Hands are full

A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story

 

Hands are full

Mullah Nasruddin
Mullah Nasruddin

Once, Nasruddin went on a long trip, and Fatima insisted that he carry a weapon, so he left heavily armed. In one hand he held a huge sword, and in the other he clenched a pistol.
Unfortunately, on the road the Mullah encountered a thief who stopped and robbed him. Not even the Mullah’s pants were left him.
When he returned home and told Fatima what had happened to him, she exclaimed, “Dolt! You were armed to the teeth! Why in God’s name did you not do anything to defend yourself‽”
In his own defense, he exclaimed, “How could I‽ I had my hands full. If I had had my hands free, I would have strangled him! But eventually I gave him as much a fright as he gave me.”
“How did you manage to do that?” asked Fatima.
“Well, after he’d gone about half a mile, I yelled the nastiest, fiercest insults at him. There wasn’t a curse word known to man I didn’t threaten him with. I’m sure his ears are still burning.”

Excerpted from

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha

now in print from Lethe Press

~

Small consolation

A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story

 

Small consolation

Mullah Nasruddin
Mullah Nasruddin

One day as Nasruddin was traveling, he met on the road an elderly Turkman who halted him and asked, “Tell me, sir, are you a mullah?”

Nasruddin answered, “Yes, as it so happens, I am.”

The fellow clasped his hands and implored him, “Our small tribe has no imam. Please come with me to our village, and you can serve our tribe as our spiritual leader.”

Nasruddin agreed, and so the men continued on their journey. After they had walked for hours, they came to a crossroads, where they happened to meet another fellow, a rather brawny Turkman with an ink-black beard, riding a donkey. He asked the first Turkman, “Who is this man with you?”

Holding Nasruddin’s hand, the elder smiled and answered, “He is our beloved new imam. I’m taking him right now to our tribe, which has been without a religious leader for more than a year.”

The second Turkman jumped off his donkey and came up to the men. “You must surrender this mullah to us. My tribe hasn’t had an imam in nine years.” And he grabbed the mullah’s other wrist.

“Screw you, loser,” said the first man, pulling hard on Nasruddin’s arm. “We recruited him hours ago.”

“Let go of him, you filthy swine,” the second one yelled, yanking the Mullah’s arm in the other direction, “my tribe needs him more. Give him to us!”

As the men argued, they pulled the Mullah back and forth like a rope in a tug of war, wrenching his arms.

Finally, the second man pulled out a huge knife and yelled, “Enough! Release him, or I’ll slit his throat. That way, he’ll be of no benefit to either your tribe or ours.”

The Mullah, caught between a Turk and a hard place, trembled with fear.

The first man, not backing down in the least, said to the Mullah, “Don’t worry, effendi — I hereby swear, if this bastard kills you, I’ll murder his donkey to avenge your death!”

 

Excerpted from

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha

now in print from Lethe Press

~

Proxy Protector

A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story

 

Proxy Protector

Mullah Nasruddin
Mullah Nasruddin

Mullah Nasruddin was traveling one day with his old friend Hussein. When night fell, they stopped at a crossroads.
Hoping to spend the night alone with his donkey, Nasruddin told Hussein, “It’s been delightful but tonight I am planning to spend the night here under the starry sky. You need not stay with me if you want to travel on. Your town is not too far from here.”
“What are you talking about, Nasruddin‽ It’s still at least a half-day’s walk. I insist on keeping you company, and I assure you that I’d be only too happy to sleep here as well, rather than go home by myself in the dark.”
“Are you sure you’re sure? Have you appointed someone to protect your wife’s virtue in your absence?” Nasruddin asked.
“Yes, Mullah,” said Hussein, “I asked my good friend and neighbor Hamza to guard my wife’s virtue while I’m away.”
“But whom, may I ask,” inquired Nasruddin, “have you appointed to look after the virtue of your good friend and neighbor Hamza?”

Excerpted from

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha

from Lethe Press

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist

~

Review of Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
reviewed in Out In Print

XNS frcoverLamfinalsealExtraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin, which was named a Finalist in this year’s Lambda Literary Awards, has reviewed its first full review by Keith John Glaeske in Out In Print, on June 8, 2015.

Here are two brief excerpts from the first and last paragraphs of the review, with our thanks to the author and publisher for their permission to reprint the material.

In 2011, Ron Suresha published The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin . . . Now he has collected 257 additional tales, many translated into English for the first time, for a companion volume entitled Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin.  Suresha’s second collection of Mullah Nasruddin lore, however, is more than a mere continuation of the tales found in the first volume, as explained by the subtitle:  Naughty, unexpurgated tales of the beloved wise fool from the Middle and Far East.  Here, then, are the tales that have been expunged from collections of modern translations of Mullah Nasruddin, due to the scatological, ethnic, racial, and/or sexist humor contained therein.  . . .

