Read Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village Online
Authors: Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #General
“Beautiful, wasn’t it?” the women said to each other and
several reached up under their veils to mop their sweaty faces.
“Did you see Ali’s son, Beeja?” asked Laila. “He was in the
second group.”
“He has been doing it since he was eighteen,” Fadhila
pointed out, “because his mother promised him, you know.”
“Why?”
“Well, Sheddir had two stillborn babies, and she went on
pilgrimage to Karbala and at the tomb of Hussein in the
mosque she prayed and promised that if she had a healthy son,
she would dedicate him to the taaziya during Muharram.”
“And he does it?”
“Of course. He is proud to do it, it is a great honor,” Fadhila
said. “A great honor for anyone,” she added with a look at me,
“but even better if your mother had promised you, because
then you are fulfilling a holy vow.”
Laila interrupted. “Beeja, if Mr. Bob gets a taxi to go to
Suffra, who else will go? Will there be room for Basima?”
Several women turned at these words and looked at me
expectantly.
“Well,” I temporized, “I don’t even know if he has gotten a
taxi, but if he has, then anyone can come who wants to,
provided there is room.”
When we saw the size of the crowd which had gathered
outside our gate to go to Suffra, Bob decided to let the driver
decide when the taxi was full. He was certain, I think, that this
would cut down on the load, but women piled into the back
seat and children crawled in and sat on the floor. Mohammed
and Bob and the driver were in front, and the driver seemed
quite unconcerned despite the fact the car was so tail-heavy
we hit bottom whenever we went over a rut. The windows
were wide open, otherwise I felt we might have come close to
suffocation from the heat and the pressure of the crowd. Also,
it appeared, some of the women were unaccustomed to motor
travel, and they retched quietly and constantly into their
handkerchiefs. Nausea and discomfort did not seem to detract
from the delights of the day’s excursion, however, and I
noticed that even the carsick ladies managed to smile when, at
each bump in the dirt road, the women in the back seat clung
together and dissolved into whoops of muffled laughter.
I had seen the square of Suffra only once before, when we
had driven through with Jabbar on our way to visit Sheik
Hamza. It had been the day of the weekly sheep market, and
the square had been crowded with lambs and full-grown
sheep, bleating loudly and pressed so tightly together Jabbar
had had difficulty getting his Land-Rover through.
Now, completely cleared, the square looked like a playing
field, and this impression was strengthened by the sight of a
small reviewing stand, four or five tiers of seats behind a
bunting-draped wall which had been erected along one side of
the arena. To this canopied stand Mohammed and the taxi
driver led Bob, pushing ahead of him through the crowds of
villagers and tribesmen who had come to town to see the
annual enactment of their
shabih
, or passion play.
With the women I trooped down to the far end of the
playing field, where a group of eucalyptus trees offered shade.
As we walked, four costumed men on horseback cantered by,
wheeled and cantered toward the center of the playing field
again. Completely covered with yellow trappings, the horses
could have been the mounts of medieval knights waiting for
the jousting to begin. Their yellow covers were bound and
decorated in black, and from the black-rimmed eyeholes, the
horses looked out, their eyes seeming bigger than life, as
though they wore eye make-up. The men’s costumes were
green and red, of some silky material which shone in the sun
and billowed out from their shoulders as they swept by. They
wore sashes and high cardboard hats, cut like war helmets of
some indeterminate historical period. Swords, curved and
painted, were brandished high.
In front of the reviewing stand a small group of horsemen
waited; green and black flags, like the flags of the taaziya,
were held up and outward. All that was needed, I felt, was a
brass band or at least a trumpeter to herald the opening of the
drama.
“When does it begin?” I whispered to Laila.
“It has begun,” she replied, and the four costumed
horsemen trotted by us, stopped near the tree, and waited.
“Oh,” I said lamely. What was going on? I looked at the
horsemen, but their costumes told me little.
“The swords aren’t real,” Fadhila confided in me.
“Of course they are real,” replied Laila.
“They are not real,” retorted Fadhila. “Mohammed says the
government has forbidden it.”
“Well, when we had the play in El Nahra, we had real
swords,” Laila returned, in some contempt, and this began a
spirited argument between Laila, Fadhila and some women
from Suffra, near whom we had found a seat on a hard, sandy
hummock under one of the eucalyptus trees.
“What is happening now?” I asked.
Laila turned, abstracted, from her conversation. “What?”
I repeated my question.
“Oh, well, the battle is beginning.”
The horsemen near us spurred their mounts and galloped to
the center, thundered back, wheeled and rode into the center
of the arena again, where they were met by other horsemen, in
different costumes. The flag-bearers moved toward the center
and moved away again, and both sets of horsemen returned to
their corners.
I turned to Hathaya, the weaver’s daughter. “Now what is
going on?” I asked.
“Now?” she said, looking briefly at the arena. “The battle
has started,” and she moved closer to one of the women and
they resumed their conversation.
Rebuffed, I sat back on my hummock and peered across the
square. I could barely make out the figure of Bob in the
reviewing stand and at that particular moment I wished
mightily I were with him. I could not see him clearly, but I
was sure that, as an honored guest, he was sitting on a chair
drinking Pepsi-Cola and having the play explained to him in
detail by the village elders. It’s hardly fair, I thought
peevishly; I’ve come all this way too and I can’t even find out
what I’m supposed to be seeing. My friends were no help at
all. And besides, I was thirsty.
Laila introduced me to several of the women, who were
relatives or friends of friends, but they did not offer any
explanation of the play either. They were far more interested
in family news from down the canal. I shifted around, trying
to find a more comfortable place on the hummock. There was
none.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Laila.
