So I was watching all three movies during the last snow day and I was thinking about a friend of mine. Aladdin is her favorite Disney movie. So, I wrote this in dedication to her. Just a short little thing about Aladdin opening up about his childhood to Jasmine. With a little surprise at the end for all you hopeless romantics out there (like that friend of mine). Enjoy!
The Prince of Agrabah
"Aladdin?" Jasmine called to me. She always knew where to find me. Anyone that had any sense would. Always up here, looking out at the palace. There was once a time that I dreamed of living in one of my own. Now I did. Yet I still found myself coming back here to gaze at my new home.
"It's a beautiful sunset today," I replied to her worried call as she came to sit by me. There was a time when it was just Abu and me, and I'd pull my blanket up to my chin, hoping to wake up in the morning and praying that the guards never found out where I lived. Not that I really owned the place. It was just a desolated building, but it was the only home I'd ever known.
"Yes, it is." Back then, one meal a day felt like a miracle. "Aladdin, you've been coming here a lot more often these last few weeks." I felt her hands encase my own, and her touch forced my eyes to look back at her. "I'm worried about you."
Her eyes could always melt away all my troubles. It was almost like a mother's kiss, to a child that had just woken up from a nightmare. Every time I returned from one of my adventures, she was there, waiting for me. But now, looking into her brown eyes, all I could think about was the past. Times long gone…faint memories that couldn't hold a candle to everything that had happened since I had fallen in love with Agrabah's princess. Today, though, and for the last several weeks, those little memories were all that filled my mind.
"What's wrong, Aladdin?" I glanced away, down to the street below. All the father's heading home to their families, the children playing in the streets, and the beggars with their cups, just asking for some spare change. There was a time that I looked at them with the pity someone shows when they know that is what they will become. Now I look at them with the respect of someone who has been where they once were. "Please, you can trust me."
"I know." I looked back into those eyes. Every day I marveled at how she put up with me. I was a closed shell, someone that had many friends but that hoarded all their secrets just the same. I'd never even told Abu about how much my memories still haunted me, and he's a monkey. Who's he going to tell?
"You've been like this ever since our wedding. Is it your father?"
"Sort of." I looked back into the room, and it almost seemed that the years peeled away and my childhood returned. "After our honeymoon, when we came back and all traces that he'd ever been here were gone…I started thinking about my mother."
"Your mother?"
"She watched for him, every night. She really believed he would come home, one day…He never did. I know he had his reasons, but she never knew…Never knew where he was or why he wasn't here." I felt her arms wrap around me and I looked down at her. She may not understand the emotions personally, but she knew. There was always something special about her, and that's what made me love her, and what made me always come back to her. I could never leave her.
"I was five years old when she died…I held her in my arms the last time she closed her eyes…I watched as they carried her away…"
"Oh Aladdin…" She held me tight, loves true embrace. "Where did you two live?"
"In this house." I smiled at her surprise. "This wall was still a wall then, of course, and this part of town was actually something special, back when I was little. But then there was a sickness…a lot of kids became orphans…a lot of orphans didn't survive." I ran my hand through her silky hair. "There were some hard times."
"My mother got sick too." Now it was my turn to be surprised. "She like to go through Agrabah and meet with the people, talk to them and see if she could help them. The doctors thought she caught it then, during the outbreak…That's probably the same outbreak that took your mother." We both looked to the palace then, watching as the sun hit the top of it just right, making it glitter like sunken treasure unearthed for the first time in centuries.
"It's been sixteen years since then." She leaned her head against me, listening to the sounds of Agrabah. Laughter, cries, carts heading through the street, animals calling out for whatever reason. Things I had heard for over a decade.
"How did you make it?"
"There was this old beggar named Samir. If it weren't for him I'd never have found the courage to steal…sad as that sounds. He told me that as long as I didn't get greedy, it wasn't so bad. We needed to live somehow…He taught me how to take care of myself and stay a pretty decent guy at the same time. Now he was someone I would have insisted on inviting to the wedding, if he were still around. He was something else…"
"So much has changed, hasn't it? Even just in the last few years."
"Especially in the last few years. I met you. My world…Has never felt so complete." There were those eyes again, looking up at me with all their love. "I love you, Jasmine." As she nuzzled against me, I felt all my worries dissipate. My past was finally winding down, right where it should have been all along.
"You went from a prince of thieves…the the Prince of Agrabah. And you really do deserve that title more than any of those other 'suitors' that tried to convince me to marry them. They didn't know anything about what the people needed, but you were right there, in the heart of things the whole time…What does Agrabah need the most right now?"
"A place for the orphans. They're starving in the streets with the law threatening to cut off their hands if they steal to fill their bellies. Especially around here…" I felt her lips against mine before I'd realized she'd moved.
"Why don't we get genie to fix up this old house of yours? If we re-build it just right, then we could connect it to the other empty buildings in this area, and then we could use them all to make a home for the orphans." My eyes must have given away all my excitement because she laughed and kissed me again.
"Who will we get to run it?"
"Oh, I'm sure we'll find someone. And then you can show our children where you grew up, and tell them just who you are."
"Our children?" Her eyes, that look… "Jasmine…are you…?" That ever so slight nod of her head, and I swept her up in my arms. We spun around my old bedroom, celebrating the future, remembering the past, and thanking our lucky stars that we had met that day in the marketplace and that we could still be together today. Prince and Princess of Agrabah. Someday I would be Sultan, but for now I was just Aladdin. My mother's son.