Episode 22A – Cursed by God – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 22A Show Notes

Source: Arabic Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’ll trek into the endless desert in search of 1001 Arabian nights. This would roughly be the right time to belt out the opening song to Disney’s Aladdin, if you like. Instead of Agrabah, though, we’ll be searching for the Lost City of Brass. You’ll discover that people lie for the dumbest reasons, why genies are trapped in bottles, and that you can totally trust evil creatures trapped in stone forever by Allah. Then, in Gods and Monsters, it’s the shape-shifting, corpse-eating monster that’s extremely hard to kill but surprisingly easy to resurrect. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 22A, “Cursed by God”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
For the small handful of you who don’t already know, 1001 Nights refers to a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales (though in English, it’s often referred to as 1001 Arabian Nights, or simply Arabian Nights). The stories were collected over centuries by numerous authors, and the tales have roots in ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, and Jewish folklore. The stories are collected under a single frame story.
There once was a ruler name Shahryar, who was shocked to learn that his brother’s wife had slept around on him. He does a little digging, and learns that his own wife had sucked even more dick than his sister in law. He immediately has her executed, but it’s not enough. He decides that these two women clearly prove that all women are sluts who can’t be trusted, and vows to marry only a virgin, so she’ll be pure, and to execute her after the wedding night so she won’t have the chance to cheat. Since he’s the king, he’s able to put this horrifying slut-shame of a plan into action. The vizier, the king’s advisor, soon can’t find any more virgins he can strong-arm into a very short marriage, so his daughter, the clever Scheherazade, offers herself as the next bride. Her father doesn’t really have much choice. If he doesn’t find a wife for the king, they’ll both be executed anyway.
On the night of their marriage, after he’s done fucking her in at least a borderline rape situation, she asks to entertain him before sleep. She begins a story, but just as she approaches the story’s climax, she protests that she is too tired to finish tonight and will tell him the rest tomorrow night. The king is curious how the story ends, and postpones her execution to hear it. The next night, she finishes the first story and begins a new one, but again becomes too tired to finish. This goes on for 1001 nights (hence the name). The exact ending varies depending on the version, but the end result is always that the king ends up giving his wife a pardon (for the crime of being a woman, I guess, since he’s the bloodthirsty asshole who’s been raping and serial killing the shit out of virgins) and sparing her life forever.
Today’s story begins on the 567th night, and is called The City of Brass. Let’s begin. In Damascus, a city in ancient Syria, there lived a Caliph named Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, the fifth ruler of the house of Umayyad (which puts the story as taking place around 661 AD). He was speaking with his sultans, kings, and grandees of the empire over dinner one night when the talk turned to King Solomon (yes, that king Solomon) and his lordship over men, Jinn, birds, beasts, reptiles, the wind, and other created things. In case you’re wondering, Jinn are also known as genies (to the English speaking world, anyhow) and are mentioned in the Quran and throughout Arabic mythology. They are creatures that are part physical and part spirit. The jinn, humans, angels, and demons make up the known sapient creations of Allah in Islamic tradition. Like humans, jinn can be good, evil, or anywhere in between and, also like humans, have free will. The specifics can vary wildly, but the jinn are often very powerful with the ability to affect the physical and spiritual worlds. That’s really all you need to know for today’s story.
For somewhat vague reasons, Solomon had imprisoned rebellious jinns, marids (which are evil spirits), and satans (which are fucking evil spirits) in copper bottles and sealed them with lead and steel. He stamped his signet ring into each of the bottles as a spiritual seal to ensure the trap held, and then he had them cast into the ocean as punishment for defying him. Eternal life in prison is a rough sentence, but it’s entirely possible they actually deserved it. Jinn and their ilk can be pretty nasty when they want to be.
One of the guests, a man named Talib bin Sahl, tells the Caliph a story about his father. He, like his father, was a treasure hunter and adventurer, and he thought the Caliph would be interested in his father’s tale. In his younger days, the elder bin Sahl had been sailing for Sicily when he was thrown adrift by a terrible storm. The ship was lost at sea for a month and eventually ran ashore in a strange land near a great mountain (probably sub-Saharan Africa). The natives there, emerging from caves in the mountain, were black skinned and completely nekkid. The sailors tried to speak to the people on shore, but neither understood the other’s language. It wasn’t until the king, who had seen the ship come into shore, walked down to meet them that they were able to communicate. The king spoke Arabic, and he welcomed them to his land.
