‘I have just had an extraordinary dream,’ Nasrudin told his wife one morning. ‘I dreamt that I met a merchant with four separate loads.’ ‘What did he have in his saddle-bags?’ ‘In the first he had persecution and in the second, fear. In the third, intolerance, and in the fourth, blindness.’ ‘And who were his clients?’ asked his wife, intrigued. ‘Oppressors, tyrants, Imams, and magistrates.’