The Bukhara fool exposes that hosts honored his coat, not him

Evidence

When the food was served, the wise fool did a strange thing: he began to feed his coat. He dipped his fine sleeve in the soup. ‘Eat, my coat!’ he said loudly, tucking pilaf into its pockets. ‘Drink, my coat!’ pouring tea down its front. … The astonished host demanded an explanation. ‘Well,’ said the wise fool, ‘when I came in my old clothes, I was turned away. When I came in this coat, I was welcomed and feasted. Plainly, then, it was not I who was invited to this feast — it was the coat. So it is only polite that the coat should eat.’ — , A Year of World Stories, 12031

Categorization

• XREF: Sits alongside the reader’s theme of small decorum acts versus empty social ritual; the coat-feeding is a literal staging of that tension.