Nasruddin Goes Upstairs

Nasruddin had invited his friends to dinner. "They're coming right behind me," he said to his wife when he got home.
"But there's no food in the house!" she exclaimed.
"What will we do?" groaned Nasruddin.
"Go upstairs! I'll do the rest."
A moment later, Nasruddin's friends knocked at the door. "Your husband invited us for dinner!" they said.
"Alas, my husband has gone out," his wife told them. "I don't know when he'll be back."
"But we saw him come in!"
"I could have gone out the back!" Nasruddin shouted from upstairs. "You didn't think of that, did you?"

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Inspired by: The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin by Idries Shah (story 1), free to read online at the Idries Shah Foundation. The story also appears in The Sufis by Idries Shah.
Notes: I included this book in Tiny Tales of Nasruddin, where it is story 98.