Читать книгу The Four-Gated City - Doris Lessing - Страница 3

Once upon a time there was a fool who was sent to buy flour and salt. He took a dish to carry his purchases.

‘Make sure,’ said the man who sent him, ‘not to mix the two things – I want them separate.’

When the shopkeeper had filled the dish with flour and was measuring out the salt, the fool said: ‘Do not mix it with the flour; here, I will show you where to put it.’

And he inverted the dish, to provide, from its upturned bottom, a surface upon which the salt could be laid.

The flour, of course, fell to the floor.

But the salt was safe.

When the fool got back to the man who had sent him, he said: ‘Here is the salt.’

‘Very well,’ said the other man, ‘but where is the flour?’

‘It should be here,’ said the fool, turning the dish over.

As soon as he did that, the salt fell to the ground, and the flour, of course, was seen to be gone.

A dervish teaching story, from

The Way of the Sufi, by IDRIES SHAH