Personal Responsibility

A Sultan invited a mullah to go hunting with him and his entourage. But he gave the mullah a camel that was very slow indeed. The mullah said nothing about this. Soon the hunt had left the mullah far behind and after a short time was completely out of sight. Then it began to rain. It rained very hard indeed.

All the members of the hunt got completely soaked. The mullah, on the other hand, quickly dismounted, took off all his clothes, folded them into a neat pile, and sat on them under the camel for the duration of the storm.

When the storm abated, he dressed himself and returned to the Sultan’s palace for lunch. The Sultan and his entourage were amazed that the mullah was completely dry, for even with the speed of their camels they had been unable to find any shelter on the plain. They looked at the mullah with suspicion.

“It was because of the camel you gave me,” he said.

The next day, the mullah was given the fastest camel, and the Sultan took the slow one. Once again it rained. The Sultan, stranded in the middle of the plain, on a camel that moved at the speed of a tortoise, got absolutely drenched. The mullah, on the other hand, repeated the same procedure as the day before. When he returned to the palace he was as dry as a bone.

“This is all your fault,” sneezed the Sultan, “for persuading me to ride this snail of a camel.”

“Perhaps,” replied the mullah, “you took no personal responsibility for the problem of staying dry.”

General source: Sufi tradition

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Read this and 77+ other stories in:

More Magic of Metaphor: Stories for Leaders, Influencers, & Motivators

Author: Nick Owen. Published by Crown House Publishing, May 2004

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