Jasmine struggled to steady her horse in the deep, fluid sand surrounding here in the outskirts of the desert, several miles from the glittering rooftops and onion domes of Agrabah. Though she was only in the presence of the Genie, Aladdin, and two royal guardsmen, it was still embarrassing how she could barely control her own horse, as well as her own riding gait, on any excursion outside the palace walls. It was late afternoon in the dusty desert spring, barely three months after the crisis with Jafar and "Prince Ali", and Jasmine was putting an immense amount of determined effort into coming into her own as a princess and future sultana— at the moment, this meant taking an active role in the political and economic affairs of her country, and at the very least it meant knowing her city and its activities as intimately as possible.
For what felt like the hundredth time, the princess yanked her headscarf appropriately around her head for shade, and re-inserted its pins securely into her hair. They wouldn't remain secure, she knew, but she was so frustrated with the long, hot, clumsy traipse she and her friends had made into the desert that it was a matter of principle at this point.
"The sun will be setting before long," Jasmine called out to her company around her in the small sand dunes. "Are we sure that the caravan is timely today? What if they mean to arrive tomorrow?"
The Genie was a little farther out from her, facing the low sun and lazily scanning the yellow horizon. Faint clouds of dust gathered in the distance, but they seemed a natural consequence of the wind that was gently puffing in all directions.
"Maybe, princess, but with a caravan this big there should've been more messenger reports of its lateness by now," the Genie replied, his face still gazing outward. "These merchants would certainly have the means to do so, and according to the city menagerie it arrived according to its schedule at the other towns on its route a few days ago."
Jasmine sighed breathily to voice her frustration, and squealed when her horse began sinking in the sand once again and unexpectedly snorted as it tried to right itself.
She heard the clumber of another horse striding up beside her from the back. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Aladdin streamed as grabbed Jasmine's reigns in a single hand, evenly clustered them together, and returned them to Jasmine's weak grasp of the leather straps. "Try gripping them a little tighter, and don't give one side more give than the other."
Though she knew that the gesture was caring and affectionate, Jasmine decided not to give a smile or even look Aladdin in the eyes. Her helplessness was even more embarrassing in front of him than it was in front of the royal guards— even if she didn't know much about how to deal with economic and political realities in Agrabah, at least she could keep herself composed and stick tight to her persona of a capable leader. The horse certainly wasn't letting her get away with this.
She turned her face away from Aladdin and kicked the horse to walk up toward the Genie.
"Did you say that they'll have a small tribute? Should I formally request it as I welcome them into our territory, or will they volunteer it?"
"Allude to an expectation of a show of their collaboration when you first address them," the Genie said. "It's easy, there will be one or two merchants heading the very first caravan. The transaction won't be long."
As her father remained in the palace, Jasmine had volunteered to take on the duties of royal tribute collecting in place of an ambassador from Agrabah. It was a small, but practical and interactive way for her to engage in the trading economy that made Agrabah a wealthy port country— despite the job's clear personal benefits as training for Jasmine's statesmanship, the royal council was not enthusiastic on relegating the duty to her. When she was called into the council's presence and noticed their hesitancy on the subject, she had initially bristled at the thought that they were hesitant because she was a woman replacing a male ambassador in representing Agrabah. Whether this reality had affected the council's disposition or not, her father immediately after the confirmation meeting made a point to tell her that her inexperience and "palpable disengagement" in state diplomacy was the primary subject of debate in whether or not to allow her to even take on the small responsibility of accepting caravan tribute. Though the council had approved her new duty, it was personally (and to an extent, publicly) embarrassing for Jasmine to know that her isolation from leadership duties was not only noticed by her in herself, but by other members of Agrabah's government themselves.
And so, after learning that Jasmine was careful to avoid asking too many questions about statesmanship in front of the council members; she did not want to give ammunition to fuel any more doubts regarding her political capabilities. But at the same time, she had initially thought that this course of action meant that she was missing out on treating the council members as truly valuable mentors in her political coming of age— but then, a true deus ex machina emerged at this time, in the form of the Genie.
As she spent more time conversing with him personally following his engagement to Dalia, it quickly became clear to Jasmine that in his thousand years cavorting with power-hungry humans he had been deeply involved in political shifts, instabilities, and scandals all over the world. And this had left him with a very intricate knowledge of how states ran themselves and, even more valuably, how economic chaos and warfare broke out— and logically, he also would know what preventative measures to take to avoid these crises. When she first noticed the intensity of this knowledge, Jasmine immediately had tucked away a note in her mind to make the Genie the one to whom she asked her questions, from what mercantile qualities made Agrabah attractive to trade with other countries to how exactly its caravan system worked. Also, despite its slightly nepotistic undertones, she also knew that he would serve her well as her grand vizier when she rose to the throne.
Finally, Jasmine saw a dark oval shape slowly climbing its way over the near horizon.
"At last, it's here!" She shouted to alert to her fellows, and the royal guardsmen immediately kicked their horses to join her on each side. Aladdin and the Genie followed closely behind, gasping slightly from the hot air.
After what felt like an eternity of watching the tapestry-cloaked wagons inching closer and closer toward them, the lead caravan creaked to a stop in front of Jasmine and her company. The sun was close to setting by now, and Jasmine thought the caravan looked quite dramatic in the forefront of a backdrop of billowing dust and sand interspersed through the red and yellow light of the crowning sun.
This is the beauty of a practical life, she thought, and straightened her back and shoulders to speak to the lead merchants, invigorated by the business of the scene.
The exchange with the merchants was as short and transactional as the Genie had anticipated, and Jasmine was encouraged by her smooth handling of the task. She ignored the fact that its ease was largely due to how facile it was to utter a few words and motion her guards to collect the heavy bundles of cloth and spices the merchants proffered.
After she echoed a goodbye to the small old men thickly covered in beige clothes for the dust, Jasmine turned her horse away and leaned into the Genie's side. "You were right, that was much simpler than I expected, it went perfectly fine," she whispered.
The Genie smiled and chuckled at her relief. "You did a perfect job, princess. Excellent marks on your first field test"
Jasmine glowed at the praise for her first official ambassadorship for her country, and she slowly felt her stress of the day evaporate away. She looked at Aladdin calmly riding beside her, subtly feeding nuts to Abu, and she felt ashamed of her coldness toward him earlier. She moved a little closer to him on her horse, and she caught his eye to try and give him a bright smile. But he was distracted— Aladdin was staring sharply behind them in the direction of the passing caravan, whose wheels were still close enough to throw clouds of settling dust on their exposed hair and hands. His eyes were flitting across the moving parts of the wagons, perhaps their thick tapestries blowing open in the wind.
Before Jasmine had the chance to ask him what he was looking at (the merchants they had spoken with were long gone), Aladdin loudly asked without facing anyone, "Where are these caravans coming from again?"
Jasmine turned to look at the Genie. "I think there is only one here now, the one that crosses over from Sherebad."
Aladdin, still without turning his face toward Jasmine or the Genie, shook his head quickly and put a hand over his eyes to shield them from the thickening dust. "No. Those quilts are from different border towns than the one the Sherebad merchants cross through."
Jasmine didn't know how to respond, since she had only been told of one source of the caravan. She turned once more to the Genie in confusion.
The Genie saw her look and immediately tried to speak to Aladdin's question. "Well, it's likely that other, smaller caravans could have joined the Sherebad train from other border locations. You know, the little sheep trying to join in with the herd's big guys for protection from outside threats. In this case, robbers or sand storms."
Jasmine inserted a question. "How do you know that those tapestries are from a different place than the leaders came from?"
Aladdin finally turned away from the trudging caravan, and looked down at his hands massaging the reigns. "The place where those are from is where I was born."
Jasmine raised her eyebrows and tried to meet Aladdin's gaze, but he was preoccupying himself with readjusting his horse's leather straps. She wanted to ask more questions, but in the awkward tension that was blanketing this conversation, she didn't even know what she wanted to ask. Her horse buckled again in the sinking sand, having stood too long in one place.
"So, shall we try to make it back home before it gets too dark and we get too cold?" Jasmine breathed to her friends, trying to get their attention in the silence. But before she could finish speaking, there was a shouting from behind them that was becoming loud and repetitive enough to the point that she turned around to see what the issue was behind her.
All three of them scanned along the caravan train to seek out the source of the yelling, but they were confronted with a multitude of shawled faces gazing out from nearly every other wagon. The people traveling in the wagons were likely either looking out to catch some cool passing air, or perhaps to catch sight of the passing princess of Agrabah.
But there, about five wagons from where Jasmine, Aladdin, and the Genie were alert on their horses, a figure was hanging far off the side of a wooden hoop. One hand was clutched to the
hoop, and the figure's feet hung what seemed to Jasmine as dangerously close to the wagon's creaking wheels. She could now make out what the yelling was, repeated calls of "Wait! Wait!" The figure was cloaked entirely in beige cloth, much like the majority of the caravan's inhabitants.
Jasmine was sure that the person could be shouting to no one other than her company— they were the only humans moving in an opposite direction than the figure was. Regardless, she saw no reason to obey a stranger's unjustified request, and she opened her mouth tell Aladdin, the Genie, and the guards to keep moving toward the palace. But as she started to sputter out the words, Aladdin moved his horse closer to the caravan. When Jasmine looked at his face, his lips were parted and that same scrutinizing look he had had moments ago was again present.
