This is a very old story about a King. The king heard one night the sound of footsteps, somebody walking on the roof of his palace. He could not believe it. The palace was so well guarded – how had somebody reached the top?
He shouted, ”Who are you?” And the man on the roof shouted, ”You should ask it of yourself first: who are you?”
The king rushed out and called the guards to catch hold of the man, but he was not found. And the next day, again there was a stranger. But the king recognized the voice, it was the same man. And the strange behavior that he had shown the night before… to walk on the roof and then to talk in such a way, and to say to the king, ”First you should ask, who are you? You don’t even know that and you are worried about me! You do your business – I’m doing mine.”
The man was fighting with the guard at the gate of the palace and saying, ”I want to stay in this inn for a few days.”The guard was saying again and again, ”You seem to be an absolute idiot; this is not a inn!
This is the palace of the king, his home!”
And the man said, ”Then I would like to see the man who lives in such an illusion.”
The king was listening: he recognized the voice. He called the guard and said, ”Bring that man in.”
And he asked him, ”Are you the same man who was on the roof?”
The man said, ”Yes.” ”And what were you doing there?”
He said, ”My camel was lost, so I was searching for it.”
He said, ”You seem to be really mad! Your camel was lost on my roof? Has anybody ever heard of camels getting lost on the roofs of houses? And now you are fighting with my guard and calling my home a inn! This is very disrespectful to me: I am the king, and this is my home, and you have to learn how to behave! And the man started laughing. He said, ”Strange! You are telling me to learn how to behave, and you don’t know at all what behavior means! Because I came here once before, and I found another man in your place. He was also saying that this is his home. I had come before that too, and there was another man and he was also saying that this is his home. Now you are saying this is your home!”
The king said, ”That man was my father, who has died. And the first time you came you met my grandfather.”
The stranger said, ”That is what I wanted to make clear to you, that they called this their home, and then they had to leave it behind. They could not take it with them. It is a inn. This is an understanding, that many people have been here who thought it was their home, and they are all gone. You will be gone when I come next time! When so many people stay here and come and go,
this is a inn!”
”And I also wanted to stay for a few days, so what is wrong? You will stay a few days, your father stayed a few days, his father stayed a few days, and this has been going on for centuries. But I am not illusioned: to me it is a inn.”
