El nahra iraq

ANCHOR BOOKS EDITIONS, 1969, 1989

Copyright © 1965 by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division

of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in

hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1965. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of

Random House, Inc.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock. Guests of the Sheik: an ethnography of an Iraqi village / Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. p. cm. Reprint. Originally published: 1969. 1. Women—Iraq—Nahr. 2. Nahr (Iraq)— Social life and customs. I. Title. HQ1735.Z9N344 1989 89-27687 306’.09567’5—dc20 eISBN: 978-0-307-77378-4

Copyright © 1965 by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1

For My Mother, Elizabeth Warnock

Contents

Cover Title Page Other Books by This Author Copyright Dedication Introduction Cast of Characters PART I

Chapter 1. Night Journey: Arrival in the Village Chapter 2. The Sheik’s Harem Chapter 3. Women of the Tribe Chapter 4. Women of the Town Chapter 5. Gypsies Chapter 6. Housekeeping in El Nahra Chapter 7. Problems of Purdah Chapter 8. I Meet the Sheik

PART II

Chapter 8. I Meet the Sheik PART II

Chapter 9. Ramadan Chapter 10. The Feast Chapter 11. Moussa’s House Chapter 12. Weddings Chapter 13. Salima Chapter 14. One Wife or Four

PART III Chapter 15. Summer Chapter 16. Hussein Chapter 17. Muharram Chapter 18. Pilgrimage to Karbala

PART IV Chapter 19. Autumn Chapter 20. An Excursion into the Country

PART V Chapter 21. Winter Chapter 22. Jabbar Becomes Engaged Chapter 23. Death in the Tribe and in the Town Chapter 24. At Home in El Nahra

PART VI Chapter 25. Back to Baghdad Chapter 26. Leave-taking

Post Script Glossary of Arabic Terms

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

I spent the rst two years of my married life in a tribal settlement on the edge of a village in southern Iraq. My husband, a social anthropologist, was doing research for his doctorate from the University of Chicago.

This book is a personal narrative of those years, especially of my life with the veiled women who, like me, lived in mud-brick houses surrounded by high mud walls. I am not an anthropologist. Before going to Iraq, I knew no Arabic and almost nothing of the Middle East, its religion and its culture. I have tried to set down faithfully my reactions to a new world; any inaccuracies are my own.

The village, the tribe and all of the people who appear in the following pages are real, as are the incidents. However, I have changed the names so that no one may be embarrassed, although I doubt that any of my women friends in the village will ever read my book.

Without their friendship and hospitality, and that of other Iraqi and American friends too numerous to mention, this book quite literally would never have been written. I want to thank my friend Nicholas B.

been written. I want to thank my friend Nicholas B. Millet for drafting the sketch-map which has been used o n this page in this book. I owe a special debt of gratitude to two people. Audrey Walz (Mrs. Jay Walz) read the incomplete manuscript and advised me to

nish it. Her enthusiasm, together with her sound judgment and critical ear, have aided the book’s progress immeasurably. My husband, Robert Fernea,

rst encouraged me to write Guests of the Sheik. His interest and his intellectual honesty helped me face the realities of living in El Nahra and, later, of trying to shape that experience into the book which follows.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

PART I

1 Night Journey: Arrival in the Village

The night train from Baghdad to Basra was already hissing and creaking in its tracks when Bob and I arrived at the platform. Clouds of steam billowing from the engine hung suspended in the cold January air as we hurried across, laden with suitcases, bundles, string bags and an angel-food cake in a cardboard box, a farewell present from a thoughtful American friend. We were on the last lap of our journey, and I found myself half dreading and half anticipating the adventure we had come almost ten thousand miles to begin.

“Diwaniya! Diwaniya!” “Those are the coaches we want,” said Bob, taking my

arm and steering me down the platform past crowds of tribesmen arguing heatedly or sitting in tight quiet groups, their wives swathed in black to the eyebrows, with children on hip and shoulder; past the white-collar Iraqi effendis in Western suits and past the shouting German tourists.

An attendant in an ill- tting khaki wool uniform helped us board and guided us to a compartment, where he dusted the worn leather seats with his coat

where he dusted the worn leather seats with his coat sleeve. We sat down. I found my stomach was churning and I glanced quickly at Bob to see how he was taking the long-awaited departure.

I knew he was nervous about my reception in El Nahra, the remote village where we were now headed and where he had been living and working as an anthropologist for the past three months. He was no more nervous than I, who knew little of El Nahra except that no one spoke English there, that the people were of the conservative Shiite sect of Islam, and that the women were heavily veiled and lived in the strictest seclusion. No Western woman had ever lived in El Nahra before and very few had even been seen there, Bob said, which meant I would be something of a curiosity. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. And we were to be guests of Sheik Hamid Abdul Emir el Hussein, chief of the El Eshadda tribe, who had offered us a mud house with a walled garden. Our rst home, said Bob—a honeymoon house. But who had ever heard of a honeymoon house made of mud?

“Hil-lal Diwaniya! Samawa! Bas-ra!” bawled the conductors. “Yallah!” The train began to move past the station and the line of waiting taxis and horse-drawn carriages.

“Well, we’re o ,” announced Bob, a little too heartily. He motioned to the hovering porter and ordered some

He motioned to the hovering porter and ordered some beer to celebrate our departure. “Maybe we’ll have some rain before we get to Diwaniya.” He stood up to peer out of the window.

I looked out, too—expecting what? A friend to wave goodbye? Three months ago I had come to Baghdad as a bride and the city had seemed strange and alien to me then, a place so far removed from my experience that I had nothing with which to compare it. Now, headed for an unknown tribal village, I did not want to miss my last glimpse of Baghdad, which seemed a dear familiar place.

Clouds hung low and dark in the bit of sky I could see between the buildings and the townspeople and tribesmen, carriages, cars and donkey carts that moved more and more quickly past the train window. The winter night was coming fast, and as we left the Tigris River behind, the lights were on in all the hotels along its banks—the Semiramis, the Zia, the Sindbad. We passed rows of mud-and-mat serifa huts with kerosene lanterns flickering in their doorways, a series of smoking brick kilns, a mosque with a lighted minaret, more serifa huts, and then there was nothing to see but the dark horizon and a few date palms and the wide, empty plain.

“Aren’t you excited?” asked Bob. “I can’t understand you at all. Here we’ve been waiting and planning all

you at all. Here we’ve been waiting and planning all these weeks for you to come down, dear, and now that we’re on our way at last, you sit there as calmly as though you were going shopping or something.”

At least I look calm, I thought; that’s good. “Yes,” I brought out. “I am excited.” We sipped our

beer. And also scared, I added to myself. I had to get along well in El Nahra so I could help Bob with his work. But would I be able to? Bob had warned that we could certainly expect the women to be friendly at rst, in the customary hospitable Arab way, but he couldn’t be sure how they would react after the initial period.

In the dining car I was the only woman, and the men stared at me curiously. We went back to our compartment and watched the dark landscape while the train pushed slowly south. I had thought, and Bob had agreed, that the women might accept me more readily if I met them on their own terms. Thus, although I had balked at wearing an all-enveloping black abayah, I had elected to live like the women of El Nahra—in relative seclusion behind walls, not meeting or mixing with men. But what if, in spite of my e orts, the women shunned me and left me to myself, more of a hindrance than an asset to my husband? Two years alone in a mud house, I re ected. Hardly an enchanting way to spend a honeymoon.

The weather was certainly not welcoming; a midnight

The weather was certainly not welcoming; a midnight rain in Diwaniya poured down as we ran from the train to the waiting room with its single wooden bench. I sat by the luggage while Bob looked for a taxi or a carriage to take us to the government rest house; even if the weather had been ideal, we could not have continued on to El Nahra that night. The village lay only ten miles southeast but there was no regular transportation except for occasional trucks and taxis which did not travel after dark.

While I waited, people gathered to stare at me again, and I slowly became aware that, among the crowds of middle-class Iraqis and townspeople, I was the only woman without an abayah. I began to be self-conscious. This is ridiculous, I told myself. Why should I have to wear that ugly thing—it’s not my custom; the arguments with Bob about the abayah returned in a rush. Bob said I ought to wear it, since everyone else did. Since we were guests of the sheik, he added, it would make everything easier if I wore the abayah; the sheik wouldn’t have to punish people for insulting me. Insulting me! I had been indignant. “They say an uncovered woman is an immoral woman,” Bob had explained, “and the tribesmen ask why a woman should want to show herself to anyone but her husband.” I remembered my furious reply: “If they can’t take me as I am—if we have to make arti cial gestures to prove we are human beings too—what’s the point?” Now,

am—if we have to make arti cial gestures to prove we are human beings too—what’s the point?” Now, although I hated to admit it, my principles were weakening before my embarrassment as more and more people gathered to whisper and point and stare. I wished from the bottom of my heart that I had borrowed the abayah o ered by a Baghdadi lady friend and could bury myself in its comforting anonymity.

After half an hour’s carriage ride through splashing mud we were ushered into a side wing of the rest house, the place where women were allowed to stay if accompanied by their husbands. I broke out our angel- food cake to eat with the tea Bob had ordered before we lay down to sleep with the rain dripping into the puddles outside our curtained window.

Although the sun was shining in the morning, the taxis were still not able to move on the muddy roads outside the city, so I was deposited in the home of one of Bob’s friends to wait. The lady of the house was called Um Hassan, mother of Hassan, her oldest child, “like my husband is called Abu Hassan,” she explained slowly and patiently in Arabic. Um Hassan was a perceptive woman. She took a long look at my tweed coat and red scarf.

“You’re going to live in El Nahra?” she asked incredulously.

I said that I was.

I said that I was. Without another word she produced an abayah. “You

wear this, dearie,” she said (or the Arabic equivalent thereof), “and you’ll feel a lot better.” As I began to protest, she stopped me in midsentence. “You can borrow it. I’ll have one made for you here.”

Her son brought samples of black silk; a dressmaker came and measured me. The abayah would be sent by taxi next week, said Um Hassan, and I could return hers then. Well, it seemed I’d capitulated; I was going to wear that servile garment after all. I discovered that my principles were not as strong as my desire to be inconspicuous and well thought of in my new home.

Um Hassan and I drank several glasses of hot sweet tea and I was urged to eat lunch while I waited for Bob to return. My mood was hardly improved by the long face Um Hassan pulled when I struggled to ask about El Nahra in my scanty Arabic.

“You won’t stay,” she prophesied. “You won’t be able to stand it. No cinema, no paved streets—and the food! No chickens—if you get one, it’s nothing but bones.” To make sure I had understood, she rattled in their dish the chicken bones I had picked clean at luncheon.

Bob nally arrived at dusk, tired and annoyed; we would be sharing a taxi with six other people and he had had to pay double to assure that he and I would have the front seat to ourselves.

have the front seat to ourselves. “The driver can’t even promise we’ll get through, the

road is so bad,” he admitted. “But I think we’d better try it; we can’t sit in Diwaniya for the next three days.”

Um Hassan showed me how to keep the black silk abayah on my head and around my body by clutching the two sides together under my chin. At the doorway I turned to shake her hand, stepped on the hem of the abayah, and it slipped neatly o my head into a little pile on the doorstep. The men in the waiting taxi stared popeyed, and one of Um Hassan’s little boys sti ed a giggle while Bob helped me recover the abayah and I tried to maneuver myself and the unfamiliar cloak into the taxi without losing it again.

Bob looked at me. “I do think you’ll be more comfortable,” he said. I knew he meant the abayah but I was beyond discussion of the matter at this point.

“We’ll soon be home,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He put his arm around me comfortingly, but he’d forgotten the abayah too, and only succeeded in dragging it o my head again. “Sorry,” he muttered, and together we dragged the silly thing back up.

Home. Home indeed. I could not even see a track in the mud ahead of us as the old Ford taxi slid around through puddles in the growing dusk.

