The Strange War Page 6

young Dorji believes it too. And anyway, if there were fewer of those Fire Eaters there would be more water for us!“ And they joined in the shouting: „Down with the infidels!“

  So they decided that next Monday, right after the service, they would cross the river and burn the temple of the Sun, so the infidels could no longer offend Lady Moon.

  But before that some of them went and dug their ditches deeper during the night to get more water on their own fields. This was only just, as the Fire Eaters had caused the drought in the first place.

  When people on the other side of the river noticed this, they became very angry: „These Sleep Walkers are stealing our water!“ they shouted. And Mrs. Pema said: „Now these poor souls have been completely deranged. It really is time to go and tell them to give up their sinful ways.“

  And Mr. Puran shouted: „We must tear down their unholy temple and fill in their ditches with the rubble to teach them a lesson!“

  „It is for their own good!“ Mrs. Pema said. „When they see the light the Lord Sun will forgive them and will let the water come back.“

  So a time of fighting begann. The villagers attacked each other‘s temples, but if a goat or sheep that belonged to the enemy crossed their path they took it as their rightful prize. They plundered each other‘s granaries in the name of the Lord Sun or the Lady Moon and of course they tried to block each other‘s ditches to take away the water from the sinners, so the true believers would not have to suffer.

  As often happens in this kind of story, there was a young man from Tralang who was in love with a girl from Namkha. Even in peaceful times it had been difficult for them to meet, but now they had to be more careful than ever. And when they managed to come together on a moonless night, they were desperate because they could not see a future for their love. „I think they will go on fighting“, the boy said, „until they have killed off half the people on each side. Then the water will be enough for them!“

  And the girl said: „And even then they will be enemies forever because they will not forgive each other what they did, and there is no way we could live together.“

  But one night the girl, whose name was Jamin, said: „I have thought of something. Did you ever notice: when the water runs through the ditches, a lot of it is lost by evaporation. The sun dries out the ditches before the water reaches the more remote fields.“

  „Yes“, said the boy, whose name was Sonam, „that‘s just natural.“

  „But what if we let the water run through pipes instead of ditches? Then not so much water would evaporate. You know, when I make soup I put a lid on the pot so the water is not lost!“

  „Well that‘s an idea!“ the boy said. „We could make the pipes of burnt clay and make little holes in them so just enough water would trickle out to water the crops.“

  So each of them went home and told the elders about this idea. And in both villages the people started making pipes of clay and for the time being they had no time to fight. And when the pipes were installed, it turned out that now there was enough water for everybody. And when Mr. Tashi and Mr. Dorji tried to make their comrades take up the fight again, the men told them: „We must look after our fields. If the Lady Moon wants to punish those infidels she will have to do it herself!“

  Mr. Puran on the other side got more or less the same answer. And Mrs. Pema said: „The Lord Sun has patience with the sinners. But he has a long memory, and the day of judgement will come!“

  But Jamin and Sonam began to talk to their young friends on each side of the river: „When I was little I heard an old story from my grandmother who is now dead. She said that the Sun and the Moon are actually husband and wife. Sometimes they quarrel, like all married couples do, but still they live in the same house up in the sky and once a month they meet!“

  Of course they had made up the story themselves. But their young friends who had enough of the fighting liked the story and did not question it much. And when Sonam an Jamin got married, a silver disc was placed in the temple of the Sun and a golden disc was brought to the temple of the Moon and there was peace again.

  The Slave

  A man had a slave. And the slave had to do all the chores for him. The slave washed the man, combed his hair, cut up his food, and put it in his mouth. The slave wrote the man’s letters for him, shined his shoes for him, darned his socks for him, chopped the wood for him, and lit the fire in the stove. When the man saw some raspberries while taking a walk, the slave had to pick them and put them in his mouth. To keep the slave from running away, the man always kept him on a chain. Day and night, he had to hold on to him and haul him around, or he would have run away. In the other hand, the man always carried a whip because when the slave pulled on the chain and yanked at it, the man had to whip him. Then when his arms hurt, and he was exhausted from whipping him, the man swore at the slave, and at the chain, and generally at everything.

