A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story
The Greater Fool
Mullah NasruddinOnce while Mullah Nasruddin was traveling on donkeyback through Foolland, he passed two local folks trudging along on foot. Nasruddin greeted them, saying simply, “Good morning.”
As the Mullah kept moving on, the first fool stopped and remarked, “I’m wondering . . . why did that fellow speak to me, and not to you?”
The other retorted, “You self-centered moron, it was me he was addressing, not you.”
It hardly took a minute before the two were pushing and shoving each other. They were about to come to blows when one held up his hand and said, “I know — let’s ask him!” So they ran after the Mullah, who was trying to ease out of the skirmish and down the road with his donkey and life intact.
“Wait, Mullah! You must settle our dispute: which one of us were you saying ‘Good morning’ to?”
Nasruddin urged his little grey donkey to keep moving, and he replied to the men, “I said ‘Good morning’ to the greater of the two fools.”
“Well, obviously, that’s me,” declared the first fellow.
“Nonsense, of course he meant me, not you!” asserted the second.
“It’s obvious that I’m greater than you in every way.”
And so the two fools continued swearing and exchanging slaps in the middle of the road, raising a small cloud of dust that became smaller and smaller as Karakacan carried Mullah Nasruddin further away toward home, until he could hear or see them no more.
Excerpted from
Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha
forthcoming November 2014 from Lethe Press