“After we pass the shrine of Abu Fadhil, the local saint, we pick up the El Nahra road,” Bob was saying,

“After we pass the shrine of Abu Fadhil, the local saint, we pick up the El Nahra road,” Bob was saying, and although I didn’t believe there could be anything ahead of us in the muck, a single electric globe gradually became visible, high up; it was burning on the very top of the shrine’s brick dome. The mud-and-thatch houses nearby were shut tight and darkened by the rain; they rose up on either side of us like deserted tombs. Only a donkey braying within indicated life. Night was coming; already the huts were merging into the at landscape, and as we passed them and edged forward into empty elds of mud, the horizon itself slowly merged with the dark sky.

We drove on into nothing. No lights were visible in any direction; no other taxis, people or animals were on the road. In the back seat the men were quiet, and we could hear, very loudly in the silence, the splash of mud against the sides of the car and the ominous bangs and creaks as the undercarriage hit the ridges of ruts. Wind swept in through the windows, empty of glass panes. Even in my borrowed abayah and overcoat and sweater, I shivered in the damp air.

The ten miles took almost two hours, but we were stuck only once. The driver sighed, the men in the back seat got out and tied their long garments or dishdashas up, and Bob rolled up his trouser legs. Directed by loud shouts from the driver, the seven of them, shin-deep in mud, rocked the car back and forth in the slime, and

mud, rocked the car back and forth in the slime, and nally, when it would still not budge, literally lifted it

up and over the bad place, the driver gunning the motor as hard as he could to help. We nally got to solid ground, the men emptied their shoes of water, and Bob looked ruefully at his mud-soaked khakis. Everyone climbed back in the car and we drove on.

Eventually the men stirred. Bob was pointing ahead to where a faint light could be seen. Dark shapes of palm trees loomed in front of us, and we rounded a bend and rolled over the last rut onto pavement and into a blaze of uorescent lights: the main street of El Nahra. Bob indicated the jail and the school and the mayor’s house. The street was deserted, but the uorescent street lights burned brightly all the way to the bridge, where we stopped at an open co ee shop. The back-seat passengers got out and a few men sitting drinking a late- evening cup of co ee raised their hands in casual salute to the taxi. We crossed the bridge and turned right onto a mud road, which followed the irrigation canal past dark walls and a lean-to co ee shop. “This is the tribal side of the canal,” said Bob, “where we live.” Here there were no uorescent lights, only old-fashioned street lamps glimmering dully in the muddy waters. I could make out big trees next to the water.

A dog began to bark, and another. Within minutes what seemed to be hundreds of dogs were howling

what seemed to be hundreds of dogs were howling furiously around us.

“It’s only the watchdogs of the tribal settlement,” Bob told me. “They always bark when a stranger comes near. That’s what they’re for.”

We turned left away from the canal, the dogs still barking, and the taxi stopped at a high mud wall, where Bob unlocked the padlock on a wooden door and carried in the bags. I gathered my abayah around me, picked up my purse and the angel-food-cake box and went through the door into a garden, following Bob up a narrow path to a small dark house as the rain spattered down onto the leaves in a sudden shower.

As Bob wrestled in the dark with the padlock on the house door, the trees in the garden around me rustled and sighed, and my shoes squished in deep mud. I shifted my feet, transferred my parcels to one hand so that I could get a rmer grip on the abayah. Water dripped from my bangs down my forehead and into my eyes.

The lock snapped open. “Don’t expect too much,” warned Bob as we stepped over the threshold. He

icked a switch and a single bare electric globe went on, illuminating a small, dusty, incredibly littered room.

“I’ve been living in one room,” he o ered, “but now you’re here we can x up the other. In fact you can probably fix this one up better too.”

you’re here we can x up the other. In fact you can probably fix this one up better too.”

I stood by the door. Books, papers, clothes, blankets and dishes were piled on an old wooden table covered with dirty oilcloth, on a broken-down sofa, on a single iron cot which stood against a stained and cracked whitewashed wall. Among the dusty papers stood a tin can; the label stated that Robertson’s strawberry jam had been or still was inside. Most of the earth oor was hidden under woven reed mats which in turn were covered with a dusty rug. Above my head I heard a strange sort of twittering and I looked up to the high beamed ceiling.

