The lost feet
In what is today Turkey there was a place called Karatepe, which existed in the eighth century before our time. In those days the men of Karatepe wore very poor footwear because they had to walk between rocks and on mountain paths and the material of their sandals was of poor quality.
One fine day a shoemaker arrived in Karatepe. He wore elegant shoes and his cart was loaded with leather of excellent quality. The men of Karatepe threw away their sandals and ordered the cobbler to make new footwear for everybody. While the shoemaker was setting up his workshop, the men sat down in the shade and ate olives. And in the centre of that circle was a pile of dirty and shoeless feet.
“Oh dear, look — we have mixed up all our feet!”, said one man.
“Which is my right foot?”, asked another man.
“And my left one?”, asked yet another.
Nobody knew for sure which feet belonged to whom — they were all the same, dirty and naked and it was impossible to tell the difference. So they called the cobbler over.
“Shoemaker”, they said, “help us out here, will you? We can't find our feet; they're all mixed up.”
The cobbler left the leather and the cutting and sewing tools he was working with and picked up the big hazel branch that he used to drive his mule.
“We don't know which are our feet”, the men complained.
The shoemaker started to hit all the feet, right, left and centre, with the hazel switch.
“Ouch!”
“Ouch!” “Ouch!”
“Ouch!” “Ouch!” “Ouch!”
Each time he hit a foot, the owner would jump up in pain and run off.
And that was how the men of Karatepe got their feet back.
Text: Koldo Izagirre
Translation: Joe Linehan
Voice: Tim Nicholson
