Later than You Think

by rjs
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Published on: August 4, 2013

Later than You Think

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah NasruddinDeciding for once to fast all thirty days of the month of Ramadan, Nasruddin devised a method to keep track of the days. Every day he put a pebble in a pot, figuring that when the time was up, he’d just count the pebbles.

Unknown to Nasruddin, his little daughter, Hafiza, noticed his daily habit of putting a pebble in the pot. To be helpful, she went around the garden and collected lots and lots of rocks, and added one or many to the collection whenever she liked.

Two weeks later, the Mullah’s friends Sedat and Ismail stopped by and asked him how many days remained in the fasting month. Nasruddin emptied his pot and counted the stones, then hesitantly returned with the information: “It seems that forty-nine days have passed.”

“How can that be? There are only thirty days in a month!” said Sedat.

“I’m not exaggerating in the least,” Nasruddin asserted. “In fact, I was being conservative in stating that number. It is actually much later than you think. Truth is, today is the one hundred and forty-ninth day of Ramadan!”

Excerpted from The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero.

Your Daily Nasruddin

Another popular Nasrudding story. The premise is that the young girl accidentally – but playfully – tries to help her Papa by adding more pebbles to the pot, without her father being any wiser for the matter. Note that Nasruddin actually admits to lying the first time he recounted the pebble count.

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