(Continued from the previous chapter)
Part 2: The Mysterious Libra
Now let us quickly talk about the story of Nasser al-Din Avanti’s childhood.
He was a gifted businessman, already crafting various pottery pieces at just eight years old. On hot days, Shermahmat would trust him with all the work, then retire to the teahouse to relax. Business was quick in the hands of young Naser al-Din, and the old man never worried about anything he entrusted to him.
Once, when the young Nasser al-Din was sitting alone in his shop, a merchant came and picked out a small earthenware jar to store honey. He looked at the jars that could hold two children and said with a charming smile:
“The clay pots are all big and round, but the servants are tiny.”
The young Nasser al-Din immediately responded with two lines of antithetical poetry, saying:
“The client is a big shot, but the thing he bought is as small as a mouse.”
As a result, the customer was speechless.
The merchant, who loved to read and recite poetry whenever he had free time and was very well versed in poetry, was both amazed and extremely fond of this clever child. He stopped bargaining with the child and immediately bought five more earthenware jars for a lot of money.
When seeing off the guests, the young Nasser al-Din gave them another poem:
“A clay pot is worth less than silver, but filled with honey, it is sweet and refreshing.”
The merchant was delighted to hear this and was overjoyed. He took the trouble to write down these antithetical verses on paper, and they have been passed down to our time.
He was truly a warrior of the sea of commerce. The clamorous, bustling, and crowded marketplace never tired him. Amidst the never-ending swirl of human activity from morning to night, he always kept his head down and strode briskly. It was in this ocean of commerce that something occurred that forged his intellect and soul.
One afternoon, he arrived at the old camel market. It was closing time, and merchants and customers had all gone to rest to escape the scorching heat. Nearby, dozens of camels lay in the blazing sun, drenched in sweat. Young Nasser al-Din, unfazed by the camels, weaved among them. His silhouette was obscured by the herd, but his gold velvet flowered hat embroidered with red tassels occasionally peeked out from between the humps. Nothing in this half-asleep arena held his interest. He tried to provoke a camel calf, but it, drowsy from the heat, simply glanced at him without anger or spitting, then turned its head away.
Young Naser al-Din thought for a moment and headed toward the Temuran Bridge, located at the gate known as the Khegandi Gate. As he passed a large trading inn, he heard shouts and laughter coming from the intersection, so he stopped. Feeling elated, he naturally headed in that direction.
He saw a group of street children his own age engaging in an amusing game. On the road beside the trading inn, under the scorching sun, sat an old beggar woman from the most detestable of all gypsies. The children laughed and shouted, calling her all sorts of unpleasant names and throwing clods of earth at her, deliberately provoking her.
The old woman was exceptionally ugly, even disgusting: her bare head was covered in silver hair, a few yellow fangs peeked out from her purple lips, her nose was hooked blue, her eyelids were swollen and red, her eyelashes had all fallen out, and her wide-open eyes shone with a poisonous light. Furthermore, in her arms, the old woman was holding a black cat, so old that its fur had fallen off, and it was just as disgusting as she was. In short, her appearance was exactly like a witch who kidnapped children and drank their blood.
Young Nasereddin immediately joined in the fun: he too shouted, hollered, and yelled at her, his tongue hanging out, and joined the others in jumping around her on one foot, barking like a dog. The old woman raised her bony fists to threaten and curse them, and the cat, too, hunched over and purred angrily. It was all so ridiculous that the children would occasionally burst into laughter.
Finally, the old woman bored them, and other games awaited them on the Temurian Bridge. They chased each other to the bridge, hoping to reach it before a tightrope-walking performance began. The children quickly forgot about the old woman and her cat when suddenly a deafening chorus of nagla drums, other large and small drums, suonas, and trumpets erupted. As they watched the tightrope walkers soar through the air, their memories vanished. A vague image of the old woman suddenly surfaced in little Naserdin’s mind, a pang of pain in his heart, as if to leave a mark, but the sensation vanished in an instant.
He played all day, then returned home by another road and did not see the old woman again. He was telling Shermamati how he had spent the day when he remembered the old woman and suddenly shut up.
“What’s wrong with you?” Shermama asked.