They feasted for three days on the king’s dime, which was awesome, but even partying gets old after a while. On the fourth day, they went down to the beach to watch the fishermen because that was apparently more fun than eating themselves silly for a fourth straight day. One of the men pulls up a weird copper bottle with his net. The sailors clamored to look over the bottle, and saw that it was stoppered in lead and sealed with the sign of King Solomon, son of King David! Holy shit, this was incredible! “But wait, there’s more” said the fisherman.
He broke open the seal and a huge gout of dark blue smoke burst out of the bottle, far more than could possibly have actually fit inside, and rose to the sky. It quickly cleared to reveal the enormous form of a giant jinn, whose head was level with the top of the mountain. His voice rent the air in a thunderous crack, screaming “I’m sorry, I repent! Holy shit, please don’t shove me ass first in there again! I swear to Allah that I will never do that again! I repent!” Then he vanished.
After the sailors’ hearts stopped racing from what had appeared to be certain doom, they noticed that the native men weren’t even the slightest fucking bit phased by the appearance of a gigantic, screaming, mystical creature. They returned to the king, and asked him what the hell was up with the bottled jinn (and if you’ve ever wondered where the concept of a genie in a bottle came from, and why they’re trapped in their in the first place, you’re about to find out).
The king nodded wisely. “Yeah, I probably should have given you a heads up or something. That shit is upsetting the first time it happens. We’ve all seen it so many times that we forget how terrifying it is if you don’t realize it’s completely safe. Those jinn were imprisoned by Solomon for pissing him off. He shoved their asses in the bottle, stopped it up with melted lead and his own God-given powers as king, and threw them in the ocean to rot for eternity. It’s more than a little challenging to keep up with how much time has passed in the sunless depths of the goddamned ocean, so they don’t realize that Solomon is long since dead and rotted. They’re begging him for forgiveness and getting the fuck out of Dodge.”
The Caliph listened to this whole story with rapt attention. “That sounds fucking awesome, Talib! I want to see one of these magical bottles! I want to pull the fucking stopper and watch a real motherfucking jinn appear!” Talib smiled at the Caliph. “I thought you might, O Commander of the Faithful. You totally can. All you have to do is send a note to your brother to send his own note to Abd al-Aziz bin Marwan to send another note to Musa bin Nusayr, governor of Magrib or Morocco, and tell him to take a horse to the mountain my dad visited, which is right next door to his province. Like I said, they have bottles up to here, and wouldn’t mind parting with them, so I’m sure they’ll give you as many as you want.”
Personally, it seems like the Caliph could save a lot of time and a massive game of telephone by just sending a note to the governor himself, but that’s how bureaucracies have worked since time immemorial. Whatcha gonna do? If you’re the king, you do whatever the fuck you want. The Caliph responded “I like the way you think, Talib, but I have a better idea. How about you go yourself and talk to Governor Nusayr and save me a lot of hassle? I’ll give you a fat purse full of gold for your trouble, plus expenses, as well as take care of your family while you’re gone.” Talib can’t very well tell the head of pretty much everything for thousands of miles to go to hell, so he agrees.
Talib sails off with letters from the king, headed for Cairo to meet with Abd al-Aziz (the king’s brother) and then on to see the governor of Northern Africa. For the record, this is where Scheherazade broke off the story to be continued on the 568th night. Not exactly a thrilling cliffhanger, but some of the stories are like that. Anyway…
Talib and company make the journey across Syria to Egypt and enlists the help of Governor Musa bin Nusayr. Musa decides this sounds like a bitchin’ adventure and decides to tag along. He tells Talib that they need to ask Shaykh Abd al-Samad to be their guide. He has spent more time in the desert than anyone alive, and he’ll know the best way to get where they’re going. It turns out that the dude is super old, shot in years and broken down with the lapse of days. The guy isn’t sure he wants to go, and tries to talk them out of it. “You do realize it’s like 2 years and a few months to get there, and the same back. Those pesky Nazarenes next door might try to invade and fuck shit up while you’re away. You sure you wanna do this?” Talib flashes stupid amounts of gold, and Shaykh decides he’s on board after all. He might die before he gets home again, but at least he’ll die rich as shit.
Musa appoints his son Harun as governor while he’s gone. “Now make sure everyone pays their taxes, no loud parties, and no inviting those awful Nazarenes over. If you let them in, they’ll never leave, okay buddy? You’re the man of the kingdom while I’m gone!” Harun was actually a pretty badass warrior, so this was not a terrible decision, nepotism aside. “No problem, pops, I got this. How long you think you’ll be gone.” “Oh, not too long. I’m sure we’ll be back in four months or so. We’re going to stay close to the shore, and there are nice camping sites the whole way. Allah will definitely make things easy for us.” The eyes of everyone around him bug out a little, but no one disagrees with the ruler of the place they’re in, since that’s bad for self-preservation.
It’s not clear why he lied to his son. This was a time in which long range communication basically didn’t exist, so when he doesn’t come back in four months, everyone will be totally justified in assuming he’s deadsies. Seems like a stupid thing to do, but whatever. I’ve never been a governor in a fairy tale. Maybe there’s a perfectly good reason to lie to your son about how long he’ll be in charge of the kingdom in a way that will force him to assume you died well before you come home.
Shaykh tells Musa to acquire a thousand camels laden with food and jars of water. “What do we need that for?” It turns out that, shockingly, the desert known as Kayrwan or Cyrene is a four-day long journey with absolutely no food or water. You know, because it’s a fucking desert.
They set out, and travel non stop for about a year until, one morning, Shaykh woke up and looked around. “Fuck me sideways.” “What’s the problem Shaykh?” “I have no clue where we are. We wandered off the road somewhere.” “How the fuck did we do that? You were supposed to be the expert here!” “Yeah, well, we’ve been traveling at night to avoid the desert heat, and the stars have been covered by clouds. Kind of makes it hard to navigate.” “And you didn’t think to check before now?” “Yeah, fuck you too.”
“Well, should we go back and look for the right road?” asked Musa. Shaykh shook his head. “Nah, we’re just as likely to miss where we got lost since I have no idea where we are.” “Well, then, we go on and hope Allah shows us the right direction. Since I’m important, he has to. That’s how being important works right?”
They continue on, more or less at random, and around midday come to a large plain. In the distance, they see some massive black shape sitting in the middle of the plain like smoke rising from a brush fire. As they got closer, the thing resolved itself into a massive castle of black stone, as large as a small mountain. Shaykh begins to do a little happy dance when they get close enough to see the steel door. “I know this place! My grandaddy told my daddy, who told me about this place. The City of Brass isn’t far from here, only two months travel!”
They ride into the abandoned palace to rest for the day before the next push. They spend the day reading plaques which have been erected over the doors, and they all pretty much talk about greatness falling to shit. Read the awesome poem Ozymandias, and you’ll get a better sense of what the story is trying to convey. Musa cries a lot because reasons and takes one of the tablets with him. In the middle of all of this, Scheherazade pauses again and picks up the next night.
There’s a lot of completely needless description of the splendors of the palace and the horrible things that happened here before they finally get the hell on with it. They travel on for three more days, until they come to a hill crowned with a brass horseman. There’s another engraving on the lance he holds, only this one isn’t morose, angsty goth poetry about death. Instead, it says that it you want to find the City of Brass, rub the horseman’s hand. Having wasted pretty much the whole night stalling for time, Scheherazade pauses the story again until the next night. Hell, maybe she was wasting time while she figured out where she was going with this.
Anyway, it picks up again the next night. Since they only have a vague idea where they’re going, Shaykh rubs the horseman’s hand, and he turns to face the right direction. It seems like there’s a simpler way to mark a path, but whatever. Fairy tale.
