It is told that a young shepherd named Salem was herding his sheep near an abandoned well on the edge of the desert when he noticed the flock suddenly stop grazing and raise their heads toward the north.

He said to himself, "A wolf." But he looked and saw no wolf. He saw a long shadow stretching across the sand, longer than a palm tree's shadow, with two great ears like a donkey's.

His faithful dog, Zaman, was the first to flinch. He gave one short bark, then shrank back behind Salem's legs, tail between them. Salem had never seen his dog this afraid. Even the wind stopped suddenly, and nothing could be heard in the desert but the trembling breath of the sheep.

The sun was leaning toward the horizon. The moon had not yet risen. The shadow drew closer, and Salem heard a rough voice, like stone grinding against stone:

"Shepherd... I have been hungry for a hundred years."

Salem froze. He had heard his grandmother tell of the ghoul that lived in the old wells, and that it devoured anyone who crossed its path. He had never believed it. Now the ghoul stood before him, with yellow eyes, a crooked nose, and gleaming teeth.

Salem tried to run. He took two steps toward the flock, but the sand beneath his feet stirred as if it were pulsing, and a wall of dust rose before him, trapping him in place. He heard the ghoul's laughter echo across the horizon: "No one escapes my well, shepherd. This has been my land since the time of the ancestors."

The ghoul said, "I'll give you one chance. I don't like fools — I like the clever ones. Give me three questions. If you answer each one correctly, you and your flock go free. If you get even one wrong, I eat you."

Salem swallowed hard and said, "Ask."

The ghoul spoke in a hollow voice:

"First question: what walks without legs, weeps without eyes, and never returns the way it came?"

Salem looked up at the sky. On the horizon was a small grey cloud, drifting slowly on the wind. He remembered his grandmother telling him that rain travels across the sky needing no legs, and weeps upon the earth never returning to its cloud.

He said, "The clouds."

The ghoul snarled and struck the ground with his foot. But he did not object.

He said, "Second question: the more you take from it, the bigger it grows. What is it?"

Salem thought for a long while. He sat down on the ground, looked at the well before him, then at the hole the sheep's hooves had dug in the sand searching for roots. He raised his head with a small smile.

"A hole. The more earth you take from it, the wider it grows."

The ghoul fell silent for a moment, then let out a laugh that shook the sand. He said, "Clever, shepherd. But the last question is the hardest. And I won't ask it — I'll set a condition instead."

He pointed his crooked finger at Salem and said:

"Say one sentence to me. If it's true, I'll set you and your flock free. If it's false, I'll eat you. And I am the one who decides whether it's true or false."

Salem felt cold sweat trickle down his back. The ghoul had set an airtight trap: whatever sentence he said, the ghoul could simply declare it false. He put the sheep behind him; they had begun to tremble. He tried to think of a sentence to say.

Heavy moments passed. The moon rose halfway, scattering its light over the ghoul's fangs. Suddenly an idea came to Salem. He took a deep breath, looked the ghoul in the eye, and said:

"You will eat me."

The ghoul stopped.

He said, "What?"

Salem repeated calmly, "I said: you will eat me."

The ghoul opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He scratched his huge head. He began thinking out loud:

"If the sentence is true... then I said I'd free anyone who speaks the truth. So I must free you. But if I free you, then I won't eat you, and the sentence becomes false. And if it's false, then I must eat you. But if I eat you, the sentence becomes true, and I'd have to free you."

He cried out, "No! No! This cannot be!"

And the ghoul spun in circles, pounding his head with his palms: "If I eat you it's true, and if I don't it's false, and if it's true I mustn't eat you, and if it's false I must!" He kept spinning and repeating this until his strength gave out, and he collapsed sitting on the sand, dizzy.

He said in a hoarse voice, "The knot has tied itself around my own head. I no longer know who is the judge and who is judged."

Salem said calmly, "And you judged it yourself, by your own condition. And the one who sets the condition cannot take it back."

The ghoul stared at him in long astonishment, then burst out laughing and said, "Three questions, three defeats. I'll leave you the flock. And I'll leave you the well too. Let none of you dare say shepherds are fools."

The ghoul rose slowly and withdrew into the darkness, his voice fading:

And before he vanished completely, he turned back from a distance and said, with something like admiration in his voice: "I'll tell you a secret, since you've outwitted me: everyone who passed through here before you answered the first and second questions easily. But no one ever found a way out of the third. Not because they were foolish. It's because they tried to lie, or tried to tell the truth outright. But you... you made the sentence fight me on its own."

"Wisdom beats fangs, shepherd..."

Salem gathered his flock and returned to his village that night. When they asked him what had happened, he said nothing. He simply smiled, and began telling the children of the neighborhood, every Friday evening, the tale of the shepherd saved by a single sentence.

And to this day, the children there still ask each other in their games: "If I told you a sentence that frees you if it's true and gets you eaten if it's false... what would you say?" Then they laugh, and all answer together in one voice: "You will eat me!"