Mulla Nasruddin and the Coat

The whole town knew that the richest merchant was giving a feast.

For a week, carts had rolled up to his house with sacks of rice, baskets of apricots and great copper pots. On the night itself, lanterns hung from every tree in his garden, and the smell of roasting lamb and saffron drifted down the street.

Everyone had been invited. And that, of course, included Mulla Nasruddin.

Straight from the fields

Nasruddin had spent the day helping a neighbour mend a wall. By the time he remembered the feast, the sun was already going down. There was no time to go home and change.

So he brushed the worst of the dust off his old coat, which was patched at both elbows and frayed at the hem, and he walked to the merchant's house just as he was.

At the gate, a servant looked him up and down and let him in without a word.

Inside, the great room was full of people in silk and fine wool. Rugs covered the floor. Cushions were piled along the walls. In the middle, on a long white cloth, the dishes were already being laid out: pilaf glistening with butter, bowls of yogurt, flatbread still warm from the oven, plates of sweets dusted with sugar.

Nasruddin stood in the doorway and waited for someone to show him to a place.

Nobody did.

Invisible

He walked to one end of the room. The guests there turned their shoulders slightly and went on talking. He walked to the other end. A man moved his cushion so there was no room left beside him.

The host passed right by him, laughing with an important visitor, and did not even look his way.

The servants carried the best dishes to the top of the cloth, where the judge and the moneylenders sat. Nasruddin was left standing near the door, where the draught came in, with nothing in front of him but the smell of the food.

He waited a little longer. Then he quietly slipped out.

A change of clothes

Nasruddin walked home, washed his face and hands, and opened the old wooden chest at the foot of his bed.

At the bottom, wrapped in cloth, was the one fine thing he owned: a long coat of deep blue wool, embroidered at the collar and cuffs with gold thread. It had been a gift, years ago. He hardly ever wore it.

He put it on. He wound a clean white turban around his head. He looked at himself for a moment in the little mirror on the wall. Then he walked back to the feast.

This time, the servant at the gate bowed low and hurried ahead to announce him.

The host himself came across the room with his arms open. "Mulla! Welcome, welcome! What an honour! Come, sit here, by me."

He led Nasruddin to the very best place, at the top of the cloth, and settled him on the softest cushion. The other guests shuffled along to make room. A servant rushed over with a dish of pilaf, then another with roasted lamb, then a bowl of soup, steaming and fragrant.

Eat, my coat!

The room grew quiet as everyone waited for the honoured guest to begin.

Nasruddin took the bowl of soup. He looked at it for a moment. Then, very carefully, he tipped a little of it onto the embroidered sleeve of his blue coat.

He took a handful of rice and pressed it into his pocket. He picked up a piece of lamb and tucked it gently into his collar.

"Eat, my coat," he said kindly. "Eat! Eat!"

The host stared at him. The guests stared at him.

"Mulla," said the host at last, "what on earth are you doing?"

Nasruddin looked up, quite calm.

"An hour ago," he said, "I came to this house in my old coat, and nobody offered me so much as a crust of bread. Now I come back in this coat, and I am given the best seat and the best food in the room. So it is clear to me that it was not Nasruddin you invited tonight. It was the coat. The least I can do is make sure it gets its dinner."

What the room heard

Nobody laughed at first. The man who had moved his cushion looked down at his plate. The host's face went red.

Then, slowly, the host began to smile, a little ashamed. He took Nasruddin's hand, and he said that he had been foolish, and asked him to forgive him and to eat.

It is said that Nasruddin did, with great enjoyment. And it is said that at the merchant's next feast, there was a place kept near the top of the cloth for anyone who came in dusty from work.

About this story

Nasreddin Hodja, known across South Asia as Mulla Nasruddin, is the wise fool of a thousand stories, told from Turkey to Iran, Central Asia and India. A real teacher of that name may have lived in Anatolia in the thirteenth century, but most of the stories were added by tellers over hundreds of years. This is one of the best known. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.