And this from the closing:

Naturally, this collection will appeal to any reader who appreciates a good fart joke or merkin story, but it will also prove valuable to students of folklore and/or Islamic culture; storytellers; and seekers of wisdom.  To this end, Suresha includes a bibliographical list of his sources, and a glossary of terms that might be unknown to the general reader, for those who might be inspired to follow the Mullah Nasruddin, perched sitting backwards upon his beloved donkey.

We thank Mr Glaeske for his kind review, and Out In Print for running the piece, which you can read in its entirety here.

doublestar-crescent smile

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha

Lethe Press

ISBN 1-59021-464-1

~

 

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin named Lammy Finalist

Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin named Finalist in 27th annual Lambda Literary Awards

 

June 1, 2015 — The prestigious Lambda Literary Awards (the “Lammys”) has honored Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin, authored by Ron J. Suresha and published 2014 by Lethe Press, as a Finalist for Excellence in Bisexual Fiction.

LammyfinalistThe author wishes to thank his husband, Rocco, for his unending support.

XNS frcoverfinalmedRead the complete LLF announcement here.

The power of chalk

A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story

In memory of our fallen heroes: those who threw themselves under the chalklines because someone else was making up the rules of play in the insane asylum.

The power of chalk

Mullah Nasruddin
Mullah Nasruddin

Once, Mullah Nasruddin was chalking a political slogan on the wall of a building in Konya when the corrupt local constable caught him and dragged him into jail. His queer appearance and illogical behavior led to his being certified insane, and so he was transferred to the regional mental asylum.
The asylum, of course, was filled with every sort of depraved and perverted lunatic. As soon as the Mullah entered the courtyard, the inmates crowded around him as if he were carrion and they were buzzards circling, ready to land. He could smell their soiled clothes and rancid breath as they came closer.
Finally, Nasruddin held up his hands to repel the sociopaths and shouted, “Stop, you fiends!” He pulled from his pocket his offensive piece of chalk. “Stand back, or else!” he hissed, brandishing the chalk as if it were a knife. The crazies halted in their spots.
Moving quickly, Nasruddin drew a line across the courtyard dividing the inmates evenly into two groups. Returning to the center he announced, “Pay attention, people! Here are the new rules. Now, does everyone clearly see the chalkline on the ground‽”
The men nodded and grunted their mutual assent.
“Good. So, the first and only rule of the game is this: on my call, all of you must jump under that line. The first man who makes it under, wins this chalk, and gets to make up the next game.” He walked to the periphery of the two teams, saying, “I will say when to begin. Ready, set, go.”
The casualties were severe as both teams went berserk and threw themselves repeatedly at the line and at each other.
Nasruddin was released. Nobody was quite sure whether it was because they could not allow further injuries of the inmates, or because his resourcefulness proved his sanity.

Excerpted from

XNS frcoverLamfinalsealExtraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha

