"Amina" is a Short Story by Edward Lucas White. It originally saw publication in the June 1907 edition of The Bellman and later, in 1927, July at the latest, it was included in the compilation Lukundoo and Other Stories. Falling under Oriental Gothic, "Amina" is a contemporary, America-centric, and uncredited adaptation of "The King's Son and the She-Ghoul" with a title derived from "The Story of Sidi Nouman". These are the two Arabian Nights stories dealing with ghouls and so does "Amina".
Waldo, a traveler from Rhode Island, goes on a trek through Persia, guided by several locals and the American consul. Although they give it their all to make his stay memorable, he recognizes they are hiding something from him and he doesn't like that he's forbidden from going out on his own. One early morning, he manages to sneak away unseen for a lone stroll. After he gets lost in the emptiness of the arid landscape, it dawns on him that he didn't bring anything to drink. His predicament seems short-lived when he's approached by a woman who goes unveiled, who has a curious figure, and whose lips barely part even when she speaks. She introduces herself as Amina, a woman from the Free-folk, and offers Waldo a drink at her home before she helps him back to his camp. Waldo readily accepts, even though her particularities unnerve him. It turns out that her home is inside an ancient mausoleum and that she is a mother, notably of ten children of the exact same age. Confused but tired and thirsty, Waldo lacks the presence of mind to do anything but ask for water, even as the family encircles him with evident ill intent. Yet the consul and a guide named Hassan have tracked him down and one-shot Amina. The consul explains to Waldo that Amina and her children aren't humans, but ghouls, showing him the long teeth and two rows of teats on Amina's corpse. Because it is imperative to take out the whole family, the consul and Waldo stay to guard the mausoleum while Hassan fetches men and weapons to complete the job. Despite his misgivings about murdering children, Waldo does as he is told and lets the slaughter play out.
Before "Amina", though published a year after the short story, White wrote a poem titled "The Ghoula". It is also based on "The King's Son and the She-Ghoul" and neatly fits in the middle of White's transformation of the folktale to his short story. Rather than a Persian prince who survives his encounter with the ghouls, the poem features an Englishman who gets eaten. In "Amina", the human protagonist is from Rhode Island and although he comes close to being eaten, he is saved at the last second by his companions and it are the ghouls who get killed instead. What is wholly new to "Amina" is that ghouls imitate human language and that the ghoul physique is a mixture of humanoid and canine. White may have gotten this from European bestiaries or Middle Eastern folklore on hyenas; as far back as the first century, hyenas have been depicted as eaters of human flesh and imitators of human voices. Over time, this has loosely gotten them associated with ghouls. One paragraph in "Amina" about Persian monsters, as relayed by Hassan, demonstrates that White had a handle on this subject matter.
Prior to "Amina", ghouls and the figure of Amine from "The Story of Sidi Nouman" were featured and referenced in plenty of European fiction following Galland's translation of the Arabian Nights, but rarely so in American fiction. "Amina" played a large role in changing that by providing the template for the weird take on ghouls that would be codified in "Pickman's Model" some months later in 1927.
In the wake of "Pickman's Model", three more stories that specifically take inspiration from "Amina" were written: "The Nameless Offspring", "The Chadbourne Episode", and "Far Below".
"Amina" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Waldo is aware that Amina and her ten children tricked him and intended to eat him and would have succeeded if the consul and Hassan hadn't intervened. Still, being ordered to help prevent the children from escaping while Hassan fetches some guardsmen to exterminate them and then watch them be slaughtered and their carcasses laid out in a row does not sit well with him.
- Ancient Tomb: The ruins the family of ghouls live in is identified as a tomb and a mausoleum that since long stopped being taken care of by humans. At least the ghouls keep the place clean.
- Antagonist Title: "Amina" comes from the name of the mother ghoul, not the protagonist or anyone with less human-eating intentions.
- "Arabian Nights" Days: Wherever the narrative has room for it, the people of Persia are depicted as hostile and merciless, traits that rub off on anyone living among them. Their country is one where monsters and other dangers are not yet extinct the way they are in America.
- Artistic License: In one curious piece of dialogue, Waldo refers to "Amina" as a name from the Arabian Nights, invoking "The Story of Sidi Nouman". The ghoul Amina condemns the Arabian Nights as foolish tales, which is supposed to make the reader think that Amina is something other than a ghoul while the reveal later on is that Amina is a ghoul, but very different from previous depictions of ghouls. What this dialogue fails to acknowledge is that "Amina" and all its variations is a very common name, not in the least because it is the name of the mother of the prophet Mohammed.
- Creepy Child: When Waldo is brought to them to be eaten, the ghoul children circulate around him, "chattering, laughing, giggling, snickering, making noises indicative of glee." They prance around him, "jabbering strange, guttural noises, licking their lips, pointing at him, their eyes fixed on him, with now and then a glance at their mother." It deeply unsettles Waldo, perhaps even more so than their mother's curious demeanor.
- Death of a Child: Amina has ten little children, as full a litter as a ghoul can birth, to take care of. It is largely for their sake she lures Waldo to their home to be eaten, but because Waldo has protectors, it is she who gets killed in front of her children. With her out of the way, the ghoul children are then mercilessly exterminated. Despite all that happened, Waldo is not at ease about this course of action by his companions.
- Desecrating the Dead: The ghoul family lives within the walls of a mausoleum, having broken a small hole through to the inside. Although nothing is outright said about what they've done with the original occupants, it may be expected from ghouls that they've treated the bodies with anything but due respect.
