TURKISH NASREDDIN HODJA STORIES KONYA

A FORTY YEAR OLD WINE
One day, a neighbor said to the Hodja:
“Have you a wine that is forty years old?”
“Yes I have”, replied the Hodja.
“Can you give me a little”, asked the neighbor.
“If I gave a little to everybody asking for it”, said the Hodja, “It would not be forty years old!”

BALANCE OF THE WORLD
Someone asked:
“Hodja Effendi, why do people go to different directions, when they leave their houses in the morning?”
The Hodja answered without hesitation:
“If all of them would go to the same direction, this would throw off the balance of the world!”

BEAUTIFUL HORSE
One day, when Temur was going hunting he wanted the Hodja to join him. In front of the palace, where the hunting started, they gave him an old, tired horse.
During the hunting suddenly it began to rain. Everybody put their horses to the gallop and ran away. But the Hodja couldn't... As the weather was hot he took off his clothes and put them under him. And so he returned slowly to the palace. When the rain was over he put on his clothes again.
When he arrived at the palace, his clothes were dry and Temur was most astonished.
“We all got wet”, he said. “How is it, that you are still dry?”
“Oh, Sir”, the Hodja replied. “With the help of this horse, I arrived at the palace without getting wet.”
Another hunting trip Temur wanted the horse which was given to the Hodja before. By a great coincidence it again began to rain and Temur got wet. When he came back to the palace he angrily called the Hodja and asked what it meant.
“Oh Sir,”, the Hodja said. “I am very sorry. I forgot to tell you, that you also had to put your clothes under you and then you would not get wet.”

BLACK BOOK
Once upon a time the Hodja was a judge and one day a man came to him.
“Your cow has killed mine!”, he cried.
The Hodja shouted:
“You silly fellow, how can the cow know that it is a crime to kill another cow. Case dismissed!”
“Oh sorry”, said the man. “I said it wrong. My cow has killed yours.”
“Then, this is another problem”, said the Hodja. “We'll open the black book and see what it says.”

BLANKET IS GONE
At midnight the Hodja heard a noise. Two men were struggling outside. The Hodja got out of his bed with a blanket over him and went to the front of his house. He asked them why they were fighting. Without answering, one of them took the blanket that covered the Hodja and they both fled. So the poor Hodja returned to his bed again.
“What were they fighting about?”, asked his wife.
“About our blanket”, said the Hodja. “Now the blanket is gone, so the struggle is over.”

BUSY-BODY
One day, people said to the Hodja:
“Your wife walks from house to house, tell her she mustn't walk so much,”. “Alright”, said the Hodja. “If she comes to our house, I'll tell her.”

CAT AND THE LIVER
After the Hodja got the recipe for liver from his friend, he bought again some liver and because he liked it very much, he wanted to eat it often.
But everytime when he brought livers he couldn't eat it, because his wife said that the cat took the liver and fled away.
One day the Hodja became angry and said:
“Woman, I brought liver! Where is it?”
“Oh”, said his wife. “The silly cat took it and fled away.”
At the same time the cat was in the room. The Hodja caught it, brought a steelyard and weighted the cat. Then he said:
“That is exactly two kilos. And the liver which I brought was also two kilos. Now tell me: If that is the liver where is my cat, if that is the cat, then I want my liver.”

 

CLEVEREST MAN IN THE WORLD
At the time of the Hodja, some clever and educated men were searching for an intelligent man, who could answer their three questions.
They traveled through the whole world and then came to Akshehir. They asked:
“Who is most intelligent man in this town?”
Of course the people of the town brought the Hodja to the three men and they began to ask.
“First question: Where is the central point of the world?”
The Hodja's donkey was with him. So he pointed to his donkey.
“Where the front legs of my donkey are, there is the middle point of the world.”
“How can you prove that?” asked one of the men.
“If you don't believe, you can measure it”, the Hodja said.
Measuring did not seem a good idea to them, so they went on to the next question.
“How many stars are on the sky?”
The Hodja replied without hesitation:
“As many as the hairs on my donkey's mane.”
The three men laughed.
“If you don't believe it,” said the Hodja. “you can count them.”
The foreigners understood that they couldn't get a correct reply and one of them asked:
“Can you say how many hairs are in your donkey's mane?”
“Oh, yes”, said the Hodja. “There are exactly the same number of hairs as you have in your beard. Now don't tell me, that you don't believe that because I can prove it by pulling one hair from your beard and one from the donkey's mane. When we pull each hair out one after the other, you can see at the end that there are the same number of hairs.”
The three men went back to their country and told everyone that the cleverest man in the world lived in Akshehir.

COW AND THE DONKEY
The Hodja had a little stable and a nice donkey. He hadn't wanted to buy a cow, because his donkey would be disturbed and he hadn't much money neither. But his wife wanted to have a cow and she convinced him at last.
The Hodja couldn't stand against his wife, so he bought a cow and put it in the stable. But the stable was small and they couldn't stay quiet in it. The Hodja who got tired of that said:
“Dear God, kill this cow and save my donkey”. 
A few days later the Hodja entered the stable and saw the dead donkey and the living cow.
“Dear God”, he said. “You have been God for so many years but still, you cannot distinguish a cow from a donkey!”

CREDIT
A man wanted money from the Hodja on credit, but the Hodja said:
“I have no money, but I can give you credit. How much do you want?”

DARKNESS
One day the Hodja lost his ring. He searched and searched, but he couldn't find it. Then he got out the house and began to search the ring on the road.
People passing by asked him:
“Hodja Effendi, what are you doing?”
“I've lost my ring at home, and now I'm searching it.””
“Why don't you search it inside?”
“The house is too dark. I can't see anything, so I'm searching my ring outside!”

DAYS OF A MONTH
In Ramazan, a special month for Moslems, the Hodja began it by putting a stone in a cup, to know which day it was. So, every morning he put a stone into the cup without knowing that one of his friends put a handful of stones in it, to play a trick on him.
A few days later a man asked the Hodja: “Hodja Effendi, how many days have passed since we started Ramazan?”,
The Hodja told him to wait for a minute, ran to his cup, counted the stones, came back and said:
“Up to today 45 days of Ramazan have passed.”
“But Hodja”, said the man. “There are only 30 days in a month. How is it possible?”
“Oh, be satisfied with that”, said the Hodja. “If you had counted the stones in the cup you would have seen, that it is the hundredandtwentieth day of Ramazan.”
DUCK SOUP
The Hodja had nothing to eat in his house. So he went for a walk beside the lake of Akshehir. Ducks were swimming in the lake. Then he began to drink the water of the lake.
“Hodja Effendi, what are you doing there?” asked a man.
“I am drinking duck soup”, he replied.

EASY METHOD OF THE BIRTH
In the village a woman was giving birth to her child and as it was a difficult birth the relatives waited for many hours. So they sent for the Hodja.
He came, listened to their story and went away. He returned in a few moments with a toy that made a squeaking sound. They asked him why and he said:
“Because the child will hear the “voice” of the toy and will very quickly come out to play.”