now in print from Lethe Press

~

Preface to Extraordinary Adventures, part 2

Preface, part 2

An excerpt from Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin

XNS frcoverLamfinalsealby Ron J. Suresha

Concluded from previous week

While researching the topic of taboo humor I discovered, in The Horn Book by folklore and humor scholar Gershon Legman, his stark condemnation of folk story and joke collections with all the bawdy or “objectionable” material expunged, which he calls “fakelore.” Despite my earnest efforts to locate such risqué stories with limited success, I naturally cringed at the implication that I had unwittingly committed some sort of literary and folkloric misdeed by excluding the naughty and nasty tales of my old friend, Mullah Nasruddin.
Given the immense volume of this character’s folklore, I was perplexed by the conspicuous absence of adult-themed stories among the hundreds I had indexed. The dearth of racy, earthy, profane, or ethnic material in the existing published folklore available to me seemed due in part to its exclusion from popular children’s presentations of the often-moralizing Mullah. My theory was that these “naughty Nasreddin” narratives were expurgated from popular representations of Nasreddin in an effort to “reform” the character, according to the moral codes imposed by both Islamist and Turkish nationalistic influences.
German Nasreddin scholar Ulrich Marzolph’s 1998 analysis, “What Is Folklore Good For?” asserts that “Early Turkish manuscripts comprised a large amount of sexual, scatological, and otherwise disputable material” about the “vigorous and vulgar” Mullah (1998, p. 7). With that concept in mind, I delved even deeper into scholarly texts in search of this taboo material.
Though the character’s Ottoman-Turkish name is Nasreddin Hoca, cognates such as Mullah or Sheikh Nasruddin, Djuha, Joha, Hodja, Abu Nuwas, and so on populate the folklore of many Asian, African, European, and other lands worldwide and share their narratives, so there are diverse cultural sources contributing to this collection. I refer to the character throughout the text as Mullah Nasruddin because that is how I first came to know him.
The most readily accessible bawdy Nasreddin stories employ scatological, ethnic, racial, and sexist humor. Tales involving Nasreddin’s wife and marital affairs are most prevalent, and many feature her as the sexual aggressor. The “young Nasruddin” tales often portray his pubescent sexual explorations and cunning sexual exploitation of women. Sexual stories involving Nasreddin’s donkey make up a third recurring theme. Oddly, storylines with overtly homosexual themes were most difficult to unearth: even putting out a call for such jokes among today’s Istanbul’s gay and bisexual men’s “bear” community yielded no results.
Other critical essays affirmed that these stories existed, although apparently not in contemporary English texts. Turkish scholar Seyfi Karabas observed that “erotic elements in Nasreddin Hoca narratives fulfill several important functions. To begin with, they point to various early stages in the development of Nasreddin Hoca as a trickster figure. Secondly, they serve to create humor in several ways” (p. 303). Aside from the issue of the trickster archetype, it is clear that examples of racy tales existed in the Nasreddin folklore corpus: the question was where.
A breakthrough in my research occurred with a fortunate connection early in 2014 with Hakkı Gűrkaş, a Nasreddin Hoca and Turkish Studies scholar teaching at Kennesaw College in Georgia, U.S.A. In his brilliant, wide-ranging dissertation, he refutes the characterization of Nasreddin as a trickster figure, namely due to the lack of any sort of shape-shifting powers ascribed to him. That point aside, Karabas sagely concludes that “awareness of the importance of sexuality in the life of human beings is one of the more persistent themes that help unify the whole corpus of the Nasreddin Hoca narratives. Hence, Nasreddin Hoca should not be laundered” (p. 305).
But changing social forces of eight hundred years has taken Nasreddin Hoca’s dirty laundry to the river and thrown it religiously against the rocks. This character purification began with linguistic and cultural changes brought in the transition from the Islamic Ottoman era to modern secular Turkish nationalism, and continued through the advent of printing and selective exclusion of objectionable material from published story collections. Over the centuries, Nasreddin “transformed into a charming and subtle philosopher,” according to Marzolph, “whose major preoccupation would be to confront his surroundings with apparently strange questions or unconventional solutions to common problems” (p. 7).
Gűrkaş explains the significance of the censored material: “These stories bring back into discourse what the official culture has marginalized and repressed. These stories are anti-hegemonic. The grotesque imagery deployed in these stories mocks and ridicules the absolutist morality and degrades the official culture that relies on it” (p. 178).
In the spirit of intellectual freedom and restoration of the adulterated folklore, presented here are more than 265 authentic Nasreddin Hoca stories, many of which appear here in an English trade publication for the first time. From the first volume, I rewrote over a dozen tales, according to verified alternate sources: for instance, the long tale “Four brays of the donkey” here is “Four farts”; this version of “God’s arrears to Nasruddin” has a Jewish protagonist; the sexual overtones in “The hens in the hammam” here are stated more fully. Some stories are not particularly naughty, but come from reliable sources newly available and are worth including here among the first and final sections of the Mullah’s adventures.
All narratives herein are based on published texts listed in the Sources; none of the tales presented in this or the first collection are my original or creative invention. Whenever multiple tellings of a joke or anecdote were available, they were incorporated into this work. However, for some stories I had to rely on a translation of one or two versions and my ability to interpret its cultural context and narrative arc. I have tried to convey the bawdy wit and folk wisdom of the Mullah as may have been presented and received, centuries ago, halfway around the world, by the original storytellers and listeners.
As in the previous collection, here I employ the literary device of naming the Mullah’s family, friends, neighbors, and donkey as a way to situate him in his community. Readers may take issue with the intensity and frequency of the colloquial profanity and slang invective in some dialogue; the foul language, however, is comparable to that as translated from authentic sources, albeit adapted to contemporary usage.
As exhaustive as this work may have been, this sequel and its predecessor do not represent the entire Nasreddin corpus. There are dozens of stories untranslatable from Turkish, German, Arabic, and other languages that remain inaccessible in English. Additionally, a handful of stories effectively translated, but requiring overlong cultural, religious, or wordplay explanations, must be left for another’s work.
This collection leads with “The learned and the ignorant,” a tale that proclaims its moral imperative, “Those who know should teach those who don’t know,” which represents a common creed of folklore and literature. In researching, collecting, translating, and publishing these stories, I have acquired not only the authority to disseminate the work but also a keen sense of duty. For far too long the social forces that repress sexual and other “undesirable” story elements have hidden this cache of some of the most amusing, witty, and outrageous folklore in the world.
I close this introduction with the words of the great American poet, Walt Whitman: “The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.” Doubtless the Mullah would agree.

