[The following is an excerpt from Gregor von Rezzori’s Tales from Maghrebinia with clever stories about the famous Turkish wit, Nasr al-Din Khoja.]

“Once, so they say, when the poverty in the country became so great that no one gave anything to the wise Hodscha any more, he went to the Gospodor, the king’s representative, and threatened, ‘Sir give me a bag of gold or I shall do what I have never done before.’ The magnaminous Gospodor, at that time a member of the House of Kantakukuruz, was frightened by the threat, and let him have the bag of gold. ‘Verily,’ said the Hodscha, ‘if you had not listened to me, oh administrator of the king’s domain, I would have been compelled to work.’…

“They also tell of Hodscha Nassr-ed-Din Effendi that he, a Mohammedan, liked to climb into the pulpit of a mosque and preach to the people. One day, when he did so, a stranger, thinking that he was a scribe, asked him a question. The Hodscha did not know the answer. ’If you know nothing,’ the stranger cried, ‘why do you climb up so high?’ ‘I climb up so high,’ the Hodscha replied, ‘in accordance with what I know. If I were to climb up in accordance with the measure of what I do not know, I would be talking to you from heaven.’”

“In spite of his great success in the field of medicine, the Hodscha renounced all activities in later years except for a few business transactions every now and then. One day he has sitting in the market place of Metropolsk, watching the many things going on there and chewing on some fish eyes. A man who was curious, and envious too, of the Hodscha’s wisdom, was watching him. He approached and asked eagerly, ‘Hodscha, what are you chewing?’

‘Fish eyes,’ the Hodscha replied.

‘Fish eyes?’ the man exclaimed excitedly. ‘What are they good for?’

‘Have you never heard that fish eyes give you wisdom?’ the Hodscha asked in his turn.
‘Let me have some,’ said the man.

‘They’re not cheap,’ the Hodscha replied. ‘Two lewonzes apiece. But considering the fact that they make you wise, they’re a kiliper.’ This is what the Jews call a metzihe, namely, a bargain.

‘Give me half a dozen,’ said the man, and handed over twelve lowenzes with alacrity. Then he sat down next to the Hodscha and chewed like him. All of a sudden he cried, ‘Hodscha, you’re a swindler! You made me pay twelve lowenzes for these fish eyes while the fishmonger over there sells a whole fish for a few parals.’

‘You see,’ the Hodscha replied, ‘they’re beginning to work already.’”

[Excerpts from Gregor von Rezzori, Tales of Maghrebinia, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962.]