Read Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village Online
Authors: Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #General
me that among other tribesmen Moussa was often the butt of
jokes and an object of pity since he had no male heir. Yet,
although the subject was never mentioned directly, Bob said
he also sensed a grudging admiration and respect for the
women of the household. What they could do—sew, cook,
clean, make a man comfortable—they did better than anyone
else. Certainly among the women this was the case. Women
said, “It’s because they have no men that they work so hard,”
but Um Fatima and her daughters were almost universally
liked and admired.
The girls had long ago divided up the work, and in addition
each girl had developed her own specialty by which she
managed to earn extra money. Fatima made silk abayahs and
Sanaa crocheted the heavy black tatting which edged the
ashas. Nejla kept chickens and raised a pair of lambs every
spring to sell for wool and meat. Basima and Laila
embroidered bridal sheets and pillowcases; the three younger
girls went to school.
Um Fatima herself knew a good deal about poultices and
medicines. From the beams in her sitting room hung little
bunches of dried herbs, twigs and leaves which she would
pound up in a mortar and use to treat the eye infections, the
carbuncles, the dysentery and fevers which plagued her and
her neighbors’ ailing children. In addition she was considered
a pious woman, competent to give advice in religious matters.
All religious holidays were observed scrupulously; the house
was the site of many krayas each Ramadan and Muharram.
Bob testified that male guests were treated to delicious food,
and no visiting relative, male or female, had ever been turned
away without bed and board.
The nine sisters found room in their hearts even for me, and
one day, sitting in the sheik’s house, I realized from a remark
of Selma’s that Laila had chosen me as her friend.
There it was; it had happened; I had been partially accepted
and had not even been aware of it, though recently it had
seemed to me I had not been as neglected as before.
Mohammed had brought Sherifa to see me. Sheddir and her
daughter Sahura paused and drank tea with me after cutting
grass. But Laila was visiting me all the time. Her calls were
never announced in advance and were often inconvenient, but
I would put down whatever I was doing and sit and talk. At
first Laila would bolt out of the house like a frightened rabbit
as soon as she heard Bob’s step outside the door; after a time
she seemed to become less cautious, and even though Bob was
working or typing in one room, she would sit with me in the
other, cautioning me over and over and over again not to tell
that she had been there while Bob was around as it was
ayb
(great shame). She did not mind Mohammed’s presence, for
some reason, and talked to him quite informally, although of
course she wore her abayah whenever he was with us. Usually
she came alone, but Basima or one of the younger girls
sometimes accompanied her.
After a few weeks the family began to bring their female
guests to view the village Amerikiya. I opened my clothes
closets and food cabinets and one day I even delivered a short
lecture in Arabic on the theory of electricity (a subject I had
never understood in my own language) to a middle-aged
cousin of Laila’s who had ridden in four miles on horseback
with her husband to discuss the forthcoming marriage of her
son.
“My cousin doesn’t believe you have a machine that could
make ice,” said Basima, so we adjourned to the kitchen to
look at the refrigerator.
The blank white front of the refrigerator and even the ice
trays themselves elicited little response, but when the lady
actually felt the ice (to make certain we weren’t teasing her),
her face changed; it was a hot day and the woman’s face,
bound round like a coif with the black foota and asha, was
bathed in perspiration.
“How wonderful!” she said. “You must get one for Laila.”
She meant the ice tray, I think, but Laila apparently thought
she meant the machine, and hurriedly announced that her
father planned to buy one if the year’s crop was good. Then
she plunged into another topic to change the subject quickly
and began to explain the process of ice making in such false
minute detail that I was impelled to explain myself how the
hot electricity made such a thing take place. We finished the
afternoon with iced lemonade, but the visiting cousin refused
ice, saying it was too cold and hurt her teeth—the three or four
she had left, she said, opening her mouth to show me broken
stumps in her old gums.
News of the novelties which the Amerikiya could provide
for bored visitors must have spread throughout the settlement,
for one afternoon Mohammed came rushing in to say that the
sheik’s oldest daughter Alwiyah and two lady guests were on
their way to my house. “They’ll be here any minute,”
announced Mohammed, depositing on my table cigarettes and
pumpkin seeds in case we might not have a large enough
supply. Then he dashed out, as quickly as Mohammed ever
moved, for it wouldn’t be fitting, he felt, for him to be present
when the sheik’s women arrived. I hadn’t time to get nervous,
so the ladies and I spent a pleasant hour smoking, drinking tea
and eating seeds, splitting the husk with our teeth, removing
the kernel and spitting the husk out, all in one motion. Laila’s
little sister Rajat crept in with the group of heavily veiled
ladies and sat on my floor to watch the show. Laila herself
arrived soon after, slightly flustered; she insisted on passing
the seeds and cigarettes and tea and smiled the whole time,
like a stage mother whose child has just been given a lead in a
hit musical comedy.
When the women left, Laila stayed on.
“It’s not often the sheik’s women leave their house,” she
confided. “You should feel honored.”
“But what about Selma?” I insisted. “Why doesn’t she
come?”
“She will, in time,” said Laila, “but that’s not important;
someone from the sheik’s house has visited you, and that’s all
that matters.”
Mohammed brought water earlier than usual that evening; I
suspected him of overweening curiosity about the party, and it
is true he asked whether there were enough cigarettes left for
Bob. I said no, it would be better to bring some more from the
suq. When he saw the piles and piles of pumpkin-seed husks
overflowing the ash trays and spilling on the floor, he said that
the shopkeeper on the tribal side of the canal knew how to dry
pumpkin seeds properly and we should always buy from him.
