Read Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village Online
Authors: Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #General
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.”
I was still clutching the despised abayah tightly under my
chin.
“Never mind, it keeps off 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 flashlight 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-stuffy 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 off, 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 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 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 find 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.
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 fix 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.”
“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
flying 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.
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
kaffiyeh. 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.
That was a greater problem. I rummaged in the suitcase
until I found the Arabic-English dictionary and thumbed
through it, Mohammed watching me intently, until I found the
words I wanted. I went slowly—nails, rope, tomatoes, onions,
potatoes, meat.
“No,” interrupted Mohammed, “no meat.”
“Why?”
He launched into an explanation. I shook my head. Then he
made an unmistakable sound and gesture as though he were
about to cut his own throat and said, “Tomorrow, not today.”
They don’t butcher today, but tomorrow, I realized.
Feeling quite pleased with myself at this small linguistic
success, I smiled again at Mohammed. He smiled too, cleared
his throat and adjusted his agal and kaffiyeh.
“Eggs, sugar, salt?”
“Yes, there is,” replied Mohammed.
I pushed ahead. Matches, a broom, soap–struggling with the
unfamiliar words, but Mohammed was too polite to laugh at
my ludicrous pronunciation. During our entire stay in El
Nahra, Mohammed never laughed at us, no matter how silly
some of the things we did must have seemed to him.
Occasionally, if we appeared about to make a serious
faux
pas
, he might mildly suggest another course of action. But
afterward he would always spread his hands as if to say,
“Naturally whatever you do, whether you take my advice or
not, is perfectly all right.” And Mohammed never, apparently,
gossiped about us, although the temptation must have been
great. In the first weeks after we arrived Bob noticed
Mohammed in the coffee shops as the guest of many men who
had never bought him tea before; perhaps people were curious
about the strange Americans and believed Mohammed to be
the best source of information. But we learned on good
authority that Mohammed politely drank the proffered teas
and coffees (why not?) but never divulged a word about what
the Americans ate and what they did when they were alone at
home. Mohammed was a Sayid, one of the thousands of
Moslems who claim descent from the prophet Mohammed. He
was also a gentleman. Although he worked for us, he did not
work only for wages. We became his special responsibility; he
explained to Bob that our reputation had to be protected like
that of his own family.
When Mohammed had set off for the market and I was
finally alone, I flicked the light switch again and again. What
had happened to the electricity? Only in the evening did I
discover that the current was turned off every morning at nine-
thirty and switched on again at four in the afternoon. This was
to save wear and tear on the generator, which was
underpowered for the needs of the village. Meanwhile I was in
total darkness, and when I opened the shutters it was so cold
in the room that I put on my coat. In a few days I learned to
wear several layers of clothes all the time and leave the
shutters open so I could see.
A stroll in the garden. Yes, I would take a stroll in the
garden, although the phrase from Victorian novels seemed
hardly appropriate in this setting. Yet despite its present
sodden state, the garden was a pleasant place. The high mud
wall gave us complete privacy and the very tall date palms
would provide shade against the summer sun. There were
patches of grass, a small vegetable garden overgrown with
weeds, an apple tree, banana trees and many other shrubs and
trees I did not recognize then, lemon and bitter orange and
oleander. From the slight rise in the center of the garden
where the house stood, a banked mud path ran down under a
large grape arbor to the edge of the wall. Near the grape arbor
was a mud-brick oven. I had never seen one closely before
and went over to peer into the cylindrical interior, blackened
by the daily bread baking of previous inhabitants.
In the farthest corner stood the outhouse and in the opposite
corner some tangled rosebushes were blooming. Here,
although I stood on tiptoe, I could see nothing but the cloudy
sky and the tops of the palm trees in neighboring gardens. The
sheik’s beautiful young wife, for whom this house had been
built, had been well protected here from prying eyes, I
thought, and intruders would have had an uncomfortable time
getting in over the prickly camel-thorn that was arranged like
barbed wire, six inches high, all around the top of the wall.
From my corner of the garden I looked back at the house,
mud-colored, rectangular, flat-roofed. Its two wooden doors,
one for each room, had once been painted blue, the color to
ward off the Evil Eye. The shutters, banging open in the wind,
had once been blue too. A crack zigzagged down the wall
from one window to the ground where the plaster of mud and
straw was washing away from the baked-brick sides. The roof
beams, jutting out at regular intervals like square eaves, were
covered with a thatch of mud and reed mats that looked quite
inadequate to keep out the rain. What kept the roof from
leaking? I would ask Mohammed. How would I make him
understand? Never mind; I would ask Bob later.
Mohammed banged on the gate several times before
entering the garden. He was laden with parcels and I went up
to the house to see what he had bought. He paused at the door
of the living room to take off his muddy shoes, and I looked at
my own, caked with mud from the garden walk, and took
them off too. Mohammed said, in careful Arabic, “That’s
better.” He pointed to Bob’s slippers, dry and clean by the
bed, and I put them on. How practical, I thought, and
thereafter always took off my dirty shoes at the door and
slipped into clean ones.