Visually very nice, the story is quite common in the way that it has the obvious ‘beauty and the beast I let her go because I love her’ kind of ending, but still it’s nice that the main character is different, true to herself, and there’s a nice epilogue.
I must say to mind the title, because it is relevant. He kept longing for freedom for 3000 years, so it’s not easy or right to judge him for not caring what his wishes can cause. It is also quite touching, like Zefir’s story is heartbreaking, luckily they don’t dwell too much, he just narrates the story and move on, but it still touches you deep, especially as a woman.
It’s not clear to me why Alithea kept seeing other Djinns while in Instanbul before she found the small bottle with her Djinn, what’s up with that? Hallucinations? It’s a bit weird, I don’t get it.
Anyway, Alithea is a scholar (narratology, I didn’t even know one could make a living out of it). One day, in a shop in Instanbul, she’s attracted by a small bottle. She cleans it and opens it in her hotel room and a Djinn comes out. He says he’s been trapped for a long long time and he needs her to express there wishes to free him. But they must be real wishes: she tries to wish for a cup of tea and stuff like that, safe wishes, but it won’t work.
Thing is, she’s an intellectual, content with her life, and she knows how these stories usually go, there’s always a trick somewhere, so he tells her his story starting when he was free: he loved the Queen of Sheba, they were also somehow related, but she didn’t love him. King Solomon had some magic powers that allowed him to pass all her tests and win her over, and he got rid of our Djinn by trapping him in a bottle, that a bird threw at sea. Many years later Gulten finds it. She’s a young slave dreaming of the handsome prince Mustafa, so she wished for him to want her, and then to get pregnant, and she let everybody know she carried his child. The king’s favourite woman wants the throne for her own children, so she makes him believe that Mustafa is plotting againt him, so Suleiman has both his son and Gulten killed. She never expressed her third wish, so he could not be free, he simply became invisible, kind of faded away, but kept trying to lure someone to the bottle.
He almost succeeded with Prince Murad, but he was too young and couldn’t lift the heavy stone hiding it. Murad grew up, went to war and became hardened, blood thirsty. His mother kept him drunk for a while, then had people tell him stories, but they were all killed because he wasn’t interested. Then a man succeeded, and Murad grew so very fond of him that when eventually he died Murad’s grief was too much. The Djinn tried again to lure him to the bottle, but Murad was too weak to even get in the room.
Alithea questions if he cared at all what such a man could wish for, but no, the djinn only cared about his freedom.
After Murad died, his mother put his brother on the throne; Ibrahim loved his harem of overweight women, and his favourite one was free to walk everywhere - totally naked, for some reason…
So the djinn lured her in the room, she slipped and fell on the stone, breaking it, and thus finding the bottle. Desperate, the djinn appeared and began pressuring her for one wish, but she didn’t trust him so she wished for him to be imprisoned again.
Back to square one, in a bottle at sea.
Some time later, in Turkey, the bottle is found inside a fish. A merchant gave it to his young wife - who became his wife at 12 years old and spent her life in her room, where she had to satisfy him whenever he so chose.
This Zefir was a genius, an inventor, a visionary like Leonardo, but as a woman nobody knew about it. Still, she asked for knowledge. She craved all knowledge, her brain could never rest, it seems, but the djinn grew to love her and stopped her from making a third wish because he didn’t want to leave her. She grew more and more frustrated until her brain snapped and she wished to forget she had ever met him, and she did.
Alithea is moved by this story, and finds herself wishing for something that might be too much to ask. She wants him to love her like he loved Zefir, and so he tries. He goes with her to London, where he lives in her house, visits her at work or goes around learning everything about this new world so different from what he once knew. But things can’t go on like this, because his nature is electromagnetic and London is not good for him.
When Alithea finds him so weak, sort of like a statue turning to dust, she uses her second wish so that he can talk to her. He tries to go on but she understands now; she thanks him for trying but love can’t be magicked, and she apologizes for her first wish. Her third and final one is for him to go back to where he belongs. Of course.
And he goes, he can’t stay in London.
Just as she did when her ex husband left her, she puts his things in a box and puts it in the basement, and then, just as she once did with her childhood imaginary friend, she writes all about him.
She burned the first, but the djinn is real so e won’t burn this one. She’s back to her life, and quite content, also because the djinn has promised to come meet her from time to time, for as long as she’s alive, and he does.
We see that three years later he appears in front of her, they hold hands, and walk together.
This is enough for her, because it’s not as powerful as passionate love, but it is real, and it is love, and it is good.
Djinn is Idris Elba
Alithea is Tilda Swinton
Prince Mustafa is Matteo Bocelli
Gulten is Ece Yuksel (I don’t know how to make the u with two dots on top)
Hurrem is Megan Gale
Zefir is Burcu Golgedar
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