درویش

The word carries warmth in everyday Persian. Iranians have a soft spot for the dervish: the figure who walks past the bazaar without buying anything is the cultural opposite of the bureaucrat. درویشی as an adjective means "unfussy, content with little," and as a noun names the entire ethic. There is even a popular saying: درویش بودن سخت‌تر از پادشاهی است (darvish budan sakhttar az pâdshâhi ast, "being a dervish is harder than being a king"). The phrase captures the cultural ambivalence: people admire it, few can do it.