OCR Text |
Show Folk Lora of the Near East. With all Its wars and political disturbances, dis-turbances, the Near East has clung to its fondness for expressing its worldly wisdom In Its own qunlnt folk lore and proverbs tinged with Orientalism. At the Near East conference con-ference Ismet Pasha, head of the Turkish delegation, frequently enlivened en-livened the discussions with homely Turkish quotations. On one occasion, when a delegote said that Ismet's statement was not In accord with general gen-eral report, he replied: "Ah, a case of Khoja Nasreddln's donkty." Ills reference evidently was to a bit of Anatolian folk lore regarding a favorite Turkish character, something some-thing of both knave and philosopher, whose donkey braying at an Inopportune Inoppor-tune moment revealed his falsehoods. By Allnh!" Khoja exclaimed, "this fool world will believe a donkey when tt will not believe Khoju!" |