Nasruddin's Answers / Non-Answers

Here is a series of language jokes which I have adapted to be about Nasruddin. You will see a theme at work:

"I'm going for a walk," Nasruddin said to his wife.
"How long will you be gone?" she asked.

"The whole time."

It makes you imagine Nasruddin being gone and being present both at the same time, as if he were some mind-bending subatomic particle that can be in two places at once!

Here's another one:

Nasruddin needed to get to Istanbul.

He found a taxi and asked the driver, "Can you take me to Istanbul?"
"Yes, sir," said the driver. "Which part?"

"All of me!" replied Nasruddin.

Istanbul 

 And a variation on the same:

Nasruddin was visiting Egypt.

"And where are you from?" an Egyptian man asked him.

"I'm from Turkey," said Nasruddin.

"Which part?" asked the man.

"All of me!" replied Nasruddin. 

The perfect obtuseness of Nasruddin's replies makes you wonder if he is not perhaps having fun at his interlocutor's expense. Here's another one:

Someone asked Nasruddin, "When is your birthday?"

"The third of September," Nasruddin replied.

"Which year?"

"Every year!"

Again, I have to imagine Nasruddin grinning a bit wickedly when he answers the question that way.

Nasruddin was working as a barber. 

A customer came into his shop. "I'd like a haircut, please."

"Of course!" said Nasruddin. "Which one?"

That little joke depends on the sound-alike ambiguity of English "haircut" and "hair cut." I wonder if there are other languages in which this joke would work!

This joke features Shakespeare, but I've gone ahead and made it a Nasruddin joke too:

Nasruddin walked into a bookstore.

"I'm looking for a book by Shakespeare," he says to the clerk.

"Of course, sir," says the clerk. "Which one?"

"William!" replies Nasruddin, smiling.