One day Khoja Nasreddin was walking through the bazaar and met his fellow countryman. He almost cried.
Nasreddin approached him and asked why he was so sad. And then the poor man told Hodja that he had hired himself to work for a rich merchant. He worked honestly and diligently, and when it was time to pay for his work, the owner told him to catch and punish the wind that had knocked all the peaches off his favorite tree. When you complete this task, I said, then I will pay you. The servant could not catch the light breeze... So he left without money.
“Eh,” said Nasreddin, “he’s a well-known miser in the city!” He keeps all his workers until they begin to demand the money they earn. Then he gives the servant an assignment that is impossible to complete, and then kicks the poor fellow out three necks.
Nasreddin sympathized with his fellow countryman and decided to take revenge on the rich miser and teach him a lesson.
I came to him.
“I want,” he says, “sir, to hire you to work.”
We agreed for three months. Nasreddin worked for these three months not out of fear, but out of conscience, and when the deadline began to come to an end, he came to the owner for what he had earned.
“I will pay you today, but on the condition that you fulfill my last order,” said the owner. - If you do it, the money is yours, if you don’t do it, you have yourself to blame.
- What do I need to do? - inquired Nasreddin, who had been waiting for this order for a long time.
“Go to the market and bring me ah and oh,” the rich man grinned, very proud of his invention, in full confidence that even Nasreddin was not capable of such a task.
“Okay, sir,” answered our cunning man, but he did not go to the market at all, but to a grove outside the city. I caught a scorpion and a phalanx there, put them in my wallet and returned home to the owner satisfied.
Rubbing his hands and giggling, the miser asked Nasreddin:
- Well, did you buy what I asked for?
“Why, sir,” he answered respectfully.
- So where is it?
“Here,” Nasreddin said and handed the owner the wallet.
The miser put his hand into his wallet, and the scorpion immediately stung him.
- Oh-oh-oh! - the miser screamed at the top of his voice.
“And even deeper in the wallet, ah, you’ll find it,” Nasreddin grinned.
So the rich man had to count out Nasreddin’s salary with his fingers swollen from bites.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru