookie sorely. I believe that he mourned in secrecy over this tremendous tribal degeneration.

Perhaps he felt some of that helpless resignation which assails every alien when he comes unexpectedly upon the demoralizing customs that prevail in a community which is undergoing a moral and spiritual disintegration. It was just before my inland trip that I experienced this. I made a brief sojourn with the Malanos, a nondescript Malay-Dyak tribe, and saw there what corruption untimely contact with civilization may bring about. Their moral unfitness was manifest in the very atmosphere; it was proclaimed loudly in their dress. Bare legs were evidence of the savage Dyak influence; but everywhere the misunderstood canons of European fashion struggled for expression. There was something pitiful, pathetic, unbelievably naïve, in those emerald-green ties, those isolated celluloid collars, and those sleeveless cuffs which made the widest and most fantastic of bracelets: unique links in the first chain forged by a distant civilization. But one must learn tolerance in such matters of morals and apparel, must learn to readjust quickly every standard to meet the new conditions of every new land. This it is not always easy to do.

With the Malanos, as with others, whatever was evil went hand in hand with all that was good. They were generous, hospitable, and my arrival was the signal for them to invent elaborate entertainment to insure my pleasure. The foremost of these events was their remarkable wrestling dance. In this, the partners, or rather opponents, sidle one about the other with the curious, lithe, serpentine glidings of the Malayan dance, until with a sudden movement they clinch, exerting all their strength in this hold for a fraction of time. The moment one dancer falls the two of them remain absolutely posed, no matter how strained the position, how false the balance. Then, gradually, they move softly, sinuously into the figures which are the prelude to this climax. Such a dance contains the one great dramatic element — surprise. There can be no formula for the tableau which marks the high point of emotion; each time it is a new grouping, a new portrayal of that fighting instinct which underlies every phase of existence. It gives a quality of spontaneity and of truth which a logical sequence of steps and posturings could never achieve. This indicates a keen, natural dramatic sense, but little touched by those laws and conventions which override civilized art.

When the dance was done there was the cock-fight, or rather a century of cock-fights, to be reckoned with. For two hundred of these luckless creatures ‘gladiatored ’ bravely, while an appreciative audience held matting up to its chin to keep from being bespattered with blood. Which goes to prove that hospitality is a hydra-headed creature whose spirit is sometimes finer than the faces it wears.

III

It was some time later — at Fort Kapti — that Cookie, but recently departed from such festivities, was fated to encounter a noteworthy rival in his particular art. This usurper was a Chinaman serving a life sentence for poisoning six people. He found no favor in Cookie’s eyes; he was too good a cook. Cookie would have preferred to have the emphasis laid on his intrinsic criminality; but we ate his meals and approved his service notwithstanding. It was not necessarily logical that, having poisoned six, he should harbor further ambitions.

But it was from this moment that Cookie’s superior position suffered. He was submitted to all manner of petty contrasts: new servants came in and obscured him, lessened his influence. Foremost were two Malays, Matélly and Umar. Matélly was chief of one part of the crew, and he carried many minor responsibilities on his shoulders. He made quick decisions, and was unfailingly resourceful. He knew the treacherousness of the rapids and understood the recklessness of the spirit who watched over the river. He was, also, an indispensable member of my interpreting quartette. I spoke English to Hodgart — super-assistant in this early part of the inland trip — who repeated the sentence in Hindustani to Matélly, who in turn notified the Dyak in his own language. After due consideration, the Dyak would, presumably, start his reply in my direction, but when it would reach home via Matélly and Hodgart it would usually be so far off key that I would give up in despair and resort to signs and sketches. This was slow work to find out the price of eggs, or the haunt of a pheasant, but the natural intuitions and active imaginations of these savages were admirable substitutes for the common language which was lacking.

Umar, who shared Matélly’s prestige, was but one of the thirteen paddlers of the canoe. He differed in no essential from the twelve with whom he worked except that he wore a sarong and the other dozen Dyaks did not. But one day he became a personality of note, achieved a career in one hour. He became a money-lender, a moneylender of magnitude who diminished the glory of the great Afghans in Ceylon. It was all a matter of good Straits dollars, which I had found were as useful as mirrors and scissors for trading. I had determined to send back to the last post for an extra supply. It was decided that Umar should return for this purpose. He did not want to go, and pointed to the river, which was swollen and running high between the muddy banks. When I insisted, he asked how much money was needed. I thought his curiosity impertinent, and was on the point of using other measures for the situation, when he said quietly, in the vernacular, that he could lend me one hundred silver dollars. And straightway he spread out the small folds of his sarong and poured on the ground a flood of silver. It was his entire worldly wealth. I gave him a signed note, duly technical, legal and binding, which he hid in one of those magical and bottomless folds.

This was the only outward sign of my indebtedness to Umar. But the Straits dollars were the least of the matter. Umar, in suddenly becoming an individual, made each and every paddler a separate personality. Before, I had sometimes been at a loss to tell one from another; they had not been long with me, and it is easier to consider many people as a crowd and to estimate them accordingly, than to set apart each unit and judge it alone. However, through the indirect grace of Umar, it was not long before we became friends. These Dyaks, unlike the Singhalese, showed interest in the work at hand and lent themselves readily to whatever task called for their help. They had no idea what I wanted with pheasants, but they loved the hunt and were eager to put all their knowledge and skill at the service of Burong-orang, the bird-man. Science was an abstraction far beyond their experience and imagination, but they speculated among themselves on my motives and the underlying purpose of the trip. They saw the bodies thrown away — plainly food was not the object. Some were certain that the feathers and bones were to be used as medicine, or at any rate were to be sold, in time, for some indefinite purpose. Others held, and these were in the majority, that the feathers were to be used for head-dresses. I was tracking headdresses through the marshes and the jungle, and some day, at some auspicious hour, I would take them back to the white man’s land, — for the men to wear. For it goes without saying that such things are not for women.

These Dyaks could build a camp or break it with great speed and thoroughness. When the river bank was muddy, causeways were built in an hour. They were superior woodsmen, and knew the secrets of the jungle. They would follow or they would wait at the signal, and they asked no questions. But they would look wistfully at my gun when game came within sight, and their faces would be troubled and overcast when I elected to watch and not to shoot. At night, about the campfires, they talked about this, rehearsed all that had taken place, expressing a gentle indignation and a profound wonder. A bush would represent the ruoi or argus, the sempidan or fire-backed pheasant which I had hunted; a blow-pipe, my gun. I would see them sometimes absorbed in this drama. Once, I asked Matélly about it. He told me that it had been decided that I was an unaccountable hunter, but that they respected whatever I chose to do, since it was evident that I, too, was governed by signs and by omens. Doubtless, the shooting of my pheasants was no light matter, and if a white butterfly crossed the sun at the moment the burong appeared, then Tuan was more than justified in saving his fire. In this tolerance, in this withholding of judgment, I saw what was finest in the Dyak character. What they did not understand they did not therefore condemn.

As for Cookie, he could not conceal his contempt for these foolish superstitions. Eking out his very scanty English with Malay words, he would hold forth at length on the colossal absurdity of an entire village tearing up its houses and moving elsewhere because a certain sunbird alighted on a certain spot at a certain time. Very, very bad, was Cookie’s verdict, when all the world knows that the success of housebuilding depends wholly on the moon — that fatal moon of madness — and that there are, at best, but three proper days in the calendar for moving.

But there was one Dyak in the crew about whom Cookie had little to say. This was Drojak, the gentlest and kindliest of all the great savages in Borneo, who worked for the success of the trip with patience, loyalty, and eternal vigilance. It happened one morning that Drojak was attacked by twelve men from a neighboring tribe. When he returned from this encounter, eight heads were hanging from his girdle. He said little about the matter, but from that hour he was no longer Drojak, paddler, but Drojak-no-spear-can-touch-him. He was a quiet, slow-thinking man who liked to sit in silence watching the campfire, where the light played over his dark skin and turned it to bronze, and made two little bright spots of flame when it touched the heavy brass earrings which hung almost to his shoulders. But, at rare intervals, he could be persuaded to reënact the fight which had brought him his new native name. Then, his quickness was marvelous, his hands and his arms moved faster than the eye, every lunge and thrust was the very essence of savagery, until at the last he would give a final whoop and burst into a hearty laugh. At such times, Cookie sat by in silence; the laws and customs and superstitions of the headhunters were no concern of his.

IV

At last, when the pheasant work in Borneo was done, the time had come for the men to go back to their tribes and for Cookie to return to his cockfights and the ways of his clan. This is one of the big tragedies of a trip. In civilization, friends may come and go and still the thread is not broken, but when the jungle reaches out and reclaims its people, the whole delicate fabric is unraveled and cannot be woven again.

But work does not stop for such personal affairs. So, at Myitkyina, I assembled new servants for the months in Burma that lay ahead. And straightway Aladdin and a usurping Cookie he had discovered by the roadside rose up and claimed the high place of power. Cookie the Second hailed from nowhere. He wore a fez and Aladdin mentioned Mohammedanism for reference; but these were small clues. His face had a murderous expression which did not change by day or night. He would tramp along a muddy road for a half day with a bundle of crossbow loot, and he would squat for hours before his cooking-pots in the heart of camp, but he scowled villainously through it all. However, his waffles were perfect, and neither he nor Aladdin had claimed anything for his character.

But when the Irrawaddy was crossed, Cookie was but one among hundreds and hundreds of strange and baffling personalities. In this territory, every step showed the Caucasian influence yielding ground to the Mongolian. And wherever there is Mongolian control, there is also mystery and secrecy. Hidden motives lie behind the smallest trivialities of the day. Men pass by on the road like shadows, and their faces tell nothing of what is in their hearts.

The whole country was in a state of upheaval and unrest; along the border, marauding Chinese and bands of hybrid robbers were having things pretty much their own way. Therefore, the English government added a guard of six Ghurkas, or Nepalese, to the small caravan of servants and super-servants which I had gathered together for Burma. These formed an imposing right flank for the expedition; they were well-trained men, natural fighters, and the only mercenaries allowed to wear their native side-arms or kokries — a subtle compliment to their courageous little independent state.

They were keenly interested in one phase of the pheasant work, and on every occasion would ask the loan of my shot-gun, that they might hunt with it. The pheasants they brought in were few, but the excuses they offered were many. Monkeys and various creatures of goodly size were shot down by mistake, or so I was told when each new assignment was duly brought to camp. And every day my guard would mourn over the stolid natives who would not fight. They would have liked a modest battle on the doorstep of each tribe. When my shot-gun would disappear into the underbrush, there was always a gambling chance that a luckless native would be suddenly and surreptitiously adjudged a pheasant. Therefore, I welcomed the monkeys and other such attendant victims.

In many countries there is a sharp line drawn between the master and the servant. Superiority and a corresponding inferiority are automatically established by the relationship itself. In Burma this was not true. Every man in my camp was at my service at any hour of the day or night, but these men were of good caste. They were governed in all that they did by their own subtle, complex laws which no artificial conditions could destroy or overthrow.

The Ghurkas, of course, ate by themselves and from their own dishes. One day I thoughtlessly reached over their pot of rice for a crossbow which my syce held. Aladdin, close beside me, whispered, ‘Careful of rice, master.’ Then I remembered and drew back quickly. All of us laughed together and I went away; but I watched from my tent and saw them throw out the rice, which was polluted by my touch. The pot, itself, was thoroughly cleansed. They would have to wait hours for the new rice to cook, and they were hungry and tired from a long march. But this mattered little when placed side by side with a spiritual scruple.

In this neither offense nor resentment played a part. It was simply the law and the law is sacred. Next day I brought in a sheep and summoned the corporal to kill it in his own way that he and his men might share it. He saluted, smiled, and we became better friends. If superiority and inferiority entered into this, we divided them equally between us.

It was in this camp that I again formed my interpreting quartette. The members were Aladdin, a Burmese, myself, and a native Kachin, or whoever the fourth might chance to be. The results were weird and wonderful.

‘Are there pheasants here?’ I would ask.

‘Snow come sometime,’ would be the answer.

