It is a a dark tale about a man who found a magic lamp and learnt that if he wept into the cup,his tears turned into pearls. But even though he has always been poor,he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. the story ends with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in his hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.