of course if he had chosen to turn his ring on his finger and call up the djinns and the afrits they would have magicked all those nine hundred and ninety-nine quarrelsome wives into white mules of the desert or greyhounds or pomegranate seeds; but suleiman-bin-daoud thought that that would be showing off. so, when they quarrelled too much, he only walked by himself in one part of the beautiful palace gardens and wished he had never been born.