Short Story: Winter, extends into Spring, this year, at the Mullah's

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Winters in the village where the Mullah (Nasruddin) currently lives can be very cold, but as soon as the winter ended, and spring starts, the weather usually improves, and becomes a bit milder. On the very first day of Spring, the Mullah's wife, Fatima, changed all of the bedding, on their king-size bed. She had a faddish, a compulsion to spring-clean, as soon as spring had begun. This year was no different. She removed the thick flannelette sheets, the extra blankets, and the doona, as well. She washed all of these, and packed them away in her linen cabinet, until next winter. Coming from a much hotter climate than which the Mullah himself did, she really hated the extra weight of these heavy blankets on top of her, as she slept. She was glad to get rid of them as soon as was possible. This spring, though, just happened to be having the coldest start in the recorded weather charts, so far in his district. It was as if winter had been extended. This did not stop the Mullah's wife from doing what she had done though. She placed on the bed just a pair of thin cotton sheets, and a thin quilt, and the quilt was mainly to be used just for decoration of the bed. That first night, after she had done this, the Mullah shivered and shaked, all night from the bitter cold, that he was feeling. He never did get even one small wink of sleep, the whole night through. Even his advanced meditation techniques, supposed to raise the temperature of the body, did not seem to be working for him here. He had asked his wife if they could pull up the quilt, which was just folded back, and lying like that on the foot of their bed. "No!", his wife had most forcedly said to him then. "That quilt is not to be used to cover us with, as, I do not want that expensive quilt to become soiled by our bodily sweats, and smells." "Well, there is no chance of us sweating tonight", the Mullah thought to himself, but he said nothing else to his wife. He knew that this quilt was only on the bed for show, so that the made bed looked good during the day, in-case, a distinguished guest, or two, of the Mullah's wanted to look over their house, during the day. Well, at least his feet will keep warm, was his next thought, and they do say, that if one has cold feet, the rest of the body is cold then too, so probably the reverse could be true of warm feet, he mused to himself then. He found out by the morning, that this logical reversing of this saying was not true. The rest of his body shivered all night, that night too. In the morning, he looked across at his wife sleeping noisily there, and still in a deep sleep. It was only then, that he realised that his wife was not as stupidly stubborn, as he first had thought. She had on a thick windcheater, to protect herself from the cold, as well, as a warm scarf around her neck too. The Mullah was only just wearing his nightshirt. The next night, of Spring, was equally as cold. The Mullah was more prepared for the cold this time though. He had brought in one of his old donkey rugs from the stable, and he had wrapped himself in that, so he did sleep a bit warmer that night, even as he also felt in his heart much closer to his beloved donkey, as he did so too. This warming thought warmed him up a bit too. And, so once again, the Mullah now had the subject matter for his weekly talk, for that coming Saturday night to the villagers, that he gave to his villagers, free of charge, with anybody in the village welcome to attend, in the large city hall of that town. He would entitle his talk, "The inflexibility of sheerly, inflexible inflexibility." It was to be a talk on "parallelism" the use of extra emphasising phrases, by repeating keywords, with similar meanings, in the phrase, to really push home its real meaning. For example, he had these other examples, prepared for his upcoming talk too: The stubbornness of a stubbornly, obstinately, stubborn, stubbornness The stupidity of an idiotically, stupid stupidity. The fearfulness of a morbidly, uneasy, fearful fearfulness. The lonelinessness of a barrenly, alone, lonely lonelinessness. The deceitfulness of a cheating, tricky, deceitful deceitfulness. And, The loveliness of a lovable, loving, kindly loveliness. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com At least, the Mullah's cat, was warm enough on their bed, curled up as he was there too.