Aminah Barnes the main character and an orphaned beggar in the city Al-Kal'as, Aminah approaches the princess hoping for sympathy and gets knocked on the head with the jinni's lamp instead. Since she was raised in a comfortably middle-class family before being orphaned, she treats the jinni with politeness and sympathy, eventually earning his affection. With a moderately large sum of wealth, she purchases a house and takes in first Idris as a manservant and then Barra as cook. Aminah wishes for the ability to travel through time and space at will in order to fulfil a dream she shared with her father. Eager to help the poor but disenchanted with humanity's greed after practically starting a riot by giving too much to the beggars in the market, she adds to this ability an orb with which to seek out the best people to help in order to help others. Using these two abilities, she helps a tailor and foster-father of thirteen named Ahab and the selfless baker Hassan in their respective trades. Eventually, she is forced to rescue Hassan from Badr's dungeon and concoct a plan to escape Al-Kal'as. Over the course of the book, she also goes by the names Zubaydah and Zaynab, as well as impersonating an angel and is eventually revealed to be Cinderella's fairy godmother.