One day Aldar Kusa went hunting.
He walked, he walked, he wandered, he wandered, he walked around the steppe, and the tugai, and the reeds, he was tired, tired, but he couldn’t shoot anything.
Just as he wanted to go home, he suddenly saw geese flying. Aldar Kusa did not hesitate, took aim with his bow and shot an arrow.
Aldar was a sharp shooter and a big fat goose, struck by an arrow, fell down like a stone.
Aldar Kusa was happy:
“Well,” he thinks, “I’ll have goose kabob at home for dinner!”
But that was not the case! As soon as Aldar Kusa picked up the shot goose, out of nowhere a fat guy in a large turban appeared and said:
- Hey, on what grounds do you want to take the goose?
“Oh, Mr. Bai,” objected Aldar Kusa, “with your permission, this is my goose.” I shot him.
“Get out of here!” the bai shouts, “don’t you see that the goose fell on my land?” And everything that is on my land is mine!
Then they began to argue. They argued and argued, and suddenly a mullah, the rector of the mosque, comes up and says:
“There’s no point in arguing here—give me the goose.”
“Why is that?” the Bai and Aldar Kusa were surprised.
“The goose was flying over the mosque when some atheist hit him with an arrow, and if so, the bird belongs to Allah. I am the rector of the mosque, so give the goose to me. I will sacrifice him to God.
But neither Aldar Kusa nor the bai listened and did not want to give up the goose. The mullah argued and argued with them, but they did not agree on anything.
The three of them went to Bukhara so that the kaziy could judge whose goose it was?
It was not a long way to Bukhara. The travelers got tired and stopped under a large elm tree for the night.
Then the hungry mullah said:
- Let's cook the goose.
Bai and Aldar Kusa agreed.
They got a cauldron from the neighborhood and began to cook the goose.
Mulla says again:
- Let the goose cook, and we’ll go to bed. Whoever dreams the most beautiful dream, then Allah Almighty commands him to give the goose.
That's what they decided on.
They left a small fire under the cauldron and went to bed. Bai and the mullah immediately fell fast asleep, but Aldar Kusa could not sleep. He was very hungry; since the morning he had not even had a piece of bread in his mouth, nor had he sniffed the tip of a fried lamb ear.
“Let me at least eat the leg of the goose,” he thinks. “The whole goose will remain.”
Aldar Kusa ate a goose leg, but he wants to eat even more.
“If I eat the other leg,” he thought, “the goose will remain.”
But even the second leg did not satisfy Aldar Kusa. He also ate a goose wing, ate another, ate the neck, ate the head. Aldar Kusa looked at the goose and said:
“Now you can’t even tell what it is: either a bird or a ram?”
He took and ate the whole goose along with the stew.
Having eaten, Aldar Kusa lay down and fell fast asleep.
The mullah woke up first and let's wake up his companions:
- Get up! Allah vouchsafed me to see in a dream that I ascended to heaven alive for my godly and pious deeds. None of you have ever seen or will ever see such a wonderful dream.
“Eh, most respected mullah,” the bai objected, “my sleep is better.” I dreamed that I went on a trading trip and made such a profit that I couldn’t carry gold on forty camels.
“Well, what did you, Aldar Kusa, see in your dream?” asked the bai and the mullah.
Aldar Kusa yawned sweetly and said:
“I saw in a dream: Allah took our reverend mullah alive to heaven, the most venerable bai left on a trade trip to distant countries. I thought: “While the mullah and the bai are away, my goose won’t go rotten. Such a fat and tasty goose shouldn’t go to waste. I took it and ate it.”
The mullah and the bai rushed to the cauldron, lifted the lid, looked, and there weren’t even any bones left on the bottom.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru