The Anthologies: Nasrudin: The Anthologies

By Tahir Shah

During a career of thirty years, Tahir Shah has published dozens of books on travel, exploration, topography, and research, as well as a large body of fiction.

 

Through this extraordinary series of Anthologies, selections from the corpus are arranged by theme, allowing the reader to follow certain threads that are of profound interest to Shah.

 

Spanning a number of distinct genres - in both fiction and non-fiction work - the collections incorporate a wealth of unpublished material. Prefaced by an original introduction, each Anthology provides a lens into a realm that has shaped Shah's own outlook as a bestselling author.

 

Regarded as one of the most prolific and original writers working today, Tahir Shah has a worldwide following. Published in hundreds of editions and in more than thirty languages, his books turn the world back to front and inside out. Seeking to make sense of the hidden underbelly, he illuminates facets of life most writers hardly even realize exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914960833

Book preview

This book is for Brook and Mikie,

with most sincere thanks and affection.

The Anthologies:

Africa

Ceremony

Childhood

City

Danger

East

Expedition

Frontier

Hinterland

India

Jinns

Jungle

Magic

Morocco

Nasrudin

People

Quest

South

Taboo

Teaching Stories

By Tahir Shah:

Travel

Trail of Feathers

Travels With Myself

Beyond the Devil’s Teeth

In Search of King Solomon’s Mines

House of the Tiger King

In Arabian Nights

The Caliph’s House

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Journey Through Namibia

Novels

Jinn Hunter: Book One – The Prism

Jinn Hunter: Book Two – The Jinnslayer

Jinn Hunter: Book Three – The Perplexity

Hannibal Fogg and the Supreme Secret of Man

Hannibal Fogg and the Codex Cartographica

Casablanca Blues

Eye Spy

Godman

Paris Syndrome

Timbuctoo

Midas

Zigzagzone

Nasrudin

Travels With Nasrudin

The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin

The Peregrinations of the Perplexing Nasrudin

The Voyages and Vicissitudes of Nasrudin

Nasrudin in the Land of Fools

Teaching Stories

The Arabian Nights Adventures

Scorpion Soup

Tales Told to a Melon

The Afghan Notebook

The Caravanserai Stories

Ghoul Brothers

Hourglass

Imaginist

Jinn’s Treasure

Jinnlore

Mellified Man

Skeleton Island

Wellspring

When the Sun Forgot to Rise

Outrunning the Reaper

The Cap of Invisibility

On Backgammon Time

The Wondrous Seed

The Paradise Tree

Mouse House

The Hoopoe’s Flight

The Old Wind

A Treasury of Tales

Daydreams of an Octopus & Other Stories

Miscellaneous

The Reason to Write

Zigzag Think

Being Myself

Research

Cultural Research

The Middle East Bedside Book

Three Essays

Anthologies

The Anthologies

The Clockmaker’s Box

The Tahir Shah Fiction Reader

The Tahir Shah Travel Reader

Edited by

Congress With a Crocodile

A Son of a Son, Volume I

A Son of a Son, Volume II

Screenplays

Casablanca Blues: The Screenplay

Timbuctoo: The Screenplay

Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd

Kemp House

City Road

London

EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

www.secretum-mundi.com

[e-mail]

First published by Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd, 2022

THE ANTHOLOGIES: NASRUDIN

© TAHIR SHAH

Tahir Shah asserts the right to be identified as the Author of the Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Visit the author’s website at: www.TahirShah.com

ISBN 978-1-914960-83-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

Introduction

Langton House, 1972, 1974

Shadowman

Reverse Thinking

In No Time

Second-hand Rainbow

Algeciras, 1987

Camouflage

Wrong Donkey

Sharing Upwards

The Demonstration

Luxor, 2003

Cat Currency

Serial Giver Upper

Brain Reformat

Forward Thinking

London, 1986

Brevity

Humour vs. Fashion

Reminding the Sky

Faulty Conclusions

Orinoco, 1988; Swakopmund, 2003

God Complex

The Premonition

King of the Queue Bargers

Cloak of Incrimination

Guinness World Records

Makak!