doublestar-crescent smile

Works cited
Gűrkaş, Hakkı. Nasreddin Hodja and the Akşehir Festival: Invention of a Festive Tradition and Transfigurations of a Trickster, from Bukhara to Brussels. Ph.D dissertation. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University, 2008.
Karabas, Seyfi. “The Use of Eroticism in Nasreddin Hoca Anecdotes.” Western Folklore 49: 3 (July 1990), pp. 299–305. Long Beach, Calif.: Western States Folklore Society.
Legman, Gershon. The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1964.
Marzolph, Ulrich. What Is Folklore Good For? On dealing with undesirable cultural expression. Journal of Folklore Research, 35: 1 (Jan.–Apr. 1998), pp. 5–16.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: New American Library, 1980.

Preface to Extraordinary Adventures, excerpt 1

Preface, part 1

An excerpt from Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin

XNS frcoverLamfinalsealby Ron J. Suresha

Coming from an ethnically diverse family with strong oral and literary folklore traditions, I became well acquainted early on with the stories of the famous Turkish folk character, Mullah Nasruddin; a simple man of renowned humor and inscrutable wisdom, known for more than eight centuries in his native land as Nasreddin Hoca.
Sometimes my mother would tell a joke or story about the “wise fool” Mulla Nasaruddin (as he is called in Jewish folklore), usually to make a point about my contrary behavior. She would often ask, for instance, “Why do you always answer a question with another question?” to which I could be reliably predicted to retort, “Oh really, do I‽”
In my twenties, while living in several ashram (residential yoga center) communities in the U.S.A. and India, my teachers would often tell, with great relish and humor, Sheikh Nasruddin “wisdom stories” as part of their regular lessons and lectures on spiritual life.
For more than two decades, Sufi writer Idries Shah’s collections of Mullah Nasruddin stories were my only sources in English. Then, in 1999, while on my first trip to Istanbul, I acquired five Turkish-published volumes of Mullah stories in English, which were illustrated with cartoon tableaux depicting the adulterated punch-line moments from the most popular stories. Shortly after, I began to discover additional Nasreddin Hoca folklore sources online.
While compiling the first book, The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin, I volunteered to help reorganize the storybook collection of the Connecticut Storytelling Center in New London, where I encountered several antiquarian Nasreddin volumes in various languages. Since then I have continued to gather and collate printed books and manuscripts in English, Hebrew, Spanish, German, French, Turkish, and Hindi, as well as material published online, all of which are included in the Sources following the text of this work.
The revised 2013 edition of Uncommon Sense is an anthology of more than 365 authentic individual stories, anecdotes, jokes, jests, and quips arranged biographically into seven parts with seven sections of seven stories each. While certainly many pieces could be considered bawdy, abusive, or ethnic, the material was generally suitable for a collegiate adult readership, including hundreds of stories entirely appropriate for children. Sgott Mackensie’s watercolor cover illustration of the bewhiskered, turbaned Mullah, happily riding his beloved donkey backward in a rural setting, reflected the book’s broad appeal and presented it as a “PG-13” collection appropriate for teenagers with parental guidance. The positive critical reviews to the first book made it absolutely clear, however, that a second volume featuring the X-rated material would be a welcome addition to world literature.
While researching the topic of taboo humor I discovered, in The Horn Book by folklore and humor scholar Gershon Legman, his stark condemnation of folk story and joke collections with all the bawdy or “objectionable” material expunged, which he calls “fakelore.” Despite my earnest efforts to locate such risqué stories with limited success, I naturally cringed at the implication that I had unwittingly committed some sort of literary and folkloric misdeed by excluding the naughty and nasty tales of my old friend, Mullah Nasruddin.
Given the immense volume of this character’s folklore, I was perplexed by the conspicuous absence of adult-themed stories among the hundreds I had indexed. The dearth of racy, earthy, profane, or ethnic material in the existing published folklore available to me seemed due in part to its exclusion from popular children’s presentations of the often-moralizing Mullah. My theory was that these “naughty Nasreddin” narratives were expurgated from popular representations of Nasreddin in an effort to “reform” the character, according to the moral codes imposed by both Islamist and Turkish nationalistic influences.
German Nasreddin scholar Ulrich Marzolph’s 1998 analysis, “What Is Folklore Good For?” asserts that “Early Turkish manuscripts comprised a large amount of sexual, scatological, and otherwise disputable material” about the “vigorous and vulgar” Mullah (1998, p. 7). With that concept in mind, I delved even deeper into scholarly texts in search of this taboo material.
Though the character’s Ottoman-Turkish name is Nasreddin Hoca, cognates such as Mullah or Sheikh Nasruddin, Djuha, Joha, Hodja, Abu Nuwas, and so on populate the folklore of many Asian, African, European, and other lands worldwide and share their narratives, so there are diverse cultural sources contributing to this collection. I refer to the character throughout the text as Mullah Nasruddin because that is how I first came to know him.
The most readily accessible bawdy Nasreddin stories employ scatological, ethnic, racial, and sexist humor. Tales involving Nasreddin’s wife and marital affairs are most prevalent, and many feature her as the sexual aggressor. The “young Nasruddin” tales often portray his pubescent sexual explorations and cunning sexual exploitation of women. Sexual stories involving Nasreddin’s donkey make up a third recurring theme. Oddly, storylines with overtly homosexual themes were most difficult to unearth: even putting out a call for such jokes among today’s Istanbul’s gay and bisexual men’s “bear” community yielded no results.

