Thus he spoke, trying to incite the courtiers against the new sage.
His efforts were in vain.
Hussein Huslia achieved greater and greater successes in his rise to power.
He distinguished himself especially well during the ‘day of praise.’ According to ancient custom, all the viziers, officials, sages, and poets would compete every month before the emir in praising him. The winner was rewarded.
Everyone expressed his praise, but the emir remained unsatisfied.
“You said the same things last time,” he said. “And we find that you are insufficiently diligent in your praising. You do not wish to burden your head, but today we will make you work. We will ask you questions, and you will answer, combining praise with truthfulness.”
The emir asked:
“If we, the great emir of Bukhara, are mighty and unconquerable, as you state, then why have the rulers of neighboring Muslim countries not yet sent us envoys bearing rich gifts and expressions of their complete submission to our unconquerable dominion? We await your answers to this question.”
The courtiers were seized by utter confusion. They mumbled something unintelligibly, trying to avoid a direct answer as best they could. Only Hodja Nasreddin maintained a state of confident calm. When his turn came, he said:
“May the great emir deign to hear my lowly words. Our sovereign’s question is easy to answer. All the rulers in neighboring countries are in a state of constant fear and trepidation before the almightiness of our ruler. And they reason thusly: ‘If we send the great, glorious, and mighty emir of Bukhara rich gifts, then he will think that our land is very wealthy and this will entice him to come with his army and take our land. And if, on the contrary, we send him poor gifts, he will take offense and send his army anyway. The emir of Bukhara, is great, glorious, and mighty, and it is best not to remind him of our existence.’ This is what the other rulers are thinking, and the reason they are not sending their envoys with rich gifts to Bukhara should be sought in their constant trepidation before the almightiness of our sovereign.”
“Yes!” the emir shouted, completely delighted by Hodja Nasreddin’s answer. “This is how you should answer the emir’s questions! Did you hear? Learn, o dunces and blockheads! Truly, Hussein Huslia exceeds you all tenfold in his wisdom! We proclaim our goodwill to him.”
The palace chef ran up to Hodja Nasreddin and filled his mouth with halva and candy. Hodja Nasreddin’s cheeks puffed up; he was suffocating, and thick, sweet spittle ran down his chin.
The emir posed several more equally crafty questions. Hodja Nasreddin’s responses were the best every time.
“What is the paramount duty of a courtier?” asked the emir.
Hodja Nasreddin replied thus:
“O great and luminous sovereign! The paramount duty of a courtier consists of exercising his spine every day, so as to make it sufficiently flexible; otherwise, the courtier cannot properly express his devotion and his reverence. The spine of the courtier must be able to bend, and even undulate, in every possible direction, unlike the hardened spine of some commoner, who cannot even bow properly.”
“Precisely!” cried the delighted emir. “Precisely, of exercising his spine every day! We proclaim our goodwill to the sage Hussein Huslia a second time!”
For the second time, Hodja Nasreddin’s mouth was stuffed with halva and candy.
That day, many of the courtiers crossed over from Bakhtiyar’s side to the side of Hodja Nasreddin.
In the evening, Bakhtiyar invited Arslanbek over. The new sage posed an equal threat to them both, and they forgot their ancient enmity for a time in order to destroy him.
“It would be nice to mix a little something into his pilaf,” said Arslanbek, who was an expert in such matters.
“And then the emir will remove our heads!” Bakhtiyar objected. “No, esteemed Arslanbek, we must do otherwise. We must praise and exalt Hussein Huslia’s wisdom in every way, so as to make the emir suspect that, in the eyes of the courtiers, Hussein Huslia’s wisdom exceeds his own. Meanwhile, we will continue to tirelessly praise and exalt Hussein Huslia, and there will come a day when the emir will become jealous. And that day will be the last day of Hussein Huslia’s rise and the first day of his downfall!”
But fate took good care of Hodja Nasreddin and turned even his blunders to his benefit.
When the combined efforts of Bakhtiyar and Arslanbek – who had been praising the new sage every day and beyond measure – had almost achieved their goal, and the emir was already becoming jealous, albeit secretly, it so happened that Hodja Nasreddin made a blunder.
He was walking in the garden with the emir, breathing in the fragrance of the flowers and enjoying the singing of the birds. The emir was silent. Hodja Nasreddin detected a hidden animosity in this silence, but could not understand its cause.
“And how is your prisoner, that old man?” asked the emir. “Have you discovered his true name and his reasons for coming to Bukhara, Hussein Huslia?”
Hodja Nasreddin was thinking of Guljan at the time, and replied absentmindedly:
“May the great sovereign forgive his lowly slave. I could not get a single word out of the old man. He is silent as a fish.”
“But have you tried to torture him?”
“Of course, o great sovereign! Two days ago, I was dislocating his joints, while yesterday I loosened his teeth all day with iron tongs.”
“That is a good method of torture, loosening the teeth,” said the emir. “It is odd that he remains silent. Perhaps I should send a skilled and experienced torturer to assist you?”
“O no, the great sovereign need not burden himself! Tomorrow I will attempt a new method of torture – I will pierce the tongue and gums of this old man with a red hot awl.”
“Wait, wait!” the emir exclaimed, and his face lit up. “But how will he be able to tell you his name after you have pierced his tongue with a hot awl? You did not think it through, Hussein Huslia, and you did not anticipate the problem, but we, the great emir, have considered, foreseen, and prevented your mistake. This shows that, although you are an incomparable sage, our own wisdom exceeds yours many fold, as you have just seen.”
The joyous, glowing emir had the courtiers summoned at once, and when they had assembled, he announced to them that he had just exceeded the wisdom of Hussein Huslia by preventing a mistake that the sage was about to commit.
The court chronicler wrote down the emir’s every word with diligence, so as to spread the fame of the emir’s wisdom in the coming centuries.
Since that day, jealousy left the heart of the emir.
Thus, thanks to an accidental blunder, Hodja Nasreddin destroyed the cunning schemes of his enemies.
But he was also afflicted more and more frequently by unbearable anguish during the solitary hours of the night. The full moon floated high above Bukhara; the tiled caps of countless minarets glimmered with a faint glow, while their massive stone foundations disappeared in the thick gloom. A light breeze wafted through the air, cool on the roofs and stuffy below, where the walls and the ground, which had absorbed a lot of heat in the daytime, had not yet cooled. Everything around him was asleep – the palace, the mosques, the huts – and only the owls disturbed the hot sleep of the sacred city with their piercing cries. Hodja Nasreddin would sit by an open window. His heart knew that Guljan was awake, thinking of him, and perhaps they were both now looking at the same minaret, but without seeing each other, separated by walls, bars, guards, eunuchs, and hags. Hodja Nasreddin had managed to unlock the gates of the palace, but the harem was still shut firmly to him, and only some chance occurrence could open it. He sought that chance tirelessly, but in vain! He could not even manage to send Guljan a message.