STORY OF THE WEEK |
Catch your rabbit
People were talking about strange, sometimes mythical beasts, and someone in the teahouse told Nasrudin that there were monsters to be found even near his own village.
As he was on his way home, the Mulla saw a new animal. It had long ears, like a donkey, but it was brownish, furry and chewing. So preoccupied was it that Nasrudin was able to steal up to it and catch it by the ears. He had never seen anything like this before. It was, in fact, a rabbit.
He took it home and tied it in a sack, forbidding his wife to open it. Then he hurried back to the teahouse.
‘I have found something’, he announced gravely, ‘which has ears like a donkey, munches like a camel, and is now in a sack in my house. There has never been an animal like this seen before.’
Immediately the teahouse emptied, and everyone ran to the Mulla’s home to see this wonder.
Meanwhile, of course, his wife had opened the sack, unable to restrain her curiosity. The rabbit bounded out of the house and away. She could think of nothing better to do than put a stone in the sack instead, and tie it up again.
Soon the Mulla arrived with his friends clamouring to see the monster.
He opened the sack, and the stone fell out. There was a dead silence. Nasrudin recovered himself first.
‘Friends! If you take seven of these stones, they will be found to weigh three-quarters of a pound.’
JOKE OF THE WEEK |
Economic Law
During the Crusades, Nasrudin was captured and set to work on the ditch near Aleppo citadel. The work was backbreaking, and the Mulla bemoaned his lot: but the exercise benefited him.
A neutral merchant passing by one day recognized him, and ransomed him for thirty silver dirhams. Taking him home he treated him kindly and bestowed his daughter upon him.
Now Nasrudin lived a life of fair comfort, but the woman turned out to be a shrew.
‘You are the man, remember,’ she said one day, ‘that my father bought for thirty dirhams and gave to me.’
‘Yes,’ said Nasrudin, ‘I am that man. He paid thirty for me; you got me for nothing – and I have even lost the muscles I gained digging ditches.’
Quote OF THE WEEK |
Thou
shall not
follow mere
rituals...
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