“What’s that?” I found I was almost shouting. “Only a few birds, for heaven’s sake,” answered Bob

in an exasperated tone. I looked at him and he looked back blankly. At that

point, somewhere inside of me, I knew what I should do. For it had been hard for Bob too; he had searched for this village for months, gone through all the preliminaries that were necessary for us to settle down here: asked for permission to stay, found the house, moved into a strange place all by himself, and prepared the way for me. His Arabic wasn’t very good either, but he had gone right ahead. I could have made a lighthearted joke about living in a mountain, no, desert cabin (loud, foolish laughter), with all the mountain, no, desert greenery (more silly laughter), where God paints

cabin (loud, foolish laughter), with all the mountain, no, desert greenery (more silly laughter), where God paints the scenery, etc., etc., etc., and we could have laughed it o together, the tense journey and the staring, pointing people and the exhausting drive through the mud. We could have had co ee and talked about the abayah and kissed each other and it would have been all right.

But I couldn’t do it. I felt only a ood of irrational resentment against my new husband for bringing me here, where not only was the bed not big enough for two, but the ceiling was full of birds’ nests!

“Do you want to see the other room?” he asked. We went outside into the rain and mud again. “No connecting doors in this hotel,” he added lightly.

He unlocked a second padlock and the door swung in, releasing a dank and musty odor. He turned on another bulb, lighting a bare room that held a camp stove, a table with a canteen of water on it, and more birds whirring in the beams.

“Shall we nish the tour with a quick turn around the garden, ending at the outhouse, which, experience has shown, is the best outhouse in the whole damned neighborhood?” Bob was trying his best to buoy up my sagging spirits, and I tried to answer in the same vein, but nothing came out.

“My dear B.J.,” he said gently, “you don’t need to wear your abayah in your own private garden.”

wear your abayah in your own private garden.” I was still clutching the despised abayah tightly under

my chin. “Never mind, it keeps o the r-rain,” I stuttered,

feeling stupid and miserable and annoyed with myself for acting like the bride arriving in the palazzo and finding the plumbing unsatisfactory.

The outhouse was simple—mud walls and roof and a brick-lined hole in the ground. Bob had given me a

ashlight so I could pick my way back through the muddy garden to where the door of the house stood open and the single light shone out.

When I got back, he had cleared a passage through the boxes and bags and straightened the bedclothes. We lay close together on the narrow iron cot and I clung to Bob, who slept almost immediately. I lay awake remembering my bachelor cousin, who had toasted Bob and me at our wedding. “Here’s to the roving life!” he had said, raising his glass of champagne punch. “Here’s to adventure and the non-stu y approach. Your very good health!” It seemed years, rather than months, since that bright June day in my aunt’s suburban Chicago garden when we had said goodbye to our families and friends and set o , in a shower of rice, for Georgetown University to study Arabic. That, too, seemed long ago after the boat trip to Beirut, the ride over the desert road to Baghdad, the months of waiting and working

road to Baghdad, the months of waiting and working until Bob found the right area for his research in social anthropology. The lawns and towers of the University of Chicago and the faces of my family against the June garden faded slowly as I listened to the strange birds chirping softly above my head, to the rain falling on the thatched roof of our mud house and to the sound of Bob’s regular breathing; finally I, too, slept.

Loud knocking at the door awakened us. Bob turned over and nearly fell out of the narrow bed.

“That must be Mohammed,” he said. “Mohammed,” I muttered sleepily. “Who’s

Mohammed?” “The servant the sheik assigned to us; he’s a nice boy.

Brings water and shops and cleans a little and does the dishes. You can meet him after breakfast.”

“But can’t I shop?” I asked. “I’d enjoy going to market.”

“Heavens, no. The women don’t appear in the market ”

The knocking continued while I thought of something to say to that, but before I got it out Bob was up, pulling on his trousers and shouting through the door in Arabic, “Good morning, Mohammed. I’ll be out in a minute.” To me he said, “You stay here. I’ll get the stove going

To me he said, “You stay here. I’ll get the stove going and fry some eggs, if Mohammed has remembered to bring them.”