  Sometimes he secretly dreamed of the times when he was still young and didn’t yet have a slave. In those times he could still roam through the woods free as a bird and pick raspberries without this constant tugging and tearing at the chain. Now he couldn’t even go to the can by himself. In the first place, because the slave would have run away, and in the second place: who would have wiped his butt? He himself couldn’t free up either hand for that.

  One time when he was bellyaching like that, someone said to him: “Well, if it’s so terrible, why don’t you let the slave go free?”

  “Sure,” said the man, “so he can kill me!” But secretly the man dreamed of freedom.

  And the slave? Did he dream of freedom too? No, he had long ago given up dreaming of freedom. The only thing he dreamed of was of being the master himself and leading the man around on a chain and whipping him and making him wipe his butt. That’s what he dreamed of!

  The Farmers who Were Good at Numbers

  Among the places the mullah Nasreddin Hodja visited in his travels, was a village whose citizens were known for being especially good at numbers. Nasreddin found lodging at a farmer’s house. The next morning Nasreddin found out that the village had no well. In the morning, someone from every family in the village loaded one or two donkeys with empty water jugs, and then went off to a stream that was an hour’s walk away, filled the jugs, and brought them back again, which took another hour.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if you had water in the village,” the hodja asked the farmer he was staying with.

  “Oh, much better,” said the farmer. “Every day the water costs me two hours of work for a donkey and a boy who drives the donkey. That comes to 1,460 hours per year, if you count the donkey as equal to the boy. If the donkey and the boy were working in the fields during this time, I could, for example, plant a whole field of pumpkins and harvest an additional 457 pumpkins every year.”

  “I see you’ve got everything nicely figured out,” said the hodja, admiringly. “Then why not dig a canal to bring the water to the village?”

  “That’s not so simple,” said the farmer. “There’s a hill in the way, which we’d have to dig up and remove. If I used my boy and donkey to dig a canal instead of sending them for water, it would take them 500 years, if they worked two hours a day. I’ve got maybe thirty more years to live, so it’s cheaper for me to have them fetch the water.”

  “Yes, but would it be your responsibility alone to dig a canal? There are many families in this village.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the farmer, “there are exactly 100 families. If every family sent a boy and a donkey every day for two hours, then the canal would be finished in five years. And if they worked ten hours every day, it would be finished in one year.”

  “So why don’t you speak to your neighbors and suggest that all of you dig the canal together?”

  “Well, if I have an important matter to discuss with a neighbor, I invite him to my house, serve him tea and halvah, talk to him about the weather and the prospects for the next harvest, then about his family, about his sons, daughters, and grandchildren
. Then I have a meal served to him and after dinner we have tea again. Then he asks me about my farm and about my family, and then we get to the matter at hand nice and slowly. That takes a whole day. Since there are 100 families in our village, I would have to speak to 99 heads of household. You have to admit that I can’t afford to spend ninety-nine days in a row having these discussions. My farm would go to rack and ruin. The best I could do is to invite a neighbor once a week to my house. Since a year only has fifty-two weeks, that means it would take almost two years to talk to all my neighbors. If I know my neighbors, every one would finally agree that it would be better to have water in the village because they are all good with numbers. And if I know them, every one of them would promise to join in if the others joined in too. So, after two years I would have to start all over again. I’d have to invite them to my house and tell them that the others have also agreed to join in.”

  “Fine,” said the hodja, “but after four years you would be ready to start the work. And after one more year, the canal would be completed!”

  “There’s one more complication,” said the farmer. “You’ll admit that once the canal has been dug, everybody will be able to fetch water from it, whether he did his share of the work or not.”

  “That’s right,” said the hodja.