Nasreddin was looking for firewood for his wife. He climbed a tree and sat on a trunk while he was sawing it. A man was passing by the street beneath the tree. He saw Nasreddin was sawing the trunk. He said, “Watch out, Nasreddin. You will fall. You shouldn’t sit on the trunk you are cutting!”
Nasreddin thought that the man was just teasing him. He answered, “Am I so foolish that I believe you! You are not a fortune-teller, how do you know my future?”
The man said, “Everybody knows that you will fall if you sit on a trunk that you are cutting.”
But Nasreddin did not believe him. And the man walked away. A moment later, Nasreddin and the trunk fell together. He soon got up and ran after the man who had told him that he would fall down.
When he was behind the man, Nasreddin said, “Great! Your prediction is really accurate. I fell down along with the trunk.”
The man stopped and turned round to see Nasreddin. When they were walking side by side, Nasreddin said, “Now, tell me when I will die?”
The man, of course, could not tell him anything about it. He was not fortune-teller. But Nasreddin urged the man to tell him about his death. Finally, the man left annoyed and said, “You will die right now.”
As the man said that he would die soon, Nasreddin fell down in the street and made no movement. The man shook his body but he did not say anything or move any inch. Then the man left him in the street. He told his friends about it.
A moment later the other neighbours came and woke him up. Because he behaved like a dead man, then they brought him to his wife. His wife knew that her husband was not dead. But, Nasreddin behaved like a dead man. His wife asked her neighbours to put him to the cemetery.
On the crossroad, they quarreled about which way they should take. One of them said that they had to go straight ahead for about 10 metres before turning right and the rest said that they should turn left.
The quarrel was getting worse. Nasreddin who was in the coffin felt very annoyed to hear the foolish quarrel. He looked out of the coffin and said, “You all are fools. When I was alive, the shortest way to the cemetery is the one that turn right.”
