A Mullah Nasruddin / Nasreddin Hoca story
Penitence
Nasruddin was a homely fellow with plain features, although his long scraggly beard did cover up a fair amount of ugliness. Once when he was in the market, a woman walked right up to him and stared at him with a cold, mean expression.
Nasruddin tried to ignore the woman but when after several minutes she had not stopped gawking at him, he confronted her, “What does this mean — that you fix your sight on me with such a severe look on your face?”
The woman answered, “I have committed a great sin with my eyes and wanted to repent, so I vowed that I had to look at something completely disgusting to atone. I’ve been searching for days, and I could not find anything more disgusting to look at than you.”
Excerpted from
Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron J. Suresha
forthcoming November 2014 from Lethe Press