A Word for Every Occasion

Sheikh Chilli's mother loved him very much, but she worried that he did not know how to behave with people. “Son,” she said one day, “when you meet people, you must always say the right thing. If people are happy, you say something happy. If people are sad, you say something kind. Remember that.”

“I will remember,” said Sheikh Chilli. But what he actually remembered was only the first thing she had said to him that morning, which was, “May there be many more of these happy days!”

That afternoon he walked past a house where people were weeping, because an old man had died. Sheikh Chilli stopped at the door, smiled, bowed and said politely, “May there be many more of these happy days!”

The mourners chased him down the street with sticks. When he got home, panting, his mother put her head in her hands. “No, no, no! When people are sad, you say, ‘What a terrible thing. May God give you strength.’”

“What a terrible thing. May God give you strength,” repeated Sheikh Chilli carefully. “I will remember.”

The next day he passed a house with music and lights and flowers over the door, because there was a wedding inside. Sheikh Chilli went in, looked at the bride and groom with a very sad face and said, “What a terrible thing. May God give you strength.”

Out he went, faster than he came in. His mother sighed the longest sigh in the history of the town. “Son,” she said, “at a wedding you say, ‘Congratulations! May you be happy together.’”

So the day after that, when Sheikh Chilli saw two men fighting in the market, with a crowd round them, he pushed his way to the front, beamed at them both and said, “Congratulations! May you be happy together!”

The two men stopped fighting at once, looked at Sheikh Chilli, and then at each other, and burst out laughing. They laughed so much that they forgot what they had been fighting about, shook hands, and bought Sheikh Chilli a cup of tea.

When he told his mother that evening, she shook her head and smiled. “Son,” she said, “you never say the right thing. But somehow, sometimes, it turns out right anyway.”

And that is true of Sheikh Chilli to this day.