Three Thousand Years of Longing

Alithea Binnie is a British scholar who occasionally suffers from hallucinations of demonic beings. During a trip to Istanbul, Alithea purchases an antique bottle and unleashes the Djinn trapped within it. The Djinn offers to grant Alithea three wishes, so long as each one is truly her heart's desire, but Alithea argues that wishing is a mistake, accusing the Djinn of being a trickster. She tells him that when she was a child, she built herself an imaginary friend in the form of young boy and even imagined his whole life (which she wrote in a diary) but she finally decided to forget about him, fearing to be overwhelmed by her own imagination. In response, the Djinn proceeds to tell her three tales of his past and how he ended up trapped in the bottle.