Khamrud ran home immediately, not sure where to go after what happened, but deciding that his family's shack (a drafty arrangement of wooden crates) was as good a place for him to try to calm down as anywhere else.
Bursting through the ragged curtain that was meant to pass for a door, he was taking deep breaths and shivering, even as he saw his mother in front of him.
"Khamrud! What's happened?"
He was too out-of-breath to answer.
"One of the soldiers saw you stealing again, true? One of these days you will not outrun them."
"No, Mom, the soldiers aren't after me this time."
"'This time,' as though there will not be others. I hauled wood all day to get the cucumber I'm slicing up for your younger siblings' dinner. You spent all day robbing people, no doubt, with nothing to show but more enemies for yourself and us!"
"Do you think the rich store owners you haul wood for give a shit about this family?" asked Khamrud furiously. "Do you think they had nothing more than a cucumber to give you? Do you want nothing more for us? Right or wrong, at least I'm trying to get something more for Rasha and baby Jamir to grow up on. At least they get a slice of meat when I'm lucky. Is it too much to ask for you to acknowledge me once and a while?"
"Is it too much to ask," his mother retorted, "for one of my more mature offspring to set an example of honesty and hard work? It's bad enough that your older sister is out there selling her body. You must remind me daily that I can raise nothing but thieves and whores--that I must look out between these crates constantly in case my son has led a gang of angry soldiers home!"
"I'm not in trouble with the soldiers, Mom!"
"Then what is it, Kharmud? You must be in some kind of trouble. Someone has caught you stealing yet again, no doubt. Did you fight with another thief? I can tell something happened to you."
"I'm not in trouble! Nobody caught me--HEE HAW!"
Khamrud was cut off mid-sentence by his own sudden impulse to bray, the sound of his mother's gasp, and the strangest feeling of wobbliness beside his head. Reaching up, he was surprised to feel a pair of long, furry ears on his head--ears from an animal he passed daily in the streets, the kind of animal he often saw doing the same kind of work his mother earned a cucumber for today. He, too, gasped--and felt his ears flatten against his skull like a whipped ass. He'd hoped to escape this argument without admitting what really happened to him, but clearly that would not be possible.
"Khamrud, your ears, what happened?" she asked. Khamrud took a deep breath and unleashed the truth.
"I WAS caught stealing, but not by the soldiers. A dumb-looking lady I swiped some coins from turned out to be a genie, and now I'm cursed to get random animal parts whenever I do something wrong unless I can do 'three truly good deeds', whatever that means."
He could see lightning flash in his mother's eyes.
"You fool!" she scolded, Khamrud's long ears perking up to hear her words. "Have you not heard your elders' tell stories of jinn? Of the powers they were given before humanity was forged? Occasionally a human might master one of them, but they are far more likely to master you."
"I know, I know!" he defended. "I saw how she swiped me from the street to another place, and back again. I told her I'm only doing this for my siblings. She didn't seem to care, just like you don't. I promise I'll find a way to fix this."
His mother threw up her hands in exasperation and went back to chopping her cucumber, hacking at it like a murderess torturing her victim. "My son steals from a genie and gets cursed," she said to herself as though he weren't there. "He could have been out doing good deeds already; he could have earned a favor from her, so we might have been living in a palace by sundown. But no, my oldest son must always be a thief, and an incompetent one at that."