Short Story: Going to the market, not to the market, the Mullah messes up once again.

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Mullah Nasruddin had his weekly lecture at his mosque, to be given by himself, Saturday afternoon, for a 3 pm start. His talks usually were scheduled for a 6 pm start, but today, there was to be a wedding ceremony starting at 5 pm that same day, lasting late into the night, so he had been asked to give his talk, a bit earlier. His wife, Fatima, had her market store to run Saturday afternoons too. She asked the Mullah to drop her off first there, at the market place, before he went to his scheduled talk. He agreed, and so they set off at 2 pm, in his cart, with Zonkey, his donkey, pulling them along. That would give him plenty of time to still get to his own engagement in plenty of time too. The Mullah had never been to this market before, as his wife usually jumped on a cab, going that way. At least, she knew enough to not bother the Mullah too much on his special holy day, when he liked to meditate and prepare his talk all day, before he gave that talk. Today, though, surely, he would not mind, as it was a just a simple 5-minute detour for him to make. All went well, with the Mullah, at the reins, until they got to a very large roundabout, just out of the town. There were roads branching out of it, going off in all directions. The Mullah looked across at his wife, sitting idly next to him. Sure enough, she got the hint. "Just keep going," she said to him. So he did. But what he did was the wrong thing to do here, even if he did keep going, as he thought that she had meant for him to do. His wife was livid. "What type of an idiot are you," she said to him. "Why can't you follow a simple directive? We were in the roundabout, why didn't you just keep going following the roundabout around, like I told you?" "I said to you clearly to keep going, meaning to keep going around the roundabout, as we were already in the roundabout, when I said this to you. Even a dumb dog, would have gotten that simple instruction from me." "Why did you go straight ahead into the wrong road then?" The Mullah looked perplexed, and even hurt, by his wife's sudden, violent, outburst of such sharply barbed remarks. He looked across at her again, as he whimpered, softly to her: "Well, you did say to keep going, and that's what this poor donkey heard you say. It just kept going past the roundabout to the other side, where the original road does then keep going." "You idiot!, the wife roared, again, and this time so loudly, that the poor donkey, stopped in its tracks too. "Now, you are blaming this poor dumb donkey. This is the last time that I ever take a ride with you again. You always mess up on the directions. You never listen to what I tell you to do. You always do the opposite of what I tell you to do." The Mullah, going the wrong way like that, took him a fair distance down the wrong road, before he could safely turn back around again. He was not even late for his talk, though, arriving there at ten minutes before the scheduled starting time. He added this remark into his talk, gleaned from his mistake that afternoon. "We can learn from our wives, that we are going the wrong way only because their way is the right way, and ours the wrong way, but we have to take their wrong way first." Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The Mullah had an unusual affection for his donkey. He hated its big ears to hear the tirades of his wife to him too. This hurt far him more than the tirades themselves. He suffered twice over, as he felt the suffering of his dearest friend, in his life, this donkey too, as well as his own suffering, within his own self, as well.