They continue on in the direction the horseman points, and find a well-used road that leads them for many days to a pillar of black stone with a figure on top. It looked humanoid, although sunk into the rock up to his armpits. Turns out, it’s an ifrit of the Jinn, the most powerful and dangerous class of the jinn. He had two huge wings and four muscular arms, two human and two lion’s paws with iron claws. His skin was jet black (not like an African man, but actually inky black) and his eyes blazed like coals (American Gods did a very cool job with this particular effect). He had three eyes, including one in the middle of his forehead, and all were slit vertically like a serpent’s.
The party pulled up in front of the pillar with the incredibly powerful trapped entity. “Hey buddy. Whatcha doin’?” “I was trapped here by God to suffer until Armageddon. It pretty much sucks monkey balls.” He roared, and everyone valiantly ran the fuck away. Musa panted at Shaykh once they were safely out of view. “What the hell was that, man?” “Damned if I know.” “Why doncha ask him? He seemed talkative.” Shaykh stared at Musa. “Have you lost your mind? That’s a big nasty. He’s terrifying.” “Come on, man. He’s trapped in a pillar by God. What’s the worst that could happen?” Shaykh realized he was going to lose this fight, so he headed back to talk to the big scary monster, but he insisted that Musa come with him. It was only fair.
“Uh, hi again big guy. Sorry about running away before. You’re kind of…intimidating. So how did you end up trapped here by God?” “My name is Dahish, son of Al-A’amash, and I’m trapped here until God decides I’ve learned my lesson. Or the end of time. Whichever comes first.” Musa whispered to Shaykh “Ask him why God is pissed at him.” Shaykh passed the message along, even though Musa could have just asked himself, and the ifrit answered “It’s a pretty rad story. I was the guardian of an idol of red quartz owned by one of the sons of Iblis (an archdevil similar to the Christian idea of Satan). The king of that country rebelled against King Solomon (yes, still that Solomon) and I rebelled along with him. I used to enter the idol and speak for it so that everyone thought it was real and magic.
“The king’s daughter thought that idol was awesome, and prayed before it often. She was a gorgeous woman, elegant and graceful. Solomon heard about her and sent a message to the king. It said ‘send me your daughter as a new wife, and destroy that blasphemous idol in the name of the one true God. If you do so, we’ll be best chums. If you don’t, dress in what you want to be buried in. I will march on your country with an army larger than you have ever seen and I will make all of you like yesterday, passed away never to return.’ The king, naturally, puffed up and got super pissed off. He summoned his advisors. ‘Have you guys heard this shit?’
“‘Yeah, king, we heard, but he’s full of bullshit. Even if he could get an army all the way here across the vast ocean, there’s no way that he could beat your army since the rebellious Jinn will fight for you! If you’re worried, ask the idol.’ The king came in to see the idol, which I was animating at the time, and asked advice after offering the proper human sacrifices that I required. I told him to stand his ground and fight that asshole Solomon. This gave the king the stones to have Solomon’s messenger beaten and sent back bloodied. That was a mistake. Solomon commanded Wazir Al-Dimiryat, King of the Jinn, to gather up all of the rebellious genies and seal them up in bottles (which is how that all went down). Then he brought a huge army of a thousand thousand men, many jinn, and even birds and serpents across the ocean to the king’s island and…” That’s where Shahrazad ended the next night. A better stopping place than most.
“Solomon gave everyone a chance to surrender, and when he didn’t, Solomon laid waste to the place from his throne of ivory that he commanded the wind to bear into the sky to watch. We fought well for two days, but on the third, we were overwhelmed and destroyed. I tried to run, but the King of the Jinn chased me for three months. I finally collapsed from weariness, and he seized me and trapped me here. Solomon sealed it with his ring, and here I’ve been ever since, guarded by an angel to make sure I stay put.” And that’s where the next night ends (the original version of the story spends a whole lot of time describing the battle in agonizing but completely irrelevant detail.
“Cool story bro. Say, do you happen to know if there are any of those nifty brass bottles with ifrits trapped inside from the battle that got you trapped here?” The ifrit sighed. “Yes, there are a bunch in the sea of al-Karkar, where people descended from Noah live since their country wasn’t touched by the great flood. They’re cut off from the other true sons of Adam.” “Awesome. Thanks. And which way is the City of Brass? And how far away is it?” “Not far.” He pointed them the way and they thanked him and left him to suffer until the end of time. Don’t feel bad for him though. He kind of deserved it, to be fair. The dude required human sacrifice just to talk to him.
