Guests of the sheik pdf

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?