Chapter 2:
Jasmine coughed as the dust from the years reached her eyes and mouth. She supposed they hadn’t cleaned in here forever, and they hadn’t had many visitors lately. In fact, no one had come to Agrabah from a neighboring city that she could remember since she had met Aladdin.
“Where would the map be?” Aladdin asked, pushing away the cobwebs that were covering some of the scrolls in the room.
“Probably over there in that stack of stuff,” Jasmine replied.
Iago, Genie, Abu, and Carpet followed them, stepping around the messy piles. None of them had ever seen so many documents in their life, except Iago of course, who’d been introduced to writings by his time he’d spent early on with Jafar. The sultan hadn’t come with them since Jasmine had other people to help her. He had other things to do as well.
It was a slow process nonetheless, even though all the help they had. Unrolling every scroll, and then re-rolling it back when it wasn’t the right one took a while to do. The only noise in the room was some grumbling coming from Iago about how big of a waste of time this was and the occasional cough from the excessive amount of dust from the items.
In a little while, Iago began to get up and walk around, trying to find something else that the map might be in. There was a trunk in the back of the room, and he struggled to open it. When he did, he fell inside and the lid closed on top of him. Unfortunately, the lid was too heavy and he couldn’t get it back open.
The group laughed, and for a second, the business-like mood that had settled among them was lifted. Aladdin went over to the trunk and lifted up the lid, and Iago was coughing and had tears coming out his eyes.
“Whew! I don’t think I could’ve inhaled one more ounce of dust or I’d have died!” Iago panted, still having coughing fits.
But surprisingly, no comment came from Aladdin. He was intrigued by what lay in the bottom of the trunk that Iago had stumbled upon. “Jasmine, come here for a second.” She walked over and knelt beside him. “Who is that person?”
Everyone wanted to see what he was talking about, and he held up a picture of a young boy about the age of eleven. No one understood why this portrait would mean so much to him. “I think it’s a painting of one of the young princes that used to live here. I couldn’t tell you exactly who it was, but I’m sure Father could if you really wanted to know.”
“That’s fine,” he sighed, keeping his eyes on the portrait. “I don’t want him to go through the trouble.”
“What is it Al?” Genie asked, noticing the way that he stared at the painting, as if it meant something to him, something from his past that he was remembering.
Aladdin shook his head. “It bears so close of a resemblance to a friend I once had, one that died a long time ago. Seeing this reminded me of him.” For some reason, Aladdin looked down at Abu and smiled in sad sort of way. “It’s how Abu and I first met.”
“Who was it?” Jasmine asked.
“His name was Kadin,” and Aladdin’s story began there.
The Story Of Abu by Brittani