A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story
An eggplant by any other name
One day, Hamza brought Mullah Nasruddin a small eggplant, saying, “Mullah, I wonder what this might be. Please tell me.”
He took the eggplant and turned it around and over in his hands, examining the odd purplish thing. After several minutes of this inspection, he said, “Hamza, my friend, I cannot tell you. But let us take it to my son, Ahmet. He will know better than me.”
They took the eggplant to Ahmet and showed it to him. He, too, looked at the thing from every angle before finally declaring, “You ridiculous old farts! What’s so hard about figuring it out? Obviously, this is a baby starling whose eyes have not yet opened.”
Excerpted from
Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha
forthcoming November 2014 from Lethe Press