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“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”

• The following version of this book was used to create this Lesson Plan: Chiang, Ted. Exhalation. Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

• “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” the first story in the collection, is told via a first-person narrator named Fuwaad ibn Abbas.

• As the story begins, Fuwaad addresses his “strange” tale to the Caliph of Baghdad, noting that “it is a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who would learn” (3).

• Fuwaad begins his tale with the day he walked through a market in search of a gift.

• Upon discovering a new merchant located in “a prized location” (4), he entered and met the owner, an inventor named Bashaarat.

• Bashaarat’s shop was filled with marvelous instruments; the most astonishing of all was “a stout metal hoop” whose “opening was as wide as two outstretched hands” (5).

• The...

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