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Hoca in Deathbed

With his last breath, Nasreddin Hodja scandalizes his wife by making fun of the grim angel of death, Azrail, when he sees him already hovering near his bed. "Put on your very best clothes, my dear wife," Hodja says. " Do your hair nicely, and put some colour to your face. Try to make yourself as beautiful as possible. Then perhaps if Angel Azrail sees you in these fine clothes looking like and angel or a peacock, he might take you along and leave me."

Hoca & The Curse

There is a legend - only a legend - that when Naraddin Hodja was young and still at school, two of his classmates killed, cooked and ate a lamb of which their teacher was extremely fond. The teacher was deeply pained and shocked by the enormity of this outrage, and he soon found out who the culprits were. Nasraddin Hodja's classmates confessed that one of them had slit the animal's throat while the other had flayed and cooked it, and when asked what role Nasraddin Hodja had played in this despicable affair, they said he had only watched and laughed. So the teacher had a curse on them saying, "Let him who slit the throat of my lamb have his own throat slit. Let him who flayed my lamb himself be flayed. and let him who laughed be laughed at by the whole world."

Years later, the legend goes, the curse was fulfilled, with disastrous consequences fo the other students. But in the case of Nasraddin Hodja it turned out somewhat differently. It is not at Nasraddin Hodja but with him that the world has been laughing for seven and a half centuries, and with whom people will continue to laugh for ever more.




Hoca & The End of The World

A group of philosophers travelled far and wide to find and
contemplated for many years the end of the world but could not state
a time for it's coming. Finally they turned to Nasreddin Hodja and
asked him:

- Do you know when the end of the world will be?
- Of course, said he, when I die, that will be the end of the world.
- When you die, are you sure
- It will be for me, Said he.

Hoca & The Candle

On a frigid and snowy winter day Nasraddin Hodja was having a chat with
some of his friends in the local coffee house. He said that cold
weather did not bother him, and in fact, he could stay, if necessary,
all night without any heat. "We'll take you up on that, Hodja." they said.
"If you stand all night in the village square without warming yourself by any
external means, each of us will treat you to a sumptuous meal.
But if you fail to do so, you will treat us all to dinner."
"All right it's a bet," Hodja said.

cont. next page



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