"Après le décès de Cheikh Sharafouddin, j'attendais une ouverture pour émigrer de la Turquie, j'étais dans en séclusion dans la mosquée à côté du tombeau de mon Cheikh, priant une nuit auparavant Fajr.
Un riche négociant d'Istanbul avait invité Nasreddin Hodja. Le jour décidé, il se présenta et vit le maître de maison était assis devant une fenêtre. Il sonna et un domestique ouvrit et dit:
Nasreddin Hodja used to take his donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again. They searched his person, sifted the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. Meanwhile he was visibly more and more prosperous.
Then he retired and went to live in another country. Here one of the customs officers met him, years later.
-You can tell me now, Hodja, he said. Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?
- Donkeys, said Hodja. Donkeys and just only donkeys.
Version Imprimable
