Read Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village Online
Authors: Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #General
even—indirectly, by silent example (as did the teachers)—
men they never saw or met. Not only did the women
influence, but in many cases they helped to determine events:
whom their sons would marry, whom their daughters would
marry, whether or not a child would go on to school and
university. And they did this without coercion, without
publicity, and above all without reproach.
5
Gypsies
Gypsies! I had heard the word several times in the houses of
the women recently. “Do they dance?” I asked. “Tell
fortunes?”
“Of course,” said the women. “They are gypsies.”
“Have you ever seen them?” I asked. They looked at me.
“No,” they said.
Bob reported that a troupe of traveling gypsy entertainers
was camped somewhere in Diwaniya province and, one sunny
winter day, out for a drive with Jabbar and Khadija, we saw
them on the move, thirty people or more in a caravan of
donkeys and camels.
They were unmistakable, distinguished from all other
nomads on the road, not only by their bright clothing and gaily
saddled animals but by the arrangement of the caravan. The
men were in front, as is usually the case, but these men were
on foot rather than on horseback, and instead of kaffiyehs and
abas and heavy rifles, they wore tight black trousers and
gaudy silk shirts and carried drums and pipes and batons. Next
came the younger women on donkeys, but again there was a
difference. The gypsy girls rode astride and their abayahs
were tucked artfully around them to good effect, showing here
a décolleté flowered dress, there a printed silk petticoat or a
gold-braceleted ankle. On the camels at the end of the
procession rode the old women and men and children. The
pots and pans and striped blankets were tied to the camel
saddles. But even the children were different, the boys in tight
pants and silk shirts like their fathers, the little girls in shiny
silky flowered dresses.
Almost as soon as we saw them, the caravan moved over to
the side of the road and stopped. The young men turhed to
prance toward us and two children jumped down from the
camels and proceeded to turn somersaults and cartwheels on
the road, directly in front of our oncoming car.
“Stop, Jabbar, please,” said Khadija, “so Beeja and I can
see,” and when Jabbar put on his brakes, the men snapped into
formation. The children wove, tumbling, among the
oud
players, the drummers, the men with pipes and nose flutes,
occasionally even upstaging the leader, who had produced a
handful of small balls from his pocket and was now twirling
and tossing his baton and juggling the balls, all at the same
time. The camels stayed by the side of the road, but the girls
brought the donkeys round to serve as a backdrop for the
performers and musicians, and, like bareback riders in a
circus, reined in the beasts with one hand and gestured
coquettishly toward us with the other. They shouted and called
to us, but we could not understand what they were saying.
Slowly the little tableau moved toward us on the empty
road, until the gypsies were so close we could see the flashing
gold teeth of the men, their embroidered skullcaps and the
single gold earrings in their ears, the gold pendants about the
slender necks of the children. Smiling and calling to us still,
the girls turned the donkeys slowly around, jingling their gold
bracelets and switching their black abayahs like the trains of
ball dresses. I had already begun to think of the abayah as a
sheltering cloak, a symbol of modesty. It was a shock to see it
used in this way, at one moment framing the girls’ pointed
faces and tightly laced bosoms, and then flipped toward us
provocatively as they turned in time to the music.
Now the music increased its tempo, the children twisted
their narrow bodies in a frenzy of backbends and somersaults,
and to the accompaniment of a long roll on the skin drums, the
leader flung his baton high into the desert air. While it twisted
and turned in a dazzling series of circumlocutions, he deftly
juggled the balls, caught the baton, then the balls, tossed his
black head triumphantly and sank to his knees in a sweeping
bow. He landed almost directly beneath the car window, and
while we clapped, Jabbar produced some coins, and the
leader, with a brilliant smile, peered into the car where
Khadija and I sat, in our abayahs, in the back seat.
Would we like one of the girls to dance? he asked.
“Oh yes,” said Khadija, who had stared fixedly at the gypsy
girls during the entire act.
“Not today,” said Jabbar. “That’s enough.”
He waved off the leader and we drove on, while Khadija
sank back against the seat and proceeded to sulk.
“See, Khadija, they are still waving after us,” I said, looking
myself at the group which receded quickly into the distance
until finally only a few tiny sticklike figures and animals stood
on the empty road under the wide blue sky. Khadija did not
turn her head, and though even Jabbar tried to tease her, she
did not respond. We rode home in silence and spoke no more
about the caravan.
A few days later Bob reported that the gypsies had camped
again, this time near El Nahra and we had been invited to visit
them by Abdul Razzak, a friend of Jabbar’s who was
irrigation engineer in a neighboring village. Abdul Razzak
was going to take presents to one of the dancing girls, who,
Jabbar claimed, was Abdul Razzak’s mistress and very
beautiful.
Khadija did not go with us, for reasons which remained
unexplained, and I was alone with the three men. It was a cold
day, the sun darkened by a thick cloud which looked
ominously like an impending sandstorm. As we left El Nahra,
the wind whipped up the silt in clouds around us.
The dust was worse farther out, blowing so hard that we
almost passed the gypsy camp before seeing it. I had looked
forward to entering a low black camel-hair tent, like those the
Bedouin pitch on the plains in their seasonal wanderings
through the Euphrates Valley. But I was disappointed, for
these were old army tents, tattered and faded and stained,
arranged in a small semicircle around a larger central tent with
a cross of wood at its peak.
“Does the cross mean the gypsies are Christians?” asked
Bob.
Abdul Razzak said no. “I think it is just their radio aerial.”