“Today I saw an old beggar woman from the Gypsies,” little Nasereddin answered. “She had a black cat in her arms.… Then we all went to the Temurian Bridge.”
What he said was neither true nor false; it was only half the truth—which was worse than a lie. So at this moment his heart was stabbed again.
Then he went to bed. Tired from running all day, young Naserdin slept soundly. But one night he was awakened by a nightmare: the old woman on the road leaped angrily at him, grabbed him, and pushed him into a deep pit. Inside the pit lay a large black cat, roaring, its eyes gleaming with ferocity, hunched over him. This dream deeply distressed young Naserdin. Listening to Shermameti’s heavy breathing and snoring, he felt a growing pain within him. He imagined the old woman’s cat leaping onto his chest, tearing at his heart with its claws.
Thus he felt his first pangs of conscience, and felt that there was an invisible, mysterious scale within him which weighed every particle of his bad behavior without mercy, and he also experienced how cruel the pressure of this scale was.
In order to get rid of the reproach of conscience, he tried to divert his thoughts to play, hedgehogs and swallows, but it was no use! Although he didn’t want to think about the old woman anymore, his mind was always full of the image of the old woman.
At this time, a strange thing happened: the more he thought about the old woman, the more he felt reproached in his heart, as if he had turned into the old woman — by dawn, three-quarters of him had turned into the old woman, and the remaining quarter had become completely opposite to himself, as lonely and unfortunate as the old woman. Later, the remaining quarter became even uglier than the old woman, so that he burst into tears, his face full of tears.
He understood everything—the old woman was utterly alone, miserable, without a single relative in the world. Was she despised simply because she was born into a gypsy tribe? Was she inherently ugly? Otherwise, why was she subjected to this punishment for her entire life? These streets, teeming with thousands of people, were a desert to her… no, worse than a desert, for they were hateful and hostile to her. Why did she always stare around with her eyes bulging, her back hunched? Because she was constantly being whipped and mocked—everything was a cruel blow to her. She had nothing but the black cat; she and the kitten lived together, both old and frail, often starving, destitute, yet they shared a deep bond.
When he understood all this, how would he view himself now? How would he view his own immoral shouting, teasing, and mocking of the old woman? He was terrified. He felt heavy, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became at himself. He even broke down sobbing over what he had done and buried his head in his pillow.
The next morning he was in a state of displeasure, lost in thought. He ate some naan and drank some milk, then went out into the street. He placed a purse in his belt containing a few copper coins, one and a half cents, worth two and a half silver dollars. Others might have thought it was just a small sum he had saved, but it was not. It was this small sum that later brought him good luck in the game.
He hurried toward the old woman, encountering many tempting things along the way: yogurt, iced drinks, toys, sweets… But he controlled himself, not unbuckling his belt along the way. Instead, he left his money behind and bravely walked on. At the entrance to a dead end, children were enthusiastically playing the Chinese game of shuttlecock kicking, but he didn’t stop. Little Nasserdin was an excellent shuttlecock kicker; no one could match him. Despite this, he turned his head and hurried on.
He found the old woman in the same place, in front of the Trading Inn. The cat lay on her knees, and the clay bowl she had been begging for money was as empty as it had been the day before. People passed by her one after another, but the old woman’s bowl remained empty. The old woman stroked the cat, mumbling something to herself; the cat responded with a faint meow, saying, “Yes, it’s hungry.”
Young Nasser al-Din hid behind a half-collapsed wall. He suddenly felt a little scared. How should he approach the old woman? What should he say to her? He thought of throwing the purse in her face and running away. But that would be out of place at such a solemn moment.
All kinds of people passed by the old woman, but no one put a penny or a piece of green-haired naan in her bowl. The young Nasser al-Din looked at this scene and marveled in his heart: How can these people be so hard-hearted!
His surprise slowly turned to anger. People passed by one after another, and the old woman’s bowl remained empty. Young Nasereddin’s blood boiled, his cheeks flushed. Why couldn’t these adults understand something a child could? Today, he didn’t see the old woman’s blue nose, her bared yellow teeth, or her trivial ailments. Instead, he saw her loneliness and helplessness.
