A Real Wiseguy! Witty Sage and Ancient Comedian Nasreddin Hodja Has the Last Laugh
One day Hodja and his students were on the way to their lesson. Hodja was sitting backwards on his donkey. "Hodja, they asked him "Why on earth do you sit that way? Isn't it uncomfortable?"
"If I sit the other way," he answered, "you would all be behind me and we wouldn't be face-to-face. Riding this way is better."
(Kabacali, A., Nasreddin Hodja, p.1)
A white-bearded and big-bellied man wearing a huge turban and a green caftan— a representative of Nasreddin Hodja—paraded the streets of Rotterdam to deliver messages of peace, tolerance and secular wisdom in 2005 at the Nasreddin Hodja Festival in Netherlands. In 2006, the inauguration of a statue of Nasreddin Hodja facing backwards on his donkey, on Rue Galait in Schaerbeek, Brussels, took place with similar messages.
