Who Will Read the Letter?

One day Nasreddin Hodja's neighbour came with a sheet of paper and a pen in his hand: "Hodja, I need to write a letter to my brother in Baghdad. I can't write. Will you write it for me?"

The Hodja thought for a while: "I can't, neighbour. My foot hurts."

The neighbour was surprised: "Hodja, a letter is written with your hand. What has your foot got to do with it?"

The Hodja explained: "Neighbour, my handwriting is so bad that nobody but me can read it. If I write it, your brother won't be able to read the letter. Then I'll have to get up and go all the way to Baghdad and read it to him myself. How can I walk all that way with a sore foot?"

The neighbour burst out laughing. "Hodja, you always have an answer for everything," he said. The Hodja laughed too: "But I'm not joking, neighbour. Come and look." He scribbled a few words on a piece of paper. The letters really were all jumbled together, and you could not make out what he had written at all.

The neighbour was disappointed: "So what shall I do now?" "Don't worry," said the Hodja. "The teacher at the neighbourhood school has handwriting like pearls. Let's go to him. I'll sit beside you and help you say what you want to write."

The two of them went to the school together. The teacher wrote the letter in his beautiful handwriting. And Nasreddin Hodja added lovely words to the letter: "Your brother misses you very much. The harvest was good this year. Your mother prays for you every evening." The neighbour's eyes filled with tears: "Hodja, I could never have said it so beautifully."

The Hodja smiled: "Every job should be done by the one who knows how, neighbour. I can't write beautifully, but I can speak beautifully. The teacher writes beautifully. When we put the two together, we got a beautiful letter." The letter went to Baghdad. A few months later a reply came from his brother. And the same teacher read the reply too.