 

Concluded next week

Works cited
Gűrkaş, Hakkı. Nasreddin Hodja and the Akşehir Festival: Invention of a Festive Tradition and Transfigurations of a Trickster, from Bukhara to Brussels. Ph.D dissertation. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University, 2008.
Karabas, Seyfi. “The Use of Eroticism in Nasreddin Hoca Anecdotes.” Western Folklore 49: 3 (July 1990), pp. 299–305. Long Beach, Calif.: Western States Folklore Society.
Legman, Gershon. The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1964.
Marzolph, Ulrich. What Is Folklore Good For? On dealing with undesirable cultural expression. Journal of Folklore Research, 35: 1 (Jan.–Apr. 1998), pp. 5–16.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: New American Library, 1980.

Forewarning, from Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin

by rjs
Comments: Comments Off
Published on: April 30, 2015

Forewarning

doublestar-crescent smileFrom Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah NasruddinXNS frcoverLamfinalseal

As in my first collection of Nasreddin Hoca folklore, The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin, every single story included in its sequel, Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin, is completely authentic, taken from published works listed in the Sources.
That said, the adult reader is hereby warned that taboo topics of tales within this collection include: bestiality, animal cruelty, scatology, ethnic prejudice, racism, sexism, domestic abuse, marital infidelity, bigamy, homosexuality / bisexuality, sodomy, pederasty, pedophilia, incest, blasphemy, apostasy, treason, violence, torture, homicide, and war.
   Readers are cautioned of the inappropriateness of this book for children.
Rule of thumb for parents and librarians: if the child can understand the meaning of the word unexpurgated, as in the subtitle to this book — Naughty, unexpurgated stories of the beloved wise fool from the Middle and Far East — the child is certainly mature enough to read on. Otherwise, strict parental supervision is strongly advised.

doublestar-crescent smile

Extraordinary Adventures Named Lammy Finalist

Lambda Literary Awards give nod to Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin

March 4, 2015 — The prestigious Lambda Literary Awards has honored Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin, authored by Ron J. Suresha and published last year by Lethe Press, a Finalist for Best Bisexual Fiction.

LammyfinalistIn a Facebook post, author Ron J. Suresha wrote:

Praise Mullah! I’m quite thrilled to announce that my book of bawdy Turkish folklore, Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin was named a Finalist in the Bisexual Fiction category of this year’s Lambda Literary Foundation Awards. (The book was submitted in Bi Nonfiction but was switched over …)
I’d especially like to thank Steve Berman for his support of this long-running project for a book I doubt anyone else would have taken a chance on publishing.
As well, the Bear Bones Books novel Salvation, by Jeff Mann and the BBB anthology The Bears of Winter, edited by Jerry L. Wheeler, were named Finalists in the Gay Romance and Gay Erotica categories. I’m so very proud to have had a hand in the publication of these two excellent books.
Mazel tov also to my friends, colleagues, and associates who were also honored. See you in May!

Additionally, the author wishes to thank his husband, Rocco, for his unending support of this peculiar work.

When asked for a comment, Mullah Nasruddin said, “I owe this honor to my beloved little gray donkey, Karakacan, without which I would have just been considered another old wise fool.”

The book is the sequel to The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin, by the same author and publisher, which was given two national storytelling awards.

The awards will be announced June 1st in a gala ceremony in New York City.

XNS frcoverfinalmedRead the complete LLF announcement here.

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