Nasruddin’s Donkey

Everyone in the village got “pilgrimage fever” and everyone got busy packing up some traveling clothes and food for the road.
All except for Nasruddin, who watched them labouring away.
Soon, all of the village: the men, women, and children, were heading out to Mecca.
They were singing songs and shouting with great excitement about how they were off to find God.

They got about one mile away, when Nasruddin suddenly came riding up on his donkey, shouting about some terrible emergency. They caught the donkey and made him tell them what the problem was.

“I’m trying to find my donkey! Where is my donkey?”

“Why, Nasruddin, you’re sitting on top of your donkey,” answered the villagers.

“Oh really. Is that so. And why are you all going on a pilgrimage to find God?”

Lee-Ellen Marvin posted this tale on Storytell in response to a request for stories on the theme of simplicity.
And, as is customary on this most generous of listservs, kindly let me add it to my site.

Put Nasruddin’s name into any search engine for more information about the Hoja’s real life (in Turkey in the Middle Ages) and for many more stories.

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For those who are teachers: Telling stories in the classroom: basing language teaching on storytelling