An illiterate man receives a letter and asks Hoca to read it for him. Hoca does his best to decipher, but fails to make it  out. The letter is probably in Arabic or Persian. “I can’t read it,” he confess. “Have someone else read it.”

The man gets angry: “You are supposed to be a learned man, a teacher. You ought to be ashamed of the turban you’re wearing.”

Hoca takes his turban off, puts it on the man’s head, and says: “If you think the turban knows it all, see if you can read the letter.”

translated by Talat Halman

Note: Nasrettin Hoca has been a figure of humor and satire in Turkey since Ottoman times. Some of his stories have become proverbs. (“Hoca” is a term for teacher or preacher.)