She heard him saying something— whether it was to her or the Genie, or anyone other than himself, she couldn't tell.
"No way," Aladdin breathed. "No way! Wait!"
Jasmine turned to the Genie, furrowing her brow, but the Genie seemed as confused as she. He raised his shoulders and said to her, "I guess we're waiting."
When the wagon with the dangling figure hurdled within proper eyesight, Aladdin aggressively unmounted his horse and started sprinting in the sand toward the wagon. The figure, which Jasmine could now see was a woman, clumsily jumped over the frightening wheel and crushed into the sand before similarly sprinting in their direction. Jasmine heard a shriek from the woman before she and Aladdin finally met each other, and then all Jasmine could see was Aladdin's arms gripping the stranger.
By this time, Jasmine and the Genie had made their way, still on their horses, to the spot where Aladdin and the stranger were still hugging. No, they weren't embracing now— Aladdin was holding the woman's face and turning her face from side to side. She could hear them speaking now.
"Are you okay? Where are your tattoos?" She heard Aladdin say to the woman.
The woman, who now Jasmine saw as looking no older than herself, but with a darker tan and rougher-looking skin. She didn't look familiar at all to Jasmine, and didn't remind her at all of the common girls in Agrabah— this one was dressed so plainly, with no jewelry, and with no separate headscarf to cover her curls. And she was very dusty.
The girl was smiling with all her teeth, flittering her eyes across Aladdin's face and making sounds that could either be coughing or laughing. When she spoke, her voice broke in a way that made Jasmine feel quite sad.
"No, no, I don't have any, they didn't do it! They couldn't!" The girl laughed, without doubt this time, and grabbed Aladdin's hands and threw them down from her face. "I don't know what to say!"
Aladdin was smiling too, gasping for breath, and quickly moved to use his hands to shrug the dust off the girl's brown linen. He was taking turns between saying "Why?" and "Who?"
Jasmine was too disoriented to interrupt. She was thankful when the Genie did.
"Well, what's happening, kid? You having a happy reunion?"
Aladdin turned sharply, with raised eyebrows, to the Genie and Jasmine.
"Well," He gasped again for air and swallowed, looking back at the girl. "I… I can't explain it, you say it, Amal."
The girl, Amal, laughed throatily, letting her head fall backward and grabbing Aladdin's hands. "I've come back from a long, long absence. And I am blessed that I was brought along this very path, and found the one person I was looking for."
Aladdin closed his eyes tightly for a moment as she spoke. When he opened them, he looked around at the three people around him, and quickly interjected, "We need to hurry back to the city, it's getting dark already. Do you have all your things?"
"Of course," the girl answered quickly, and patted the sides of her clothing. "Oh—" She looked back toward the wagons. "But let me say goodbye first to my companions!"
The girl ran a distance back where she had jumped from, holding her skirt in her hands. When she had found the wagon she was looking for, it was clear that at the speed it was going it was impossible for the girl to jump back on the wagon ledge past its massive wheel. Instead, she began sharply waving to whatever lay beyond its blowing tapestries, and when Jasmine squinted she could see that the wagon contained three or four shadowy faces wrapped in headscarves. The women in the wagon were much older than Jasmine, but they smiled at Amal and lifted their hands to wave back. Jasmine noticed that one had more than one tooth missing.
"Let's go, do you have a horse like your friends?" Amal said when she returned, raising her eyebrows. But then she stared at Aladdin's "friends".
"Who…is this—" she said, sputtering uncertaintly, and Jasmine saw her tug on Aladdin's hand.
Aladdin jumped slightly. "Oh, um...this is my friend, we call him Genie, and she...Jasmine…" He glanced between Amal and Jasmine.
Jasmine tightened her grip on her reigns and straightened her back. "I am Jasmine, crown princess of Agrabah. And our friend Aladdin's betrothed." It was too formal. Jasmine knew it.
But her declaration had the desired effect on the girl. Amal had stopped smiling and turned her gaze down from Jasmine, ostentatiously looking to Aladdin for guidance. He couldn't offer much.
"It's a long story, Amal, don't worry about it," Aladdin offered with a strange chuckle, which Jasmine recognized by now as his way of trying to lighten the tension between her and the strange girl. "I'll tell you on the trip back to the city, let's go." With the last words, Aladdin looked up at Jasmine and the Genie and nodded his head.
Jasmine opened her mouth to insist that the girl ride with one of the royal guards— that seemed most appropriate for a stranger (to her, at least) that was an unknown woman. But she didn't get a chance to speak before Aladdin and Amal were trudging in the sand toward Aladdin's horse, safely reigned in by the two guards.
The Genie leaned into Jasmine's side as she watched Aladdin reach down to help Amal pull herself up onto the horse. "Looks like he knows what he's doing."