Hodja Nasreddin decided to spend the night in the cemetery, judging sensibly that no matter what the commotion, the deceased would never run around, wail, shout, or brandish torches.
Thus Hodja Nasreddin, disturber of the peace and sower of discord, concluded his first day in his native city, quite worthy of his title. Tying his donkey to one of the headstones, he settled in comfortably on someone’s grave and soon fell asleep. Meanwhile, the commotion carried on in the city for a long time – noise, din, shouting, ringing, and cannon fire.
Chapter 9
But as soon as dawn began to break, the stars to dim, and the hazy outlines of various objects to emerge from the darkness, many hundreds of sweepers, dustmen, carpenters, and clay workers came out onto the square. Together, they got to work: they raised the toppled awnings, repaired the bridges, fixed the holes in the fences, picked up all the chips and pieces – and the first rays of the sun did not find any trace of the nighttime commotion in Bukhara.
And the bazaar commenced.
When Hodja Nasreddin, having slept well in the shade of the headstone, arrived in the square, it was full of buzzing, excitement, and movement, flooded from end to end by a multinational, multilingual, multicolored crowd. “Make way! Make way!” shouted Hodja Nasreddin, but he could barely discern his own voice among thousands of other voices, for everyone was shouting: the merchants, the camel drivers, the water-bearers, the barbers, the wandering dervishes, the beggars, and the bazaar tooth-pullers, who were shaking the rusty and frightening tools of their trade. Multicolored robes, turbans, horse-cloths, rugs, Chinese speech, Arabic, Hindu, Mongol, and many other dialects – all of it melded together, swayed, moved, and hummed, and the dust rose and darkened the sky, even as hundreds of new people came to the square in endless streams, laid out their wares, and joined the communal roar with their own voices. The potters drummed resoundingly on their pots, grabbing customers by the flaps of their robes and begging them to listen, become enchanted by the clearness of the sound, and then buy; copper blinded the eyes in the metalworking row, the air groaned with the chattering of little hammers which the artisans used to indent patterns on trays and pitchers, praising loudly their skill and denigrating the skill of their neighbors. The jewelers melted silver in tiny forges, they pulled gold and polished semi-precious Indian stones using leather disks. A light breeze sometimes brought on a thick wave of fragrance from the neighboring row, which sold perfumes, rose oil, ambergris, musk, and various spices. The endless carpet row stretched off to the side – speckled, ornate, colorful, decorated with Persian, Damascan, Tekinian rugs, Kashgarian carpets, dyed horse-cloths both expensive and cheap, for ordinary horses and for thoroughbred ones.
Then Hodja Nasreddin passed the silk row, the saddle row, the armory row, and the dye row, the slave market, the wool cleaning row – and this was just the beginning of the bazaar, while hundreds of various rows stretched out further ahead, and the more Hodja Nasreddin penetrated the crowd on his donkey, the louder was the yelling, shouting, arguing, and bargaining around him; yes, it was that very same bazaar, the famous and incomparable Bukharian bazaar, which had no equal at the time in Damascus, or Baghdad itself!
But then the rows ended, and the emir’s palace appeared before Hodja Nasreddin’s eyes, surrounded by a high wall with loop-holes and toothed edges. The four towers at the corners were tiled skillfully with multicolored mosaics, crafted over long years by Arabian and Iranian artisans.
A speckled camp was situated before the palace gates. People languishing in the stuffy air were sitting and lying on reed mats in the shade of torn awnings, some alone and some with their families; women were rocking their infants, cooking food in pots, and sewing up torn robes and blankets; half-dressed children ran around everywhere, fighting and falling, and turning certain indecent body parts quite disrespectfully towards the palace. The men were sleeping, or engaged in various household tasks, or speaking amongst themselves as they congregated around tea kettles. “Huh! Why, these people have been here for many a day!” thought Hodja Nasreddin.
Two people attracted his attention: a bald man, and a bearded man. Their backs turned to each other, they were sitting right on the bare earth, each under his own awning, while between them was a white goat tied to a poplar peg. The goat was so thin that its ribs threatened to tear through its bare skin. Bleating pitifully, it was gnawing on the peg, which was already half-eaten.
Hodja Nasreddin was very curious and could not resist a question: “Peace to you, inhabitants of Noble Bukhara! Tell me, how long has it been since you joined the Gypsy persuasion?”
“Do not mock us, o traveler!” the bearded man replied. “We are not Gypsies, we are good Muslims like yourself.”
“Then why do you not sit at home, if you are good Muslims? What are you waiting for here, in front of the palace?”
“We are waiting for the just and merciful judgment of the emir, our ruler, master, and lord, who obscures the sun itself with his brilliance.”
“Right!” said Hodja Nasreddin, without concealing his derision. “And have you been waiting long for the just and merciful judgment of the emir, your ruler, master, and lord, who obscures the sun itself with his brilliance?”
“We are waiting for the sixth week now, o traveler!” the bald man interrupted. “This bearded litigious fool – may Allah punish him, may the shaitan lay his tail on his bed! – this bearded fool is my older brother. Our father died and left us a modest inheritance, and we divided up everything except this goat. Let the emir judge which of us is the rightful owner.”
“But where is all the other property you have inherited?”
“We had to sell everything; after all, the scribes writing the complaints must be paid, and the clerks receiving the complaints must also be paid, and the guards must be paid, and many others.”
The bald man jumped from his spot suddenly and dashed towards a dirty, barefoot dervish, who was wearing a pointed cap and had a hollow black gourd hanging at his side. “Pray for me, holy man! Pray that the judgment be in my favor!”
The dervish took the money and began to pray. And every time he pronounced the final words of the prayer, the bald man tossed a new coin into his gourd and made him say it all again.
The bearded man got up worriedly and combed the crowd with his eyes. After a brief search, he noticed a second dervish, even dirtier and more tattered, and therefore more holy, than the first. This dervish demanded an exorbitant fee, and the bearded man began to haggle, but the dervish dug under his cap and extracted a handful of large lice. Assured of his holiness, the bearded man agreed. Glancing triumphantly at his younger brother, he counted off the money. The dervish stood on his knees and began to pray loudly, his deep voice drowning out the high-pitched voice of the first dervish. Worried, the bald man gave more money to his dervish, and the bearded man to his, and then both dervishes, trying to outdo each other, began to shout and scream so loudly that Allah probably had to order his angels to shut the windows in his chambers for fear of going deaf. Gnawing at the poplar peg, the goat produced long, mournful bleats.
The bald man tossed it half a sheaf of clover, but the bearded man shouted: “Get your filthy, foul clover away from my goat!”
He threw the clover far to the side, and placed a pot of bran before the goat.