“Yes,” I said, noting the crowds of colorful horsemen in the
square.
“It’s a war, Beeja,” explained Laila, “between the good men
of Hussein’s family and the evil men of Muawiya.” I nodded.
“The costumes are very beautiful, don’t you think?” I
nodded again.
“What’s the matter, Beeja? Are you sick?”
“No,” I said, “I’m very very thirsty. Let us find a man
selling Pepsi-Cola.”
Laila demurred. “Don’t waste your money, Beeja. Why,
today I am sure the Pepsi-Cola will cost four fils instead of
two.”
“I don’t care. I—”
“Soon the play will be over and then we will go to the
house of Hathaya’s aunt. She brought up Hathaya after her
mother died and Hathaya loves her very much. This is the first
time she has seen her in four years.”
I looked at Hathaya, her puny baby asleep in her lap, deep
in conversation with her aunt, and suddenly felt a little
ashamed of myself for my pique. If I had not been an outsider,
I would have enjoyed the social aspect of the occasion as
much as they, and, I realized, I would have appreciated the
play too, for I would have seen it so many times I would not
have needed an explanation. But I was still very thirsty and
found myself thinking longingly of water and Coca-Cola and
iced lemonade and a whole succession of cool drinks, despite
the colorful and ancient drama being enacted in front of me.
The forces of good, on green-caparisoned horses, and
wearing cardboard helmets, fought with the forces of evil in
turbans and on yellow-caparisoned horses. Neutral elements,
represented by the flag-bearers, tried to make peace and failed.
Everyone knew what the outcome would be, but the battle was
still worth the seeing. By this time fifty or sixty horsemen
filled the square, and the two groups of warriors galloped
toward each other, met briefly in the center in a clash of
wooden swords, then regrouped at each end in preparation for
another assault. In between rounds, several small boys would
run into the arena and rescue from the dust objects which Bob
later told me were papier-mâché arms and legs carried by the
horsemen and thrown up into the air after each assault to give
an air of reality to the proceedings. With shouts and cries the
women and men urged on the forces of Hussein and hissed the
forces of Muawiya. I wanted to cry out too, but what I felt like
shouting at the top of my lungs was, “I’m so thirsty.”
Then came rifles, passed up to the horsemen from the
audience, and the battle started anew. The knowledge that the
bullets the men fired over each other’s heads were real bullets
added danger and a certain awe to the affair. Even the
gossiping women were silent.
My view was less superb than Bob’s, I was sure, but at least
I had a sense of participation, for as the battle raged faster, the
horsemen drew up closer and closer, until I could taste in my
parched throat the dust raised by the panting horses, who were
brought up short only a few feet from us and then turned to
gallop back into battle. The legs of the horses ran with sweat,
the cardboard helmets were wilting, and the silken tunics
stuck to the backs of the horsemen. But the riders, at full
gallop, continued to fire their rifles, and the smell of
gunpowder was added to the odors of sweat and manure that
drifted toward us from the arena. I tried to moisten my lips,
but my tongue was dry too. I tried to forget my thirst by
concentrating on the spectacle. I found that half closing my
eyes filtered the spectacle quite effectively, reducing the glare
of the sun and the density of the dust clouds until the ancient
play became a fine kaleidoscopic whirl of odor and shining
blurs and flying sand.
Without any particular concluding action that I could see,
the battle ceased. I looked at my watch. We had been
onlookers in the hot sun for more than three hours. No wonder
I was thirsty. In a few minutes the crowds filled the square,
and the horses, still in their brilliant trappings, were led off to
the canal to drink. The costumes and horses’ coverings would
be saved for next year’s performance, Laila told me. The
reviewing stand was hidden in the throngs of people who
pushed on, back to houses or shops or to the long road home
to their clan settlements on the plain. Where was Bob? I saw a
pail of Coca-Cola pass by, carried by a man, and I rushed after
it, but Laila pulled me back so fiercely that I turned to her, and
saw Bob and Mohammed and the taxi driver walking near us,
but not with us. We headed up a narrow street leading off the
square to a wooden door in a mud-brick wall. Once inside the
door, we separated again. The men disappeared into one room
and we were led into another, where in coolness and darkness
(such a relief from the dust and heat outside) several women
were seated in a circle on reed mats. We sank down also, and
loosened our abayahs.
“Ahlan wusahlan,”
said a large, square woman seated near
the door.
“Shlonich
[how are you]?” asked Fadhila, and we repeated
her greeting.
“I am afraid we cause trouble by our presence,” said
Fadhila.
“On the contrary, you honor us.”
Using the phrases traditional between host and guest, the
square-faced woman and Fadhila set about building a polite
relationship for the short period of time we would be together.
Could I interrupt the dialogue to ask for water? In a moment
they were discussing mutual friends and near-relatives in El
Nahra, and after this, Fadhila felt the moment had arrived
when she might appropriately make a request.
“Good aunt, may we trouble you for some water? We are so
parched from the heat.”
At a word from the square-faced woman, a young girl
slipped out and came back with a tray of glasses.
“Water is a gift from God,” said Fadhila fervently, setting
her empty glass on a tray.
“The Koran says that water is the source of all life,” quoted
the square-faced woman.
If, at that moment, I could have remembered any proverbs
about water, I would have quoted them, that water tasted so
good to me. It had obviously been drawn from the depths of a
porous clay jar, for chips of the clay were visible in the bottom
of the glass. But in my great thirst, the flat earthy taste of the