The old man was sitting on the hay in the corner, his eyes flashing in the darkness, resembling a furious cat.
“Well, now, Hussein Huslia,” Hodja Nasreddin said calmly. “You and I will settle in quite well in this tower – me below, and you above, as befitting your years and wisdom. How much dust there is here! I will sweep it up.”
Hodja Nasreddin went downstairs and brought a pitcher of water and a broom. He swept the stone floor clean, laid down the blankets and pillows, and then went down once again and brought bread cakes, honey, halva, pistachios, and split it all evenly right before his prisoner’s eyes.
“You will not die of hunger, Hussein Huslia,” he spoke. “We will manage to get food. Here is a hookah, and I have placed some tobacco here.”
After setting up the small chamber like this, so that it almost looked better than the room below, Hodja Nasreddin left and locked the door.
The old man was left alone. He was completely confused. He thought for a long time, pondering and weighing, but still could not understand what was going on. The blankets were soft, and the pillows were comfortable, and neither the bread cakes, nor the honey, nor the tobacco contained poison… Worn out by the day’s misadventures, the old man went to sleep, entrusting his subsequent fate to Allah.
Meanwhile, the cause of his misfortunes, Hodja Nasreddin, was sitting by the window in the lower chamber and watching the slow transition of twilight into darkness as he thought about his amazingly turbulent life and about his beloved, who was now nearby, although she did not yet know anything. A fresh coolness drifted in through the window, and the ringing, sad voices of the muezzins weaved over the city like silver threads. Stars appeared in the dark sky, shining, burning, and fluttering with clean, cold, distant flames, and there was the star Al-Shual, signifying the heart, and the three stars Al-Gafr, signifying the veil of a woman, and the two stars Al-Sharatan, signifying horns, and only the sinister star Al-Kalb, signifying the stinger of death, was absent in the blue heavens…
Part 3
“Praise be to him who lives and does not die!”
Chapter 27
Hodja Nasreddin earned the emir’s trust and favor, and became his closest advisor in all affairs. Hodja Nasreddin made the decisions, the emir signed, and Grand Vizier Bakhtiyar only applied the carved copper seal. “O great Allah, what is going on in our country?” the vizier exclaimed in his head as he read the emir’s decrees to cancel taxes, allow free use of roads and bridges, and reduce collections on the bazaar. “At this rate, the treasury will be empty before long! This new sage, may his insides rot all the way through, has destroyed my labor of over ten years in a week!”
Once, he dared express his doubts to the emir. The sovereign replied:
“What do you know, wretch, and what do you understand? We are just as saddened by all these decrees that are emptying our treasury, but what can we do if the stars are commanding this? Calm yourself, Bakhtiyar – this is only for a short time, until the stars enter a favorable alignment. Explain it to him, Hussein Huslia.”
Hodja Nasreddin took the grand vizier aside, sat him down on the pillows, and explained to him for a long time why the additional tax on the blacksmiths, the coppersmiths, and the armory workers had to be repealed immediately.
“The stars Al-Abba in the constellation of Virgo and Al-Bal-da in the constellation of Sagittarius stand in opposition to the stars Sad-Bula in the constellation of Aquarius,” Hodja Nasreddin spoke. “You must understand, o esteemed and luminous vizier, they stand in opposition and are far from union.”
“So what if they stand in opposition?” Bakhtiyar objected. “They were in opposition before, and it did not prevent us from collecting taxes in the least.”
“But you forgot about the star Ak-Dabaran in the constellation of Taurus!” Hodja Nasreddin exclaimed. “O vizier, look at the sky and you will see for yourself!”
“Why should I look at the sky?” the stubborn vizier replied. “My business is the protection and enlargement of the treasury. I can see that, since the day you appeared in the palace, the treasury’s profits have diminished, and the flow of taxes has lessened. The time has come to collect taxes from the city tradesmen, so explain to me why we cannot collect them!”
“What do you mean, why?” Hodja Nasreddin exclaimed. “I’ve been explaining this to you for a whole hour now! How can you still fail to understand that each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac is associated with two and one third positions of the moon?”
“But I must collect the taxes!” the vizier interrupted again. “The taxes, do you understand?”
“Wait,” Hodja Nasreddin stopped him. “I have not yet explained to you that the constellation of Al-Sureya and the eight stars An-Naimi…”
Here Hodja Nasreddin launched into such vague and lengthy explanations that the grand vizier’s head begin to ring and his eyes clouded. He got up and left the room, swaying, while Hodja Nasreddin returned to the emir:
“O sovereign! Although old age has covered his head with silver, it has enriched him on the outside only, without turning into gold that which lies within the head. He could not absorb my wisdom. He did not understand anything, sovereign. O, if only he possessed but one thousandth of the great emir’s mind, which eclipses Lukman himself!”
The emir smiled a gracious and self-satisfied smile. Every day, Hodja Nasreddin took great pains to make the emir fancy himself incomparably wise, with much success. And now, when he explained something to the emir, the latter listened with a pensive look and never objected, afraid to reveal the true depth of his mind.
The next day, Bakhtiyar spoke among the courtiers:
“The new sage, this Hussein Huslia, will ruin us all! We only grow rich on the days of tax collection, when we can scoop from the wide and deep river flowing into the emir’s treasury. And now it has come time for us to scoop, but this Hussein Huslia is standing in our way. He refers to the arrangement of the stars, but who has ever heard of stars, which are controlled by Allah, arranging themselves to the detriment of distinguished and noble people, while benefiting contemptible tradesmen, who – I am sure – are even now eating shamelessly through their earnings instead of giving them to us! Who has ever heard of such an arrangement of stars? There is not a single book that describes this, for even if such a book had been written, it would have been burned immediately, while the man who wrote it would have been cursed and subjected to execution as a great blasphemer, heretic, and villain!”
The courtiers remained silent, not yet knowing whether it would be more profitable for them to take the side of Bakhtiyar or the new sage.
“Already, the inflow of taxes is decreasing every day,” Bakhtiyar continued. “And the time is not far off when the treasury will become depleted, and we, the emir’s closest servants, will be ruined. Instead of brocade robes, we will put on plain, rough ones, and instead of twenty wives we will have to make do with two, and instead of silver platters we will be served on clay ones, and instead of tender young lamb, we will be forced to garnish our pilaf with stringy beef, suitable only for dogs and tradesmen! This is what the new sage Hussein Huslia has in store for us, and he who does not see this is blind, and woe betide him!”