The movie Three Thousand Years of Longing has much to offer. Alas the ending is, in my opinion, just awful. It’s almost an insult the the djinn themselves! The scene that leapt off the screen at me is so masterful and so magical I had to write about it.
It is very short, unfortunately, for it is one of those haunting tunes one used to find in old music boxes.
UPDATE: November 13, 2025 Someone on YouTube commented on my video asking the name of the piece. At the time I uploaded the clip, I had sent emails off to the producer of the film and to the composer. I never heard back. Today, however, I found the song “Djinn Theme” on Spotify.
But I digress once again. It is the Djinn who make the harp in the movie COME ALIVE. If you do a search on King Solomon, you will find debates about how Solomon is portrayed in the Quran vs the Bible vs in the Jewish folktales.
The djinn are a very interesting group of spirits. Some traditions say they are neither good nor evil. They are invisible most of the time, but they can become visible. Netflix aired a series called Jinn in 2019. It starts off in Petra, a place I was invited to visit by one of my English as a Second Language students back in 1979. Petra leapt to fame in a series of movies. It was best portrayed by the blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
King Solomon was supposed to be able to speak to birds and he had power over the djinn. A very odd coincidence is Solomon’s ability to talk to the ants. We assume those tiny little creatures that annoy everyone at picnics, are the bane of householders everywhere, and who can bite and torment and sometimes fly are the ants in the folktales. In telling the story about Solomon to a friend here in Nevada, I heard a first hand account of seeing the ANT PEOPLE in Osino, Nevada. The same ANT PEOPLE who the Late Notorious Doc’s father claimed HE MET. The same ANT PEOPLE the Hopi talk about. AND MAYBE MAYBE?????? The Ants . . . .
Now for a brief detour:
Gene D. Matlock, B.A., M.A.’s blog post “Is the Hopi Deity Kokopelli an Ancient Hindu God”? is a must read. I always wondered if Kokopelli was Shri Krishna because of the flute. Never made the connection between Lord KUBER and Kokopelli. It’s brilliant!
And then it hit me! The ants in the Surah An-Nami
Please if your a devout Muslim, do not attack me. This is conjecture. I wonder if this Surah is a vestige of an ancient tale from India which is why academics have not been able to make sense of it!
If you take the tale of King Solomon and replace it with Lord Indra, then the ants make sense in the story. It it a teaching tale about pride and greed and disdain for others. It is a teaching tale of humility and how the gods (Vishnu and Shiva) can take the form of anything they want and use any creature necessary to help a sentient being recognize his/her infinitesimally insignificance compared to the Creator.
But it also might serve a dual purpose and that is to remind the storyteller and his/her audience that ants might not be tiny creatures who live in tunnels and hills!
FOR FURTHER READING AND LISTENING
https://www.academia.edu/6660530/Solomon_and_the_Ant_Sura
Librarian's Guide to the Multiverse! 