ANOTHER NASRUDIN STORY

by Steven Steinbock

After posting my column of June 29, in which I retold the story of the Mulla Nasrudin keeping dry in a rainstorm, I was told by Joel Ben Izzy, professional storyteller and author of The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness, that it’s a tradition to always tell Nasrudin stories in pairs. Like Lays potato chips, you can never eat just one.

By the way, if you enjoy stories with an Occidental flair, our chief-brief criminal, James Lincoln Warren, wrote a short mystery, “The Thief-Taker of Baghdad,” available at his web site, featuring a thief named Ahmed the Moth. The story has one foot in One Thousand and One Nights, and the other foot in the world of hard-boiled pulp fiction.

Anyway, back to the stories of the Mulla Nasrudin. Here’s one that Joel Ben Izzy told me:

Nasrudin is teaching at a little mosque, and he comes in one Friday afternoon, and announces, “Before I give you today’s teaching, let me ask you a question: who among you knows what it is about which I am about to speak?”

The students look at each other nervously. Eventually one of them says, “Master Nasrudin, none of us knows what you intend to tell us.”

Nasrudin angrily responds, “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s no point in my saying it.” And he picks up and leaves the mosque.

The next week, students gathered from all over, hoping to learn the lesson that Nasrudin had withheld the week before. The mosque is packed. Nasrudin announces, “My friends, before I give you a teaching, let me ask you a question: Who among you knows what it is about which I am about to speak?”

No one knows what he’s going to say, but remembering what happened before, they all rise and say, “We know, we know.”

Nasrudin said, “If you already know what I am going to say, there’s no sense in my saying it now!” And he picks up and leaves.

The third week, the mosque is again packed to the rafters, and Nasrudin enters and announces, “My friends, before I give you a teaching, let me ask you a question: Who among you knows what it is about which I am about to speak?”

Of course, they don’t know what he’s going to say, but they remember what happened the previous two weeks. So half of the people rise and say, “Yes, we know,” and the other half of the people rise and say, “No, we don’t know.”

Nasrudin scratches his beard, and looks from one person to the next. After a moment he says, “It seems that half of you know what I am about to teach, while the other half does not know. Those of you that know teach the other half, and you’ll save us all a lot of time.”

I suppose one with a broad imagination could draw connections between this tale and Criminal Brief. I’ll leave that up to you.