Buenos Aires, 1948, 1988, 2008

Right Lessons, Wrong Birds

The Laughing Hyena

Moonstruck

Edible Reading

London, 2006

All in the Name

The Sitter

Nasrudin’s New Clothes

King of the Octopuses

Bukhara, 2007

Hide-and-Seek

Known to All

Progression

Two-wheeled Tool

Kolkata, 1998

Mixed Up

Donkeymanship

Time in a Jar

Equality in Baldness

Tokyo, 1992

Adulation Wanted

Priorities

Bird Talk

Fooling the Fools

London, 1996

The Perfect Time

Thanking Providence

Suspended Disbelief

Unfooled by Fools

Balkh, 2006

The Secret of Success

Weapons of Choice

How We Play

Late Again

Second-rate Untruth

The Essence of Time

Yucatan, 2017

The Cloak of Wisdom

Russian Roulette

The Reason for Braying

Peacock Calm

Tamil Nadu, 2008

Making the Weather

All in the Details

Operation Overthink

Never Lost Again

Shakiso, 2000

Old Tech Rules

Worry You, Worry Me

Evolution

Danger: Potholes!

Casablanca, 2009

Sharing is Caring

Donkey Elixir

Thief’s Messenger

Tomorrow’s Me

San Francisco, 1991

Freeing the Trees

Crocodile Curse

Wise Fools Needed

Genius Machine

Alice Springs, 2018

Given an Inch

Shark Think

Yamazamadooo!

Different Luck

Iguazu Falls, 1988

Wrong Way Round

Classic Nasrudin

Part-time Treasure

Rain Machine

Rye, 1993

The Gorilla Queen

The Living Statue

Jodhpur, 1989

New News

High-tech Hat

Bare Essentials

Right to Be Wrong

Casablanca, 2010

Discourteous

The Greatest Secret

Knitted Fiction

Cat Think

Madre de Dios, 2002

Spaces in Between

Substitution

Stone Home

Artificial Unintelligence

Accra, 2007

Knowing Who Counts

Trapping Time

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Leap Tradition

Algeciras, Tangier 2019

Introduction

Last week, at

a lunch with new friends, I found myself telling a room full of people about Nasrudin.

None of them had ever heard of him before.

‘He’s the wise fool of Oriental folklore,’ I explained. ‘A character that’s found across much of the known world – from Morocco in the West to China in the East. In many countries there’s a tradition,’ I went on, ‘to share Nasrudin stories, or short jokes, when a handful of people are gathered as we are now.’

Someone at the far end of the table shrugged.

‘Go ahead… tell us a tale of Nasrudin.’

And so I did… this one…

With his mother-in-law about to visit, Nasrudin was in a fluster. She always complained there wasn’t enough fuss being made of her, or enough food offered to her.

So, in an effort to pull out all the stops, Nasrudin hurried across the street and begged to borrow his neighbour’s huge cooking pot.

The neighbour, universally disliked on account of his miserly nature, narrowed his eyes.

‘How do I know you’ll look after my pot?!’ he hissed.

The wise fool fell to his knees.

‘In the name of despairing sons-in-law, I beg you to lend me the pot!’ he wailed.

Eventually, the neighbour agreed.

‘If it’s not returned in the same state in which I am giving it to you,’ he spat, ‘I’ll come after you with a meat cleaver – do you understand?’

Nodding eagerly, Nasrudin hurried home, the pot in his hands.

That evening, a banquet fit for a queen was served to the mother-in-law. And for once, she didn’t howl with rage.

Thrilled beyond words, Nasrudin cleaned the enormous borrowed pot and took it back across the street.

Having spewed a fountain of thanks, he appeared to remember something.

‘I almost forgot,’ he said.

‘Almost forgot what?’ the neighbour grunted.

‘Well, last night while your lovely big pot was under my roof,’ he said, ‘it gave birth to a lovely little pot. And, the way I see it, having been born from your property, the offspring is yours.’

Nasrudin dug a hand into his cloak, fished out a small but perfectly formed pot, and passed it over.

The greedy neighbour could hardly believe his good fortune.

Naturally, the next time the wise fool’s mother-in-law came to stay, the neighbour was only too pleased to lend his big pot once again – half-expecting another pot birth.

But on the second occasion that Nasrudin availed himself of the pot, he didn’t return it the next day.

Nor the day after that.

Furious, the neighbour marched across the street and demanded to be given the pot back – along with any offspring that had been born while staying under the wise fool’s roof.

Standing in the door frame, Nasrudin appeared gripped with sorrow.

‘Dear neighbour,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘We have established, have we not, that pots can be born just like humans?’

‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ the greedy neighbour exclaimed, hoping for yet another gift.

‘Well,’ Nasrudin responded, his head stooped low, ‘I have the pitiful duty to inform you that on the stroke of midnight your beloved pot dropped dead!’

This morning, I bumped into one of the people who was at the lunch last week – the one at which I explained about Nasrudin.

‘Can’t stop thinking about it,’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘About the tale of Nasrudin and the Pot.’

I gave a double thumbs up.

‘That means the story is doing its magic,’ I said.

And that’s the whole point about Nasrudin…

You see, the tales have a way of seeding themselves in your head, and turning round and around while you get on with everything else.

As someone who was raised on Nasrudin stories, I have come to see them as the Rubik’s Cube of folklore. The more you think about them, the more the elements of the stories turn, revealing hidden arrangements – rather like a kaleidoscope held into the light.

Nasrudin is a personification of absurdity, and he’s part of an ancient teaching mechanism, too. Some of the stories provide instant gratification, but others are far more complex. Seeping down through the layers of one’s mind, they allow us to find ourselves.

Nasrudin has always been inside my head – ever since my father ‘gave’ him to me as a champion and a friend. I was frightened of the monster under my bed and my father said that if I believed in Nasrudin, the monsters would melt away.

He was right.

The monsters did indeed melt away – not because I chased them out, but because I moved on to thinking about something else…

Nasrudin.

In the years and decades that followed, I kept him close to me, travelling with him, and observing the world through his own back-to-front lens.

Eventually, I wrote a book called Travels With Nasrudin, and four volumes of stories about the wise fool – a selection of which are presented in this anthology.

At the lunch last week, one of the guests clapped her hands at hearing the story of Nasrudin and the Pot.

‘Whatever could be better than listening to Nasrudin tales?’ she asked.

I looked at her for a moment, and smiled.

‘Being Nasrudin,’ I said.

Tahir Shah

Langton House, 1972, 1974

On the eve

of my sixth birthday, my father tucked me into bed.

‘Are you excited for tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I whispered.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m frightened.’

‘Frightened of what?’

‘Of the monsters under my bed.’

Stooping down, he peered into the darkness.

‘Nothing there.’

‘That’s because they’re invisible monsters.’

‘If you don’t think about them, they’ll go away.’

‘But they’ll just hide under someone else’s bed, and that doesn’t seem fair,’ I said. ‘You see, that’s how they came to my bedroom in the first place.’

Perching on the edge of my bed, my father smoothed the blanket with his hand, and said:

‘I’ll tell you something… something that will protect you throughout your life.’

‘From monsters?’

‘Yes. And all kinds of other things… things that frighten you, or that you don’t understand.’

‘What is it, Baba?’

‘A suit of armour.’

‘Like the one down in the hallway?’

‘A little bit like that, but different as well.’

‘Will I wear it?’

‘Yes you will.’

‘Can I see it?’

Leaning back, my father grinned, the kind of magical grin that preceded something special.

‘This suit of armour isn’t like others that you’ve seen before. It’s different because it’s not made of metal.’

‘Then it won’t stop the arrows and the swords.’

‘Ah, but it will… in its own way.’

‘How?’

‘By protecting you from the inside out.’

I didn’t understand. All my friends had fathers who said things simply, while mine spoke in riddles.

‘What’s it made of, then?’

‘Of stories.’

‘What kind of stories?’

‘Stories about the bravest and most amazing fool who ever lived.’

‘What’s his name?’

Dark eyes reflecting the lamplight, my father replied:

‘His name is Nasrudin.’

My childhood was divided in two halves.

The first was the one I came to loathe. It consisted of schoolwork I couldn’t do, sports I couldn’t play, and games at which I failed. Continually lampooned by my peers, and roasted by the masters, I was scruffy, confused, and all covered in ink.

The second half was a fantastic realm where I spent almost all my time. Before and after school, on the weekends, and increasingly during class – a realm free from monsters, and conjured from the stories I so loved to hear…

I called it the ‘Land of Nasrudin’.

Adults are taught to learn things in a practical way – starting at the beginning and finishing at the end. But children do things differently – in a way that’s the default setting with which we are born.

That’s how I learned about Nasrudin…

Not in a linear kind of way, but upside down and from the inside out. Whenever I asked about the wise fool, the reply came in the form of a story, or a fragment of information that seemed to make no sense at all. The suit of Nasrudin armour my father gave me in the shape of stories, took other forms as well.

Among them was an awkward stuffed puppet of Nasrudin on his donkey, made by a band of Argentine troubadours; a glass eye whispered by my aunt to have been given to Nasrudin in payment for a dream; and a lump of quartz supposedly cut out of a rear hoof of Nasrudin’s donkey while on a journey in Tibet.

As the years passed, and as I found myself less and less able to be the person I was expected to be, I slipped deeper and deeper into the Land of Nasrudin.

In class, the form master would beat me, order me to face the corner, or write out lines after school. In the playground, I was shunned by the other boys at the insistence of the master so dead set on making my childhood hell.

With time I came to see that the kids at school who were given an easy ride, and the adults who aren’t knocked about by life, have something in common with each other: the inability to succeed in the face of desperation.

At the same time, there was something that the brutal form master, my classmates, and all the others, never grasped.

Something amazing.

Something magical.

Something that made me who I am.

It was this:

The more they punished and heckled, lambasted and ridiculed, the more I sought refuge in the Land of Nasrudin.

And, the longer I spent there, the better equipped I became for the world – because the stories prepared me by teaching me how to think in an original way.

A way that mirrored how my father perceived the world…

From Travels With Nasrudin

Shadowman

Nasrudin went for

a haircut in a side street near the Galata Tower.

Having left his suitcase just inside the door, he sat down on the chair. Within a minute or two, the barber had got down to work with his scissors. He cocked his head over to the luggage.

‘So, are you travelling alone?’

‘Oh no,’ Nasrudin responded, ‘Anwar’s with me.’

‘Who’s Anwar… your son?’

‘No, my shadow.’

The barber frowned.

‘But a shadow isn’t a person… so it can’t have a name.’

The wise fool shrugged.

‘Who says a shadow can’t have a name?’

‘They just don’t.’

‘Yes, they do. In my homeland all the shadows have names.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

After lifetime of cutting hair, the barber had heard all kinds of tall tales, but never anything so strange as shadows having names.

Silence prevailed for a while.

Then, rekindling the conversation, the barber sniffed.

‘So, tell me, what’s the population of people in your country?’

Nasrudin narrowed his eyes.

‘With or without shadows?’ he asked.

From The Misadventures of

the Mystifying Nasrudin

Reverse Thinking

Moving at high

speed, Nasrudin hurried backwards into a shop in Jack London Square.

After rushing from left to right, he bustled out again – all of it in reverse.

Then, still going backwards, he hurried across the main street, down steps leading to the car park, climbed into his car, and reversed it out into the traffic.

A policeman on patrol stopped him and demanded to know what was going on.

‘Hello officer,’ the wise fool replied courteously, ‘I’ve forgotten the address of my friend who lives near here.’

The police officer glared.

