HODJA STORIES

• The Scholarly Coachman
• Sweet Quarrels
• Super Salesman
• Hodja in the Dust
• Hodja Postpones Paying
• The Mulla Pleads Poverty
• The Mulla In A Muddle
• Sour Reply
• Fired by Fear
• Milk for the Mullah
• The Mind-Reader
• Speedy Ox
• Hodja's Rich Dream
• The Donkey's Relatives
• Hodja's Holy House
• Hodja Goes To A Tailor
• A Question of Time
• Hodja is Relieved
• Hodja and the Scholar
• Hodja's Donkey
• Hodja Suggests a Remedy
• Hodja Refuses to Write
• Hodja, the King
• The Incomplete Coffin

Hodja in the Dust

Nasruddin Hodja had a buffalo whose horns were set wide apart. Hodja often felt an urge to sit on the animal's head between the horns, but never dared try it. One day the animal came and sat down very near him. Hodja threw caution to the winds and seizing the horns swung himself into the space between them.
"Now I feel like a king on his throne!" he said exultantly to his wife. The buffalo, startled by the sudden invasion of its privacy, got indignantly to its feet and jerked its head violently forward. Hodja went sailing into the air and fell head foremost into a ditch.
"It doesn't matter," he said to his wife who came running to help him. "It's not the first time a king has lost his throne."