With the natives as a whole, there was no such mental quickness as had characterized the Dyaks. Signs, gestures, sketches were nothing to them. It was only by dwelling on the names of animals and pheasants, by repeating them over and over and showing a handful of money, that we could coerce the less stupid into some meagre understanding of what was afoot. I had no help from them as guides and little as collectors.

Mongrel Kachin and Chinese tribes were the worst with whom I had dealings. They were moving inland to escape the punishment which was to be meted out to them for the borderline disturbances, and we were encamped directly in the line of flight. Their appearance was the signal for a minor skirmish. Twice they rolled down rocks on the trail as we were passing, and more than once they hid themselves on the upper hillside and took pot-shots at the camp with poisoned arrows. Some of the arrows would strike the tent and set jangling the native swords which hung at the back. These missiles were long, slender, feathered with a bit of folded frond tissue. The heads were barbed and the necks channeled so that they would break off easily. The poison was aconite or tetanus germs. This is evidence of an uncouth and evil scientific knowledge; the men depend upon cultivated gardens of tetanus and in some way have the infected earth at hand, or already spread upon the arrows, so that their victim not only faces inevitable death, but dies slowly and in terrible agony.

While the Ghurkas kept faith delicately but surely with their secret codes and remembered their caste at all times, the natives showed no such fineness. They did not openly resent our presence and were at times friendly, yet they made no effort to conceal the fact that they placed no trust in the influence we might exert over the spirit world of their region. They openly propitiated their Nats, or evil gods, wherever we unfolded our tents. They would steal up at night and build bamboo rests, that the evil spirits might repose in comfort and be lulled into forgetting their witchcraft. This manœuvring did not escape the vigilant eyes of our Nepalese sentry, but while he despised these tribes of no-man’s land, yet he respected their customs and discreetly looked the other way. At dawn, I would see these elevated bamboo baskets and awkward racks which had mushroomed in the darkness. But I said nothing. The Nats’ rests made good towel-racks, the natives were spiritually at peace, and presumably the Nats themselves reclined nightly to their satisfaction. It was harmony without harmony, but on the surface all was well.

A frowsy-headed boy of Kachin extraction sometimes went with me after pheasants. In fair Burmese he talked freely of his people and their customs. He believed devoutly in the Nats, which I gathered were nature spirits — fairies, goblins, elves, pixies — but all malevolent. The native worshiped them only that he might be let alone. At night, he would empty food and drink on the ground, that the Nats might be well fed and strong to fight out their quarrels among themselves and have no time to go meddling in the affairs of those who would sleep in peace. However, when the sun shone, when no thorn-sores wrought havoc with bare feet, and food fell abundantly from the sahib’s table, a used bowl was sufficient sacrifice at the shrine, since it symbolized the rice which was both expensive and lacking, and a few feathers implied the flesh of the chicken itself. So worked the native mind. A low order of faith at best.

But at the village of Sin-ma-how whatever was good rose up to take the place of the bad which ran riot through the land. The headman of this village was an old Chinaman, a fine, gentle, dignified old chief who should have worn diplomatic robes in his own country. His wife was no less remarkable than he. She lived in the midst of squalor and filth, surrounded by beast-like people, but she was gracious, tactful, and possessed that rare imagination which is the great gift and is not to be won, courted, or in any way acquired. It was an honor to have known her, and after her grave farewell which extended to me the courtesy of her gods, I hope that she thought well of me.

When the Burma trip was done and the Ghurkas had returned to their post, I was talking with Aladdin, and spoke of her.

‘She was fine woman,’ he said.

In the midst of all the confusion, the hurried packing, the tumult that concludes any trip, he, too, had remembered her.

I looked at him bending over a box of specimens with a hammer in one hand and nails in the other, and I was carried back to the day when he had come asking for work, which meant a passport to the world. And I thought that in spirit he was not unlike the hill-woman whom we could not forget. He, too, revealed the best in his people. I thought of all the servants and super-servants who had worked with me, and I knew that Aladdin had given me the vision to see them in this new perspective. But I mentioned nothing of this.

Instead, I looked up from my packing and said, ‘A. Deen, get me a hammer and nails.’

And Aladdin, Gift of God, smiled, and went quickly to do as he was told.