Because he was very angry and sad, he finally overcame his timidity, so he took out his purse and walked up to the old woman.
The closer he got to the old woman, the heavier his legs became, as if the soles of his feet were glued to the ground.
The old woman recognized the young Nasereddin; the young Nasereddin saw the old woman looking at him with fear, probably afraid that he would throw stones at her or laugh at her with bad words like yesterday, so he hid his head in his clothes.
“Here, take it, old woman,” he stammered, and poured the money from the bag into the old woman’s arms. The copper coins touched the cat’s body, and the cat suddenly purred at him.
This made his courage disappear, and he ran away in fear, and only recovered when he ran to the iron market on the other side of the trading inn.
Although he had bravely cleared himself of his sins, he spent the entire day alone, lost in thought. He thought of two kinds of people: the old woman, and the hard-hearted people who had avoided helping her. He felt pity for the first and hatred for the second. If he remained merely heartbroken and resentful, he would have no bright future. He needed to get down to business, but how should he do it?
Upon thinking this, he first thought of harnessing the power of his intellect. He initially separated his feelings from his thoughts, as feelings had not yet driven his thoughts. Later, he carefully sorted out his thoughts, roughly dividing them into major and minor matters according to the order in which they occurred, and placing them in their proper places. He learned this method of thinking from the chess players he often saw in teahouses, and he often practiced on his own small chessboard. During his practice, he would sometimes focus on the opponent’s moves to capture his king or to cause him to lose his troops and generals. In such situations, he often needed to counter their own tactics. This was the decision young Nasereddin made: if the residents of Bukhara were unwilling to give alms, then they should be forced to do good!
He clearly understood what he had to do first and what his future strategy would be: to find a game that he could play better than the Bukharans. He thought that instead of dealing with thousands of hard-hearted Bukharans, it would be better to unite them into one and turn them into a Bukharan giant.
Things became simpler—even though the Bukhara giant was enormous, things were much easier to handle. He began to study the nature of this hard-hearted Bukhara giant. His goal was to find a shield to prevent justice and mercy from entering the minds and hearts of the Bukhara people mentioned above.
The inner nature of the Bukhara giant wasn’t complex, nor was it unfathomable—the young man pondered it for two or three hours before he grasped the essence. He found the rotten roots of stinginess, greed, and arrogance that had festered there. By then, the Bukhara giant was perfectly clear to him, his revolting features exposed before the young Nasereddin. The giant was as tall as a pagoda, but incredibly obese. His long dhoti, wrapped around his waist, barely reached one end. His face was fat and red, his eyes puffy and small. His dull, dull gaze looked at the world indifferently, revealing an arrogant, empty smile in his sleep. When he opened his mouth, a bloated, clumsy tongue would protrude from his lips. He was constantly sniffling, breathing heavily and groaning from the fat that filled his nose. In his hand was a piece of naan as big as a wheel and smeared with honey, taking big bites of it. Because the naan was very sweet, he shouted and hummed with pride. At the same time, he seemed to be afraid that someone would take half of it or share a bite with him, so he held the naan in his arms.
Young Naserdin was furious at the Bukharians’ hard-heartedness toward the old woman, which made the Bukharian giant seem so abominable in his eyes. However, the view that anger is a bad counselor to justice is, of course, rare. For the majority of genuine Bukharians are kind and compassionate. They weren’t unwilling to help the old woman out of selfishness, but rather they failed to see past her ugly exterior and grasp the depth of her suffering. If they had known, they wouldn’t have waited for others to tell them to, but would have taken the initiative to help her. They simply didn’t think deeply enough. But for young Naserdin, there was no time for deliberation—he was ready to duel with the Bukharian giant. In other words, he had made every possible preparation and was filled with courage.