- Disappeared Dad: The consul twice mentions how lucky Waldo and the rest of their group are that the ghoul family's father is absent, because they assuredly would have deaths on their side if they'd have had to deal with him too. It is left open whether he's not part of the family anymore or off on a hunting trip and is going to come home to a cruel surprise.
- Enemy Mine: When the consul and Waldo set up their vigil to prevent the ghoul children from escaping their upcoming extermination, the consul is very clear that Waldo has no choice in the matter. If he refuses or fails, they run the risk of becoming the target of all Mohammedan communities, who share "little or no solidarity" upon all but a few matters. The need to eradicate ghouls is such an exception and failure to do what must be done will be answered by stoning as the method of execution.
- Explosive Breeder: Ghouls breed as dogs or pigs do: a litter at a time. The maximum number of children per litter is ten, which is exactly the number of children that Waldo almost gets eaten by. Ghoul children are suggested to develop quicker than human children do, because Waldo, as far as he can tell in the dark, estimates them to be two years old but moving around with "the assurance of boys of eight to ten."
- Fantastic Racism: The humans of Persia, whatever the various communities may think of each other, have a shared interest and purpose in destroying the whole of ghoulkind because they eat humans. The intensity of this project is such that any human who fails to do their part gets stoned to death. Even the consul, ostensibly an American, has adopted this mindset, as he tells Waldo: "You must not feel any foolish sentimentalism about any fancied resemblance of these vermin to human beings. Shoot, and shoot to kill... it is incumbent upon every man to assist in eradicating these creatures."
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Before encountering the ghoul, Waldo is told about all kinds of wonderful and often dangerous beings running around in Persia by Hassan. The ghoul is mentioned among them, but so many are mentioned that neither Waldo nor the reader could have been prepared for any of them.
- Humanoid Abomination: Amina looks mostly human, but has remarkably muscular arms, long and sharp fingernails and toenails, too red lips, and pointy teeth like a greyhound's that she hides by moving her lips as little as possible. With her clothes on, it draws attention that she has no defined waistline, which is because she has a total of ten canine or porcine teats rather than a doublet of breasts like human women. She may have some shapeshifting abilities, because Waldo perceives her twice to be shorter than before. No adult male ghoul shows up to be described, but Amina's ten children are all naked and feral in behavior.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Amina lures Waldo to her home so she and her family can consume his flesh and drink his blood. They come mightily close to that first bite, but Waldo gets saved just in time by the consul and Hassan.
- In Medias Res: The story begins when the consul, Waldo, and Hassan have just killed the mother ghoul and are setting up a plan to eradicate her children. For two pages the narrative works towards the end of the events, after which six pages follow detailing what is going on and how it came to be.
- Insistent Terminology: For as long as Waldo tries to get to know Amina, she often talks about herself by referring to her people, the Free-folk. For instance, when Waldo asks if she's not a Mohammedan, she replies that the Free-folk are not Moslems. However, she refuses to elaborate who the Free-folk are. Waldo only learns from the consul that the Free-folk are ghouls.
- Naïve Newcomer: Waldo is from Rhode Island and some words regarding his recent sea-voyage suggest that he's never left New England before. He is wholly unprepared for his stay in Persia, where he doesn't speak the language, barely knows the customs, and refuses to heed the warnings of his guides. If anyone was going to be lured in by a ghoul to get eaten by her and her children, it was him.
- Non-Action Guy: Waldo is painfully passive and incompetent throughout the story. His encounter with the ghouls starts when he ditches his party for a quiet stroll alone despite being warned not to. He gets lost and has forgotten his bottle of water. This makes him an easy target for the ghoul, who promises him a drink and a place to rest if he comes with her. Despite that she unsettles him in several ways, he walks into her home, a mausoleum from days past, without qualms or care that Amina is between him and the exit. Even when he cannot deny anymore that she and her children aren't human and mean him harm, he just sits as they close in. He gets saved just in time by two of his party, the consul and Hassan, who then make plans to exterminate the ghoul family. Waldo, still dazed and thirsty, is not part of the planning, barely plays a role as guard, and sits back when his party slaughters the ghouls.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls refer to themselves as the Free-folk and the Free-people and the word "ghoul" may be exclusively what humans call them. Ghouls may or may not be without religion, but in any case they are neither Christian nor Muslim. Physically, ghouls are a mixture of the humanoid and the canine forms with some aspects reminiscent of swines. Clothed ghouls can pass for human as long as they take care to hide their sharp teeth too, because most of their animal qualities are on their torso, such as five sets of teats on the species's females. Relatedly, ghouls produce offspring in litters with ten being the maximum. There is a possibility that ghouls can shapeshift ever so slightly to have more of a human form and that they have a knack for learning new languages. Still, whenever they speak there is a growl beneath their words and they do not talk like people do, because they can produce a message without moving their lips.
- Sinister Nudity: The ghoul children walk around naked, which is fair for two year-olds, but gets disconcerting in combination with the fact they live in an ancient mausoleum away from civilization, behave distinctly feral, and are very bad at pretending they have no ill intentions.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Even though Amina and her children meant to kill and eat him, Waldo is uncomfortable with the consul's slaughter of the ghoul family. He, however, has barely spent any time in Persia, while the locals are very aware of the danger ghouls pose. Therefore, they consider exterminating them their duty as human beings, regardless if the ghouls are still little children.