I dressed by electric light, for although the clock said eight-thirty, the window of the room had no glass panes and the wooden shutters were tightly closed. Overhead the birds were also waking up, and when I opened the door one flew out in a rush and I found myself staring at Mohammed, a tall thin man in what I was to nd was typical tribal dress: white dishdasha, wool sport coat, tan aba or cloak, and black-and-white head scarf. (The scarf was called a kaffiyeh, Bob said, and the heavy rope which held it in place was an agal.)

Mohammed smiled broadly, showing a row of beautiful white teeth. “Ahlan wusahlan,” he said. “Welcome.”

Bob came out of the other room. We all smiled at each other awkwardly until Bob broke the impasse. “Come on and eat,” he said. “Mohammed, please heat some water so I can shave.”

We set the plates of eggs and the cups of Nescafé down on the table. I tried to wipe the oilcloth, but it was caked with layers of dust. Bob turned on his radio to the BBC news, which came through sporadically between loud hums and bleats of static.

“That’s Radio Moscow jamming,” explained Bob between mouthfuls.

between mouthfuls. From the ceiling a feather wafted down onto the eggs.

I snatched it off. “Those blasted birds!” I cried. Bob reached over and took my hand. Don’t cry, I

warned myself. “Place isn’t much, is it? But really it should be quite nice when we get set up. I’ve been counting on you to x it. The roof is good. We could replaster the walls. What do you think we need?”

“A bigger bed.” Bob smiled. “Actually, I thought of that. John Priest,

this young American engineer in Diwaniya, has a three- quarter mattress he’s willing to sell us, and an apartment-sized refrigerator too. His company is providing him with everything, so he doesn’t need the stuff he brought over.”

“What about a stove?” “We do have the camp stove, but it’s true, it uses too

much expensive gas. I’ll see what I can find. What else?” His eye followed mine to the big nail on the back of

the door and another which had been pounded into the plaster wall; on these hung all of his clothes that weren’t scattered about the room.

“Maybe a cupboard or a wardrobe to store things in.” “Yes, good idea. Well,” said Bob, rising, “I’d better get

moving if I’m going to do everything today.”

“Yes, good idea. Well,” said Bob, rising, “I’d better get moving if I’m going to do everything today.”

“This morning? Now? You’re going now?” “I have to. Those two boxes we shipped with us, with

the blankets and the folding table and chairs, must be in the Diwaniya station. I can’t leave them there more than twenty-four hours. And the next taxi should be going in about nine-thirty.”

“Don’t leave me alone here the first day, please Bob.” “B.J.,” said Bob, “be reasonable. I have to get those

boxes. And you’re not alone. Mohammed is here. See what you two can do with the place. He’s shy, so take it easy with him. He can go to the suq and buy whatever you need.”

“Okay,” I answered. “I’m sorry. But don’t be gone too long.”

“I promise you I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?” “Okay.” He kissed me and I was left alone at the table

with the wind blowing through the cracks in the shutters and birds ying about the cluttered room. Then, without warning, the electricity went off and I sat in darkness.

If Mohammed had not been in the next room, I probably would have thrown myself on the rumpled cot and howled from sheer self-pity. This wasn’t what the romantic, roving life should be at all, I said aloud, and drained my cup of Nescafé in the dark.

drained my cup of Nescafé in the dark. A light knock sounded at the door. Mohammed. What

would I say? More important, what would he say and how would I know what to reply if I couldn’t understand him in the first place?

Mohammed gulped once or twice and adjusted his agal and ka yeh. Looking at him, I decided he was pretty scared of me, too, and this gave me new courage. I smiled. He smiled in return and held aloft an Iraqi sterling pound note. He pointed out the door in an exaggerated fashion. “Mr. Bob,” he said loudly, and pointed to the pound and to the door again and enunciated, “suq, suq.”

Aha, he was going to the market; Bob had given him the pound note. “What do you want?” he asked in Arabic.