Even before we stopped, the watchdogs had set up a fierce
barking; they jumped on the car with teeth bared, scratching
and growling. It was hardly an auspicious welcome, and we
decided to stay where we were until someone came to greet
us. At least five minutes went by, with the dogs snarling and
jumping at the windows; finally a man, wrapped in an aba
against the cold and wearing only a skullcap on his head,
looked out of the central tent. Through the fog of dust he
recognized Abdul Razzak and called off the dogs. He was full
of apologies for not coming sooner; he had been asleep, he
said. They had entertained all of the provincial police officers
the night before, and everyone was very tired. Abdul Razzak
said we would come another time, but the man brushed aside
this suggestion. He ushered us into a side tent, which was
higher than it looked from the outside, but was dark and cold.
No one was up and about, but at a sharp word from our host,
two women in abayahs arose from mats and padded silently
out in bare feet to prepare our tea. We were seated on boxes
covered with old blankets and rugs; Abdul Razzak offered
cigarettes and the host made an effort at polite conversation,
but he looked exhausted and even talking seemed a strain.
I looked around me in the gloom. From the entrance flap,
which had been staked back, a thin stream of light illuminated
the bare earth in the center of the tent. This was empty. But
the edges and corners of the tent, shrouded in darkness,
seemed full of bundles and boxes, and people lying on pallets.
When one of the bundles moved and a child emerged, I began
to wonder how many men and women lay around us in the
darkness, too weary and cold to bother about visitors.
Only the women who had been summoned by our host were
moving about. One placed a small charcoal brazier at our feet
and sat down beside it to warm herself; the other was making
tea near the entrance. The child who had awakened wandered
over, tousle-haired and dirty and thin, and crouched near the
brazier. The rest of the company slept.
“I am sorry,” said the man. “Everyone is tired and it is so
cold.”
Abdul Razzak tried to be gay and Jabbar laughed helpfully
at his jokes. Bob joined in the conversation occasionally, but I
sat in silence clutching my abayah under my chin. Finally
Abdul Razzak could not stand it any longer. “Where is
Fatima?” he asked. “I have brought her some presents.” The
man called out and one of the bundles answered back; in a few
minutes a girl came over, yawning and smoothing her hair
down under her abayah. Even in the gloom of that miserable
tent she moved beautifully, drawing her abayah about her with
ease and grace. Without a glance at us, she bent over Abdul
Razzak’s hand, kissed it perfunctorily and sat down at his feet,
one arm resting on his knee. He produced the presents, a bottle
of perfume, a scarf, and some English biscuits in a painted tin
box. She thanked him, not very graciously, and muttered
something at which both Jabbar and Abdul Razzak guffawed.
Jabbar translated into English. “She is asking Abdul Razzak
why he didn’t bring her some hashish so she can forget her
troubles,” he said, and proceeded to stare at her admiringly.
Fatima sank back into a cross-legged position and asked for
a cigarette. While she smoked she looked us over, apparently
decided that we were not worth her while, and looked away.
She was young, with enormous black eyes and fine high
cheekbones, but her face was wasted and pinched by illness.
Her eyes were dull and had dark circles beneath them, her skin
was yellowed like the skin of malaria patients, and she was so
weary she seemed to have difficulty even stubbing out her
cigarette. Abdul Razzak was teasing her; she responded with a
faint smile, rested her elbow on one knee and began to pick
her teeth. The host spoke sharply to her, but she continued to
pick her teeth. “You must forgive her, Abdul Razzak,” said
the host. “You know how sick she is, and she was such a
success last night the officers didn’t let her stop dancing until
nearly five o’clock this morning.”
Another girl had joined our circle; she looked much like
Fatima, and Abdul Razzak said she was her older sister. The
sister nodded at Jabbar and Abdul Razzak and Bob, and jerked
her head in my direction. “Who is that?” she asked. Jabbar
explained. She stared, came over and sat down nearer to me,
and stared harder, then stared at Bob. Then she laughed, a
short dry laugh and whispered something to Fatima. Fatima
repeated this to Abdul Razzak, who looked slightly
embarrassed.
“What does she want?” I could not help inquiring.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Abdul Razzak, but I insisted.
“She says she will dance for you if you like, but it will be
very expensive since she does not usually dance for women.”
“Tell her I didn’t come to see her dance, just to visit,” I
said. The sister stared at me again, a shrewd hard glance, then
looked away indifferently. Fatima was seized by a fit of
coughing, and when she had finished, she rested her head in
her hands. Her shoulders were trembling.
The tea, in a china teapot with a bit of aluminum wound
around its broken spout, had been brewing in the charcoal at
our feet. Now the older woman poured it out into glasses,
served it, and sat down, looking at us with her one good eye;
the other was whitened and sightless with trachoma. After we
had drunk tea, the girls had some, and Abdul Razzak passed
around cigarettes again. Fatima declined, punched Abdul
Razzak playfully on the knee and asked for something else.
He smiled, produced another cigarette and gave it to her.
“Hashish,” explained Jabbar, laughing. “She will become
more jolly after she has smoked it.”
Gradually, as the clink of tea glasses signaled refreshments
and warmth, more and more people had risen and come over
to join the group. Men, women, children, they were all thin,
and after glancing at us fleetingly, they would turn to
conversing with each other in low-pitched tones. The one
object in the room that seemed to interest them was a child of
about two. She was very plump, fatter than anyone else in the
tent, with the deceptive milk fat which is the ominous and
ironic sign of serious malnutrition and almost certain death.
Her hair was matted around crusted sores, which covered her
head and face and disappeared down into the neck of her filthy