The Seyyed

Once there was an itinerant, an improvised old man who squatted in a derilct house and made ends meet singing laments in the street about the Imam Hossein. They called him the Seyyed because he wore an old black turban -- it was an ironic name, for no one believed he actually was a decedent of the Prophet. The Seyyed was known to frequent prostitutes. They would sit on his knee, it was rumoured, and weep for their lost grace. Some suggested that the Seyyed's interest in them was more than pastoral.

I confronted him one day, 'I have been told that you spend time with women of ill repute. Why do you do this?'
'I see women for their purity.'
'You mean they benefit from your status as a cleric,' I offered him an olive branch.
'No, I mean that I benefit from their purity.'
'Where is this purity?' I replied rather crossly.
'Its in their belief that there exists nothing so insignificant as them on the face of earth. They have been so crushed under the weight of sin, there remains no trace of pride in them. And when they say they are sinners and worth no more than the cur which sits on my door, I know they are not like the charlatans we see around us.'
He put a hand on my shoulder, 'They're a step ahead of us. they know they're nothing before God, where as we persist in thinking that we are something.'