‘That doesn’t explain why you’re driving backwards so dangerously!’

‘Oh, but it does, sir,’ Nasrudin explained. ‘You see, I’m simply going back until I reach the last time I was there.’

From The Peregrinations of

the Perplexing Nasrudin

In No Time

During his adventures

in Iraq, Nasrudin was found spouting his usual blend of nonsense in the north of the country.

As they didn’t have many wise fool travellers passing through, the people there developed an interest in him. It wasn’t long before he was invited on the local television channel to talk about his life and adventures.

Halfway through the TV appearance, Nasrudin was asked how much time he planned to spend in Iraq. He looked flummoxed at the question.

‘But everyone knows that time doesn’t exist,’ he said earnestly.

The interviewer flinched.

‘Of course it does.’

‘No it doesn’t.’

‘Well, if time doesn’t exist, why are you wearing a wristwatch, which appears to be set to the correct time?’

Nasrudin swished a hand through the air, as though the question was beneath him.

‘I said time does not exist,’ he answered curtly. ‘I never claimed wristwatches don’t exist!’

From The Voyages and

Vicissitudes of Nasrudin

Second-hand Rainbow

Seeing a fine

rainbow arcing across the sky, Nasrudin stopped the first fool he saw.

‘Want a bargain?’ he asked.

‘What bargain?’ answered the fool.

‘I’ve got an exceptionally lovely rainbow for sale.’

The fool blinked hard and pointed upwards.

‘You mean like that one?’

‘Yes,’ said Nasrudin, ‘that very one. You see, I own it, and as I’ve used it for as long as needed, I’m putting it up for sale.’

The fool blinked again.

‘But you can’t own rainbows,’ he said.

‘Of course you can.’

‘Can you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But what’s the point of owning a rainbow?’

‘Are you out of your mind?! Everyone knows the value of rainbows.’

‘What is it, then?’

Nasrudin considered the question for a moment, and said:

‘Well, it’s obvious.’

‘What is?’

‘The fact that owning a rainbow isn’t about the rainbow itself, but about the pot of gold that’s waiting at the end of it!’

The fool’s eyes lit up.

‘You mean there’s a pot of gold at the end of that one?’

‘You mean my one?’ Nasrudin corrected.

‘At the end of your rainbow,’ the fool whispered.

‘Yes indeed… You see, there happens to be the very best pot of gold I’ve ever seen at the end of my rainbow.’

‘Is there?’

‘Yes, of course there is!’

The fool blinked hard a third time.

‘Are you telling me you didn’t spend some of the gold yourself?’

Nasrudin sighed.

‘All right, all right,’ he hissed. ‘I admit I spent a few gold dinars, but most of it’s still there.’

‘But, if you spent some of it, then it’s not new, is it?’ asked the fool.

Nasrudin felt his back warm with anger.

‘All right! Technically speaking, it’s not new. But, as I’ve said, both the rainbow and the pot of gold at the end of it are in fine shape.’

The fool was about to hand over his money when a storm cloud passed over the sun, and the rainbow vanished.

‘Where’s your rainbow gone?’ he moaned.

Nasrudin scratched a thumbnail to his cheek awkwardly.

‘Being a second-hand rainbow,’ he said, ‘there are a few idiosyncrasies like that. But you’ll soon get used to them.’

‘Idiosyncrasies like what?’

‘Idiosyncrasies like the way it vanishes from time to time. When it does, rest assured, it’ll pop up again with the pot of gold intact, so long as…’

‘So long as what?’

‘So long as you believe.’

From Nasrudin in the Land of Fools

Algeciras, 1987

Curvaceous, big-boned, and

a shameless flirt, Doña Fernández did her level best to shock everyone she encountered.

More often than not dressed in a super-tight T-shirt and an ultra-skimpy miniskirt, with a spectacular beehive towering above her head, the doña may once have been a beauty of sorts. But time had been cruel to the face that, I liked to imagine, had broken a thousand hearts. Half an inch of foundation cream, mascara, rouge, the