Customs Officer: You can tell me now, Nasrudin... Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?
Nasreddin: Donkeys.
Nasreddin used to take a donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again. They searched his person, staffed the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. This dialogue takes place when one of the officers met him years later.
N. Hanif (ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis: Central Asia and Middle East (2002)
