Eat Your Fill of This Soup
Once Nasruddin ran into his friends, Abdul, Süleyman, and Jafar, and got to talking about many things. Not wanting to end the flow of such good conversation, Nasruddin graciously invited the men over for dinner.
However, he invited them to eat with him without first checking with Fatima. When he arrived back home, Fatima cuffed his ear and said, “Nasruddin, you fool! We don’t have the least bit of food in the house — we don’t even have wood to cook anything!”
Nasruddin recoiled and, thinking quickly, grabbed a ladle and a large bowl, then calmly walked into the dining room where his friends were waiting for dinner.
Nasruddin went around the table, and mimed as if he was actually ladling out hot delicious soup in the bowls of each of his guests. After he pretended to ladle some hot soup into his own bowl, Nasruddin set down the imaginary pot and ladle, and sat down to eat it exuberantly, making much slurping and ahhhing and blowing on the spoon.
The men just stared at him in disbelief at first, then Süleyman finally asked, “Nasruddin, what are you doing? Where is our dinner?”
He set down his spoon and got up from his seat, then picked up the large soup bowl. He said, “With this huge bowl, I had intended to serve you both the most delicious and hearty soup and invite you to eat your fill. However, seeing as that we have no rice, meat, vegetables, or butter, nor even fire to cook it with, I had to serve you all imaginary soup from this large bowl. I trust you will all enjoy yours as much as I enjoyed mine.”
Excerpted from The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero
