Episode Details

Twelve more anecdotes of the Hodja, from the minaret of Konia to the door of the Kaaba and home to the neighbours and animals of the old folk book. Playing hide-and-seek, he leaves Akschehir altogether and hides for days in a minaret, calling down to the searchers: bring the money, I have won. Pressed into service as a guide, he answers that he is a servant of the Most High — and providence answers for him. Fallen from the roof, he asks his visitors for a comrade in the fall; a guest in his poverty-struck house is blanketed with a ladder and a trough still full of water; and a young man who pays his porter in three counsels — do not believe it — learns the fourth at the top of the stairs. A summer afternoon is weighed against three whole days in winter; at the Kaaba door the Hodja rebukes the crowd that mocks a black pilgrim; a mighty wind is blamed for a sackful of vegetables; the Ramadan pot reckons the forty-fifth day of the month; a stolen calf is demanded back as an ox; a horse that will not be mounted hears the truth about worse fellows; and a great cudgel, raised against a dog on a burial ground, is quietly lowered: go on, friend, go on.

From Der Hodscha Nasreddin by Albert Wesselski (1911), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering.

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.

Chapters:

0:00 Opening

0:04 I Have Won

1:07 A Servant of the Most High

2:34 Fallen from the Roof

2:58 The Ladder and the Trough

4:38 Don't Believe It

6:17 Three Days in Winter

6:44 Blacker Than He

7:14 The Wind Blew Me In

8:01 The Forty-Fifth Day

9:04 An Ox for a Calf

9:36 Worse Fellows than the Horse

10:00 Go On, Friend