The next morning, young Naser al-Din appeared at the inn again. After careful consideration, he arrived early. The old woman hadn’t arrived yet; he would have to wait for over half an hour. He searched for her, exhausting himself by searching around the inn and the surrounding streets. The morning sun wasn’t quite as blazing; the sky was clear, and even in the shade, the damp ground still held the lingering moisture of the night. Steam was just beginning to rise, a breath of air. But the carved dome of the temple tower was blinding in the sunlight. Above him, the azure sky, heralding another scorching day, seemed to drift inward, trembling in the heat. The dull clamor of the surrounding streets grew louder, filling every corner of the city. This sound adorned the magnificent palaces of Allah, drowning out the angels’ songs and drifting away into the depths of the heavens with the dawn dust storm. It was the cry of the Bukhara giant for naan.
Soon the old woman arrived, and the black cat followed her. The boy regretted not bringing a piece of cooked goat’s liver with him. Now this disgusting, shed cat had become his close ally in his fight against the Bukhara giant.
The young man Nasserdin did not delay and walked boldly towards the old woman and greeted her:
“May God grant you good health, old woman! Did you have a peaceful night?”
“May God grant you happiness too!” the old woman replied, squinting her tearful eyes. “Last night was quite peaceful, but I don’t think this day will be peaceful.”
Although the young Nasserdin understood what she meant, he pretended not to hear.
He bowed a second time and asked:
“How was your beloved cat last night?”
“The cat caught the mouse, so it didn’t get a good night’s sleep.” She answered, staring at the boy as if she could see through him.
Her gaze embarrassed the young Nasser al-Din, who kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His courage suddenly vanished, and he forgot all the words he had prepared.
A moment of silence fell. Nasser al-Din Afanti felt not only his face but his entire body burning hot, and he began to breathe rapidly. Finally, he managed to whisper:
“I am that child. Yesterday and the day before yesterday…”
The old woman stared at him intently without saying anything. Nasserdin gathered all his strength and said in a voice that he could not even hear:
“I made you angry, do you remember?”
If the old woman didn’t say anything this time, he would turn around and run away like he did yesterday.
But the old woman answered:
“Do you think I remember it? How could I not remember it? You kept sticking your tongue out at me. I was surprised to see how long it was.”
If the old woman had not said these words with a face as bright as the sun and a smile on her face, he would have been ashamed of himself.
“Come closer,” the old woman said. “You are a good, kind-hearted child, but I see you are also a rather naughty one. Now, don’t hide anything, tell me the truth. Why are you here? What do you need? Let me tell you this: if you brought two silver dollars with you as you did yesterday, you’d better take the money and leave as soon as possible. Helping the poor is certainly a noble act, but it’s not good when some children steal money from their parents’ pockets to do so. Otherwise, where do you get two silver dollars every day?”
The young Nassereddin blushed with embarrassment, but he thought that since the old woman was a Gypsy, she was talking to him as if he were a child from her own tribe.
“That’s not the case at all!” said young Naser al-Din. “I didn’t bring two silver dollars today. I never pick my father’s pockets. He often leaves me alone in the shop selling clay pots, and I always give all the money I earn to him.”
“That’s good!” the old woman said affirmatively.
“He would give me half of a denarius, or even half a denarius, at festivals.”
“You may take this,” said the old woman. “It is not wrong. I am glad I have wronged you. Don’t be angry with me.”
Later, their conversation continued in this way, and they both talked very happily. The young man Nasserdin sat beside the old woman, stroking the cat, listening to its meows, and praising it non-stop.
“Does your cat like goat’s liver and milk?”
“I don’t know, because I’ve never fed it goat’s liver or milk.” The old woman laughed. “I haven’t seen those things in years.”
This sad answer paved the way for the young Nassereddin to move on to the main topic. He excitedly but timidly told the old woman his thoughts on “opposing” the Bukhara giant.
The old woman listened with only mild interest at first, but then she believed him and finally burst into tears.
“God has sent you to me because you have brought a little comfort to a homeless old woman like me! You are a scheming child; if you had been born into our tribe, you would have become a leader. Your heart is purer than that of any righteous man, and may God bless you with wisdom and wisdom.”
According to young Nasserdin’s idea, it would cost about fifteen silver dollars or a little more. The old woman trusted him so much that she took the money out of her tattered old clothes and handed it to him without hesitation.
“This is my last bit of money.” said the old woman, her hands shaking.
“Don’t worry, old woman, the money will come back to you along with the profits,” said the young Nasser al-Din.
(To be continued)