They traveled for several more days until, in the distance, there appeared a great darkness and twin pillars of fire. “What’s that?” asked Musa. Shaykh answered “We’re almost there, Musa. That’s the City of Brass as described in the Book of Hidden Treasures which I’ve totally had this entire time and just never mentioned before. The city’s walls are made of black stone, and it has two towers made of brass (hence the name) which appear from a distance to be made of fire due to the reflection of the sun.” They traveled on from there without stopping until they reached the city.
The city looked like a piece of a mountain made of cast iron, and it managed to look imposing and beautiful at the same time. They looked around for a gate, but couldn’t see one. “Hey Shaykh, how the hell do we get in?” “Well, Musa, there are 25 entrances, according to the book, but they only open from the inside.” “And you didn’t think to mention that until now? How the hell are we supposed to get in then?” One of Musa’s viziers responded “I have an idea. Have someone ride around the city and see if anyone happened to leave a door or window open.” “Good idea. Glad I thought of it. Go do that thing.”
One guy (maybe he drew the short straw, or maybe he was just the intern) mounted up on his camel and rode around the city. It took him three days and nights to make a full circuit around the city (and apparently he didn’t even pause long enough to take a nap – talk about commitment), but he reported back that the place was locked up tighter than some sort of graphic and sexist innuendo about some part of anatomy. “Honestly, boss, the easiest place to get in is probably right here. The wall seems lowest here.”
Trust but verify was their mantra, so Musa and Shaykh rode up to the top of a nearby hill to look over the city. It was an incredible piece of architecture, with towering mansions topped with glittering domes set beside gently flowing streams topped with wildflowers and fruit trees. It was magnificent, but empty and lifeless. It looked like a corpse washed and dressed resplendently before being buried. On top of the hill, for some reason, Musa sees seven white tablets inscribed with warnings of death and destruction rained down by the mighty hand of Allah in Greek. They go on for quite a while, and I’m not going to get into it all.
End of the next night. Not exactly a nail biter, but you’re probably just invested at this point. The tablet warnings continue, and I’m still not going to get into it. Once they’re done reading the completely needless time-filler tablets, Shaykh says “You know, I think we’re overlooking the obvious. We want to get over the wall, so we should probably just build a ladder. I mean, that’s standard procedure for storming a castle, and it’s not like we’re going to have people raining down arrows or boiling oil while we climb, right?” Everyone agrees that this is a fantastic idea (and for once, it really is), and they get to it. For some reason, it takes them a month to build it. Maybe they were just being careful, or maybe it just takes a long time to gather up all of the wood needed since trees don’t really grow a lot in the desert.
Somebody (maybe that same poor asshole who had to ride around the city alone) volunteered to be the one to climb over the wall and see about descending into the city and opening a gate. There’s usually stairs to the top of the wall from the inside of the city, so this isn’t a crazy idea. Unfortunately, those tablets we skipped over were apparently kind of literal. The man reaches the top and screams out “By Allah, thou art fair!” and throws himself off the wall and into the city. They can all clearly hear the THUD-SPLAT! of his body hitting the stones on the other side of the wall.
Musa, reasonably enough, is shocked and cries “Holy shit! He killed himself!” A second man, in a callous display, taps Musa on the shoulder and says “Don’t worry about it, chief. That dude was stone cold crazy, and his madness probably got the better of him. I’m not suicidal, though, so I’ll go up and open the gate.” Musa is a little doubtful. “Okay, I guess. Do it, but be careful. Don’t lose your head up there like the last guy did.”
The second guy, who was pretty blase about his coworker committing suicide right the fuck in front of him, climbs to the top and looks over the city. He laughed maniacally, clapped his hands and, wobbling unsteadily, yelled out “Well done! Well done!” Then he too threw himself over the wall and into the city, to his death. Musa wonders aloud if maybe they should just turn around and march away before each and every person they send over the wall looks over the majesty of the city, goes mad, and kills himself, but a third guy, for reasons that aren’t fully clear, says “Come on, I can totally do it. There’s no way I’ll be crazy enough to kill myself just because I look over a wall.” You can probably guess what happens (if you can’t, spoiler alert – he totally kills himself just like the last two men).
You would think they would learn by now that this was a bad idea and give up, but they try this over and over again until a full twelve men have all committed suicide. At that point, they decided to change tactics and…no, I’m shitting you. Shaykh decides that he’ll go over the wall and hope that, for some reason, he won’t die the exact same way the last dozen people who tried this did. “I’ve got more experience than the rest of these assholes, so I should be fine.” Musa stares at the man. “Have you lost your mind? Cause I’ll help you find it! A dozen men have tried and died, and if we lose you, we don’t have a guide anymore. It’s a terrible idea.” “That may be, but I don’t want to waste this whole trip, so I’m gonna give it a shot.”
He climbed the ladder and, when he reached the top, he clapped his hands and stared down into the city. He began to wobble unsteadily, and the men standing on the ground began to scream and pray. “Oh, fuck! Shaykh, seriously man, don’t do it! Don’t throw yourself off the wall!”
And like Scheherazade, we’re going to take a pause here when things are sort of cliffhanger-y to hopefully keep you from murdering me until I can finish the story. As a little icing on the cake, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the ghul.
Ghuls are creatures from your deepest nightmares that show up in a lot of different places, but it comes from Arabic folklore. The original ghul, or ghoul, lives in uninhabited places, especially burial grounds and cemeteries. They are an especially evil brand of djinn who gets an extra helping of evil from big daddy Iblis (who we discussed earlier), who’s the ghoul’s literal daddy. They are capable of changing their forms, but they can’t change one thing: they always have the hooves of an ass (which they will try to hide while luring you to your doom). The ghoul was traditionally considered to be female, because men have an unreasonable fear of being tricked and destroyed by women.
In some stories, the ghoul will lurk in the desert and change its shape to that of an animal (often a hyena) to lure unwary travelers deeper into the desert. Why someone would follow a dangerous scavenger into the desert, I don’t know, which is why in a lot of other stories, the ghoul instead takes the form of a gorgeous woman to do the luring, which makes more sense. Anyway, once it gets the unlucky dumbass out into the wastes or other abandoned place, it rips their throat out, drinks their blood, and eats their flesh.
In other stories, the creatures will feast especially on children. It drinks blood, steals money, and desecrate graveyards to eat corpses. This allows the ghoul to take the form of whomever it just devoured (giving new meaning to the whole you are what you eat thing), and lure other people into abandoned places to be killed and eaten.
In all of the stories, the only way to protect yourself from a ghoul was to kill in in a single mighty blow. One blow could kill it, but a second would bring it back to life. They are hardy creatures, though, so a weak blow won’t do the trick. Threading that needle is a challenge, and if you stop to see if you killed it at the wrong time, it’ll eat your face.
The first ghul showed up in Bedouin folk stories and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry in the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries, most notably that of Ta’abbata Sharran. It may have come from gallu, an Akkadian demon in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. It transitioned into North African Berber folklore, which was already full of demons and monsters, so the ghul fit right in. Once the 1001 Nights was translated into English, it entered into Western stories, including stories by Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Jim Butcher, among many, many others. In these stories, they are sometimes considered to have once been human, but were cursed after eating human flesh (either from a fresh kill or from a desecrated corpse). Once cursed, they become monsters who feed on corpses and living flesh. They especially love the tender flesh of children and, since they are disgustingly ugly and reek of a charnal house, only shapeshifting allows them to lure people to be murdered. So if you see a beautiful woman trying to get you to follow her into a graveyard, she might be a goth, or she might be a ghoul, so be careful either way.
That’s it for this episode of Myth Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher or on TuneIn, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. I want to thank Juwabo, radiomaxfmpodcast, and Big Brother B for the reviews on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll be finishing the story of the City of Brass. You’ll see what is actually inside the City, what happens when you love jewels too much, and that racism was alive and well back in ancient Arabia. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn about a different flavor of djinn, with flaming eyes and a love of the cock. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.