Magi: The Tale of Faith and Hope

Incident

"Cassim?" Aladdin asked.

"Yeah. He's the real leader of the Fog Troupe. He's the one who created it. But, it seems he always wanted me to be the leader, though," Alibaba explained.

"What sort of relationship does he have with you?"

"It's very similar to the relationship between you and Ugo."

Aladdin was surprised.

"Yes, Cassim and I have been friends since long ago," Alibaba said with a small smile, and with that he began his tale.

He told them everything, starting with how he and his friend were born into the slums of this country. Faith had a laugh about their 'tunnel death row'. Although the two boys often fought, in reality they were the best friends. They would run around the junkyard streets together every day. But not everything was the same for the two of them. Alibaba told them he had a kind and gentle mother.

"Woah, Alibaba's mother?" Aladdin asked excitedly.

"Yeah, my mother," Alibaba said with a nod and a small smile. "She was a really kind person." He went on to explain that his mother had been a prostitute in the slum quarters.

In the evening, he would return to his mother's lap. His mother was a cheerful person, so he was always happy. But it was different for Cassim. His father was a worthless man, a violent drunk who was always yelling and often beat his children. One day Cassim's father hit him so hard that he knocked out several of his teeth, and when Cassim's little sister, Mariam, cried for her brother, their father hit her as well. Cassim was so angry that he threatened to  kill his father, which only made the man try to hit him harder. Seeing this, Alibaba's mother ran over and managed to put a stop to it by knocking the drunk off of his feet. After that, she held Cassim and Mariam tightly in her arms, as if they were her own children, and let them cry as much as they wanted. Alibaba admitted to feeling a little  jealous at the time, even though he was glad she had saved his friends, because he thought his mother had been stolen from him for a moment. After that day Cassim's father disappeared from the slums. They didn't know if he had ran away or hanged himself somewhere to die, but that kind of thing seemed to happen a lot in the slums. So Alibaba's mother adopted Cassim and Mariam, and they became a family of four.

"A family... must have been lively," Aladdin said.

"Sounds fun," said Hope.

"Yeah, it was lively and fun," Alibaba agreed. "And Cassim changed after that."

Cassim always stole. But one day he was caught by the old man at the store, and when Alibaba's mother found out she went and bowed on the ground in front of the man to apologize for Cassim, promised to repay him for the stolen goods, and begged him to hit her instead, because Cassim's faults were her responsibility as the parent. As expected, Cassim behaved himself after that incident. But even that strong and kind mother died one day because of an illness.

"That day was a really sad one..." said Alibaba, looking down. "I was still a kid then. I was lonely and anguished and didn't even know the reason why..." He had the twins' sympathy. They had been really young when they lost their own mother. "But Cassim never cried. Because he was a year older than me, he took the role of an older brother."

That day Cassim told Mariam and Alibaba not to cry and promised that he would protect them from then on. The three of them were only small children, but they combined their strength and really did their best to survive. Life took a better turn from there. Alibaba's mother's old customers and the neighbors helped them out. They did all sorts of work. Picking up trash, polishing boots, and leading foreigners in their sightseeing tour of Balbadd. But Cassim used the wrong methods for survival. He went back to stealing. Moreover, he used the bad kids in the street in a showy way. Alibaba said Cassim was probably driven to desperation to secure their situation. That led to a day Alibaba asked Cassim if he should give him a hand. Cassim told him he didn't have to do such things, because Alibaba was different from him. Alibaba, taken aback, asked what he was talking about. Without looking at him, Cassim replied that he had recently realized that he was villain, just like his father, whereas Alibaba was different, because he was like his mother, living in a respectable way. Alibaba didn't know what to say to that, but he thought Cassim was being too hard on himself. He thought Cassim was good too. After a pause, Cassim said this: