The story goes that one evening, at the hour when the heat at last leaves the sand, a merchant arrived in a small town at the edge of the desert, carrying a silver jar. He stood in the middle of the square and announced, in a voice that was neither loud nor soft, "I sell moonlight." The richest citizens hurried forward and offered him purses of gold, one after another, each heavier than the last, but every time he shook his head, gently, as though they had misunderstood a very simple question.
At the back of the crowd stood a poor girl called Safiya. She had no gold and nothing to sell. All she had was a lullaby that her mother used to sing to her at night, a tune she had never forgotten. Shyly, almost to herself, she began to hum it, and as she hummed, the jar in the merchant's hands began, very slowly, to glow, as though the night itself had leaned closer to listen.
The merchant smiled. "Moonlight cannot be bought," he said. "It can only be shared." He put the jar into her hands and walked off into the dark, and nobody could say afterwards which way he had gone. That night Safiya climbed onto the roof of her house and opened the jar. A soft, silvery light spread over the whole town, and one by one the neighbors came out and sat quietly on their roofs, and under that light the children, who had never been so still, fell asleep, and the grown-ups, for once, did not feel like talking.