Short Story: Mullah Nasruddin asks why we often ask useless and dumb questions to each other

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The Mullah was thinking of what to include in his weekly talk to the village about how to handle life, and relationships better. Again, he thought of how, he, himself had handled his father-in-law, in that last week. His father-in-law was representative of a certain class of peoples, he thought to himself. This week, the father-in-law, Abdullah, had been asking the Mullah, some pretty dumb, obvious, even stupidly useless questions of himself. He tried to remember now, just a few of these questions, that he would include, as examples, in his upcoming talk. The Mullah was boiling the jug to make himself a Turkish coffee. The father-in-law, had asked him: "Is the water getting hot?" Then, on the next day: "Are you heating the water?" When the Mullah had just returned from the bakery, with a bag of bread, that you could smell was just freshly baked that day, the father-in-law asked of him: "Did you buy bread?" Then, when the Mullah was washing his car, the father-in-law chimed in, chirpily: "Are you washing your car?" Another time, the Mullah was just standing outside, looking up at the clouds, when his father-in-law said to him: "Are you looking at the clouds?" He always wanted to be certain for some reason about what he thought that the Mullah was doing. This continual questioning, like a five-year-old child would do, became very annoying to the Mullah, after a while. When the Mullah was watching the television, the question was: "Are you watching TV?" He asked the same question, or this similar one, when the Mullah appeared to be listening to the radio: "Are you listening to the radio?" Now, this question, was more justified, as the old man was deaf, but surely he could have seen that the television was on. Finally, the old man asked the Mullah one day, when he was riding his donkey into town, not where are you going Mullah, but this question instead: "Are you riding your donkey, Mullah?" The Mullah, frustratingly upset, said: "No, my donkey is riding me! What do you think, old man? Get a grip on yourself, and stop asking me such stupidly stupid questions." It had upset the Mullah that he had lost his cool, and his patience here with his old father-in-law, who was a bit muddle-headed, at times. Maybe, I should have answered him, that, "No, I was only just thinking about riding my donkey, until, you showed me that I really am doing so." The Mullah finally just decided to answer these dumb questions, in the most simple of ways, "Yes, Dad, that's exactly what I am doing," and then he saw that the old man smiled immensely, with a look of gleeful satisfaction, written all over his face, as he congratulated himself inside his own head, that indeed he had been right, all along, after-all, about what the Mullah had been doing. "The simple pleasures of a simple old man," the Mullah, mused to himself again. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com At least the Mullah's donkey did not ask him stupid questions.