One morning Laila brought a gaunt old woman who grinned at
me cheerfully, patted my cheek and sat down in my best
armchair without being asked. Laila announced, “Qanda has
business with you.”
“Ahlan wusahlan,”
I replied, wondering what on earth her
business could be. I offered candy, but the old woman refused.
“She wants a cigarette,” prompted Laila.
Qanda took two, lighting one and depositing the other
within the recesses of her black garments. I pressed the box of
cigarettes on her, and after a minimally polite refusal she took
two more. These also were stored away before she pushed her
abayah aside and leaned forward.
“Now,” she said, and began to speak very rapidly, gesturing
floridly in all directions. I was having difficulty understanding
and asked Laila to repeat for me in slower Arabic.
Qanda, it appeared, was the local beautician. She plucked
eyebrows, removed unwanted body hair (with a string or with
a sugar solution), pierced ears and noses, made up brides on
their wedding days, and, most important of all, she was an
accomplished tattooer. She stood up and yanked her black
dress above her knees to show me two full-blown roses
tattooed on the backs of her calves.
“Aren’t they lovely things?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “I
only charge a quarter of a pound for each.” I agreed that the
roses were very beautiful, but said I did not want to be
tattooed.
She eyed me a moment, then started a new tack. “It seems
expensive now, I know,” she said, “but a tattoo lasts a
lifetime, and by making you more attractive, it will help you
keep your husband.”
I smiled and said no, thank you.
Qanda muttered something to Laila, who giggled and
repeated it.
“Qanda says you are young and newly married and don’t
know much. She says you are so thin your husband will soon
grow tired of you, but if you will let her tattoo your backside
for half a pound, perhaps that will amuse him.” Qanda
interrupted Laila, who added, “Qanda is sure it will amuse
him, she can almost guarantee it, it works with all her
customers.” She broke down in uncontrollable laughter, and
Qanda and I joined her.
I explained that it was not our custom to tattoo and
therefore my husband would not find it attractive.
Qanda smiled sweetly. “You are just thinking of the
money,” she said calmly. “I can arrange for you to pay half
now and half when your husband is satisfied. Remember, I am
the best tattooer in El Nahra. I tattooed Abdulla’s wife when
she was a girl.”
I assured her I believed her workmanship excellent, but I
simply did not want to be tattooed. Qanda looked exasperated
and began to glower, until Laila broke in to explain patiently
that tattooing was considered old-fashioned nowadays, that
none of the young girls wanted to have it done except perhaps
one small tattoo “just for fun.” And, she concluded
triumphantly, the schoolteachers had told her that women in
Baghdad had not been tatooed for many years.
Qanda grunted, but she subsided, accepted still another
cigarette, lit it and inhaled deeply. After a moment she leaned
forward once more.
“At least you should have your ears pierced,” she said. “I
only charge 150 fils for that, and I will ask 125 from you as a
special favor to Laila.”
Actually I had been considering having my ears pierced, but
much as I enjoyed Qanda, I was not sure I wanted her to
undertake the operation. “All my earrings are from America
and are different,” I said, trying to demonstrate the difference
between screws and clips and hooks, but Qanda shook her
head in bewilderment.
“Show her,” suggested Laila, so I opened my jewelry box,
and at this Qanda leaned forward with real interest. I trotted
out my collection of costume jewelry, false pearls, and my
gold bracelet and gold earrings.
With the nose of a connoisseur, Qanda passed over the
imitation items and seized on the bracelet and the gold hoops.
Then she put them down.
“Is that all you have?” she asked.
I nodded.
She looked very puzzled indeed, glancing around the room
with its radio, clock, books, electric light and other symbols of
prosperity. She spoke to Laila, who said, “Qanda can’t
understand why you have all these things in your house and
yet no gold. Not even Sheddir has as little as that.”
I replied that I did have some gold in America which I had
left behind for fear of losing it on the long trip to Iraq.
“Wear it, wear it, you silly girl,” Qanda burst out. “What
good does it do lying in a box far away?” Then she launched
into a short, earnest sermon about the value of gold as
ornament, but secondly and most important, the necessity of
gold in every woman’s life as insurance in case her husband
should die or leave her or divorce her. I had not heard such an
eloquent statement of the “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”
theory in a long time.
Finally Qanda stood up, peered at herself closely in my wall
mirror, snorted, and announced that she must leave to prepare
a bride for marriage. “Is there a wedding today?” I asked.
“No, it’s tomorrow,” she said, “and from now on I shall be
very busy. This is the season, you know.” She started out the
door, turned and wagged her finger at me.
“You come with Laila to see the bride,” she said, “and
when you see what a good job I have done on her, you’ll
change your mind about tattoos and pierced ears. Maybe
you’ll even want to have your nose done, ha ha!”
I gasped out a sort of goodbye, and Laila, grinning and
nodding, winked at me outrageously as she followed the
skinny old woman, still laughing at her own joke, out of my
garden.
My partial acceptance into the society of the women was a
mysterious process, and I have often wondered what marked
the turning point in our relations and what prompted Laila to
single me out for friendship. Probably it was a combination of
particular circumstances, many of which I remained unaware,
plus the fact that people were just becoming used to our
presence. Also, as my Arabic improved I was able to
participate more fully in the half-joking, half-serious teasing
with which the women entertained each other. Now