They do not prevent it from happening. The mayor, who Caesar described as "henpecked", distracts himself from the affair by trying to engage in sexual intercourse with a servant girl,[4] and Caesar states that "the scene of his pitiful sexual impotence with a willing servant girl [is] paralleling his moral impotence."[6] Allen states that the story contrasts the Sufi's "gentle scrupulousness" with the Brotherhood's "aggressive indifference to anything outside their religious/political aims" and that "Awadallah's conversion ceremony is compared, not subtly, to the Crucifixion."[5] Awadallah believes that he is about to re-enact the Stations of the Cross.