Have you heard that the famous Arabian chieftain' Hatim Tai, was deaf?
Quite a few people believed that!
But, one morning there was a fly buzzing as it struggled to escape from a
spider's web. The spider had been so still and silent that the fly had perhaps
thought it was a piece of sugar. Now it was about to learn otherwise.
Hatim Tai went over to the corner of the room where the buzzing was.
'You are caught by your own greediness,' he said to the fly. 'You won't find
honey, sugar and candy in every nook and cranny. But that's where you will
be certain to find traps and snares.' The buzzing stopped. The spider had its
pray.'
'But Hatim' said a follower who had watched all this 'how could you have possibly
heard that fly? I could only just hear it myself. yet everybody says you are deaf!'
'You're very clever,' said Hatim with a smile. 'Well, I see I must tell you about my
deafness. It's like this; Much of my time, for reasons of state, I had to be among
flatterers, the sort of people who hid my faults from me and filled my ears with praise.
I couldn't help but take in some of their talk. I grew proud, and pride made me
wretched man.
'Then I gradually allowed them to think I was deaf. Naturally, there was much sad
shaking of heads. But then came two great advantages.
'The first was that they stopped bothering to flatter me. They soon saw that it got them
nowhere- all they had for their effort was my blank face.
'The second was that I began to hear the truth about myself. When they thought I couldn't
hear, they were quite frank about my good and bad qualities. It was always pleasant to
hear my sins discussed publicly, but it quickly abolished my pride and helped me in avoiding
further wickedness.'
SAADI
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