What If?: His Tears Weren't Real?

As Rahim Khan states, Amir's first short has irony.  A man forces terrible deeds onto himself so that he can be rewarded with pearls.  The story ends with the man killing his own wife, which made him so sad that he was sitting on a mountain of pearls, which was supposed to make him happy.  The paradox in the story is so simple, yet complex.  However, Hassan points out an obvious flaw to Amir, "Why did the man kill his wife?  In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears?  Couldn't he have just smelled an onion?"  So... what if the man had just smelled an onion?  If he had done that, here is what might have happened:
A man finds a magic cup and learns that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls.  But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear.  So he finds a way to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich.  He went to the grocery store and bought onions daily.  There, at the grocery store, he met a lovely young woman.  He began having affairs with her and a love connection spurred.  The story ends with the man on his mountain of pearls, along with his lover.  His beloved wife held a knife in her hand.