“Hale!” “Halele!”
Long ago on Ngazidja there was a sultan who could not bear to be made fun of. Yet in the alleys of the medina, everyone was repeating the witticisms of Abunuwas, the trickster whom the storytellers of Grande Comore also call Ibnasya. The sultan summoned him before the whole court.
“They say you are the most learned of my subjects. Here is my donkey: teach it to read. If you succeed, I will cover you in gold. If you fail, I will have your head cut off.” The court held its breath. Abunuwas bowed. “It shall be done, Majesty. But a donkey is a slow pupil: I need ten years, and rations from the palace for it and for its master.”
The sultan agreed, delighted with his trap. On the way out, the cadi, who hated Abunuwas, sneered: “Poor fool, in ten years you'll be dead.” Abunuwas smiled. “In ten years, either the sultan will be dead, or the donkey will be dead, or I will be dead. And until then, I'll eat my fill.”
Every day, he set the donkey in front of a big ledger and slipped grains of barley between the pages. The donkey turned the pages with its lips to find the grain, and brayed when the page was empty. One day, the cadi came to watch the lesson. “Is it reading?” he asked. “It reads like certain judges,” replied Abunuwas: “it turns a lot of pages, it makes a lot of noise, and it only looks for what has been slipped in there for it.”
The whole court burst out laughing, and the sultan himself, who was not fond of his cadi, forgot his threat. No one knows whether the donkey ever learned to read. All we know is that Abunuwas ate well, and that the cadi never dared make fun of him again.
Against arbitrary power, wit buys time, and time is often the best ally of the weak.
What we know about it
Abu Nuwas was a poet in 8th-century Baghdad; popular tradition turned him into an insolent trickster, the hero of countless stories all along the Swahili coast (Hekaya za Abunuwasi). On Grande Comore, he is also known as Ibnasya or Ibounasuya: he is the hero of The pot that gave birth. His tricks make fools of capricious sultans and corrupt cadis.
The episode of the donkey that has to learn to read is told throughout the Muslim world, most often about Nasreddin Hodja: tricksters readily borrow each other's stories. It was reported to us as belonging to the Abunuwas cycle told in Moroni, Itsandra and Mitsamiouli; we have not found a published Comorian version. Some storytellers make reading the Koran the object of the challenge: out of respect for the holy book, we have preferred a ledger.
Further reading
- Voices of the archipelago Saïd Abdallah, Trois ruses d'Ibnasya : contes comoriens. L'Harmattan.
- Voices of the archipelago Salim Hatubou, Sagesses et malices de Madi, l'idiot voyageur, 2004. Albin Michel Jeunesse.