Short story: The Mullah's mullings eanrt him some Mullah's Moolah

Tweet

The Mullah Nasruddin used to have a second hand, mystical, new-age, type bookshop, that sold spiritual, and religious tomes. He would place his own books in there to try to sell them too, as his collection inside his library, in his own house was too large, and needed often to be culled, or reduced in its size. His wife often prompted him to get rid of some of his useless collection of books, that he never seemed to read anyway, but which he occasionally browsed, for reference purposes only. Once the Mullah had read a book once, he never read it again. He could absorb all of its contents, in only the one read, but he did like to keep it around, so that he could quote an exact quote, plus the name of the book, and page number of the quote, when he wrote some of his own articles, for his shop's magazine, called Mullah's Mullings. Anyway, there was an epidemic in the Mullah's village, and in fact, it had rapidly spread all over his own whole country. A sexually transmitted venereal disease, had mutated, and it was now capable of quickly spreading from contact with the saliva of an infected person, alone. Everyone now had to wear a mask, and to stop transmission, or to at least slow down its spread in this country, until a suitable cure could be found, a lot of businesses had been forced to close their doors, by the Government of the day. The Mullah's business was also affected. His bookshop was now closed down. He was working from home now, trying to sell his books online, and giving his spiritual advice out, via his blog. This blog, that he called, "Mullah's Hollers", meant to convey to others that he still had a loud voice in his community. The problems of working from home, with others in his house, soon reared its nasty, (even ugly), head, though. For one thing, the Mullah was very particular, methodical, fastidious, and almost regimental, in the way that he placed his books, onto his shelves. Each bookshelf had a name, and a number taped onto it, and also each individual shelf, on the bookshelf, was so named too. The Mullah thus knew the position of every book in his online catalogue of his books, and exactly where to locate it, in his shelving system. With 6 large, 6 shelved bookshelves, in his library, and with 300 books on each bookshelf, he really needed such a surefire system, in order to find a particular volume quickly, if it sold. The problem was that his wife, Fatima, was continually dusting his bookshelves with her duster, or dusting cloth, and she always removed the Mullah's books to do so, and she invariably then replaced them back onto a different shelf, to where they had been before. When the Mullah, luckily, was able to sell that book, he never could find it then again on his shelves, and so he would, unluckily then, lose that sale, because of this misplacement of his books. Now that his father-in-law was in the house too, another problem developed here for the Mullah too. The old guy would sneak into the Mullah's library, using the key that he had had made, from his pinching it off of the hook in the key cupboard, in the Mullah's study, next to his computer, and he would "periwinkle" a book from there. The Mullah had coined this word for his behaviour, because the old guy used to creep around, and leave his marks, much as this plant does too. It will creep over anything it can do so, even down steep cliff-faces, and hillsides, or up trellises, and trees. The Mullah would then never see this particular book, then ever, again. The Mullah found out through word of mouth, and from the gossip-mongerers in his village, that the old boy, not being as stupid as the Mullah had thought that he was, had set up his own small book-selling business on his own iPad, given to him by the Mullah, himself, so that he might be able to entertain himself in his room, to relieve some of his undoubted boredom. One of the Mullah's repeat customers had told him that he had bought the latest copy of some Religious guru's book, much cheaper than the Mullah's advertised price, from his own father-in-law's small business too. The Mullah just took this all on board, and stored it all in his heart. He was bigger than this. He would not allow himself to be getting upset by petty pilfering. He let it go. After all, the old guy's expensive Turkish cigars, must have been very expensive enough to buy. He used to ask the Mullah for money for this anyway, but now he was paying for his own cigars, which, in the Mullah's logical mind, equated to being the same thing, anyway. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The father-in-law was a crafty old guy, indeed!