Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (34 page)

another man stood, and whenever the horseman paused, this

man raised his arms and spoke.

Other windows were being opened and the people pushed

toward them.

“Stop shoving—stop it!” Fatima cried, but it was no use.

We were jammed so tightly against the window bars I felt I

could stand it no longer.

“Let’s go, Fatima; it’s almost finished,” suggested Laila.

She was having difficulty holding her abayah on, the crowds

were pulling and pushing at us so hard.

“Yes,” said Fatima, “and these impious people are rude. It’s

shame, shame, shame!” she shouted, her voice rising with

each repetition of the word, elbowing her way out with dark

looks at the indifferent, roistering people.

“This is a funeral for the martyr Hussein, not a party,” was

her final shot before we hit the open street.

“It’s late,” said Laila. We had crossed the bridge and

walked now along the tribal side of the canal, where the road

was calm and almost empty. On the other bank, the crowd still

milled and shouted around the mosque.

My clothes under my abayah were soaking with

perspiration; we had walked and pushed and been pushed

during the hottest part of the day. Although it was near

sundown, the heat still shimmered, a felt and observed

presence in the air. The water in the canal was at low level in

this season, and the sides of the mudbanks were dried and

cracking in the heat.

“Will you come and have tea with us?” said Laila.

I felt exhausted, and I was certain they must be too.

“No, thank you,” I replied. “I should fix supper for my

husband.”

They left me at my gate and I watched my friends go, two

black-robed figures, one tall and proud, one shorter and

slightly stooped, walking gracefully home through the hot

powdery dust.

18

Pilgrimage to Karbala

After the burial ceremony, the village seemed visibly to relax.

The krayas were over, the yearly cycle of religious drama

successfully complete. People set about their chores in order

to be ready for the pilgrimage to Karbala.

Summer crops were harvested. The sheep were sheared and

the women washed the wool in the canal, piling the damp

fleeces in the courtyards of their houses to dry before

beginning the carding and spinning. Okra was threaded on

long strings and hung from the roof beams to dry for winter.

Soon it would be time to harvest the dates. In spare hours the

women returned to the everlasting task of cleaning rice and

flour, tossing it expertly on woven plates to rid it of chaff and

then laboriously picking out, one by one, the stones and hulls

and bits of dirt and straw.

Clothes were washed and mended for the coming journey.

The hajj, or pilgrimage, is one of the five basic obligations of

Islam and every Moslem hopes to visit Mecca before he dies.

But the Shiite Moslem has a further duty, to visit the shrines

of the twelve imams of the Shiite sect.

In El Nahra, the sheik and one or two rich merchants were

the only people who had been to Mecca, but even the poorest

fellahin and their wives had been several times to the three

nearest Shiite shrines, at Najaf, Karbala and Khadhimain.

The most propitious period to visit Karbala was the time

now approaching, the fortieth day after the death of the martyr

Hussein. This year Laila had invited me to make the

pilgrimage with her, her mother and her older sister Fatima. I

had accepted immediately, or rather Bob accepted for me after

talking to Laila’s father, Moussa. Moussa had first apologized

to Bob for not inviting him, and explained that it might not be

the best time to see Karbala, when it was crowded with

pilgrims. But we guessed that the real reason lay in Bob’s

appearance. With his crew cut and light skin, he was too

obviously foreign and Karbala, during the ceremonies on the

fortieth day after Hussein’s death, was particularly sensitive to

the presence of unbelievers. I, on the other hand, could easily

pass unnoticed in abayah and face veil. I had been wearing the

abayah for several months and was accustomed to it by now.

My Arabic was good enough so that even if I had to speak, I

might be mistaken for a Persian pilgrim whose native tongue

was Farsi; my light skin, should the face veil slip, could also

be attributed to Persian origins.

Moussa added that Bob need not worry about

accommodations in the crowded city, for we would stay at the

home of his cousin Yehia, a doctor in Karbala.

As the time of our journey grew near, Laila visited me

several times a day to discuss the presents we would take to

Sitt Najat, Cousin Yehia’s wife, to talk about the glories of the

golden mosque, and to plan what we would do when we got to

Karbala. Laila was very anxious to go this year. She hoped,

she said, that if her pilgrimage and prayers were worthy, her

father might send her with her sister Basima to the secondary

school in Diwaniya.

The other women too spoke of nothing but the coming

pilgrimage; Medina, Mohammed’s mother, and Sherifa, his

sister, were determined to go, although there was scarcely

enough money in their house to buy food for the coming

month.

Nearly three quarters of a million Shiites actually made the

pilgrimage that year, 1957, filling the little town of Karbala

(normal population 30,000) far beyond capacity. Pilgrims

came from Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Many were poor and

illiterate but many were men and women of education and

wealth, come to find solace together at the tomb of Hussein.

For the essential character of the pilgrimage has not

changed much in a thousand years. In the past, pilgrims had

brought spices, rugs, copper and silver to exchange for food

and lodging; they also brought new ideas and communicable

diseases. In 1957 the pilgrims brought hashish, spices, copper

and rugs to trade in Karbala; they managed also to bring

smallpox and cholera, and agents disguised as pilgrims

brought in Marxist leaflets. The mosques were lighted by neon

instead of by candlelight, the wealthy pilgrims came by

airplane rather than by palanquin, but the ritual was

approximately the same as it has always been. The trade in

goods and ideas and the mixing of people from all parts of the

Shiite Moslem world were marginal to the principal purpose

of a good pilgrimage, spiritual renewal through penitence and

prayer.

But before we started, I did not know all this. I guessed at

the vital place the pilgrimage held in the lives of all my

friends, and was therefore startled and surprised when Laila

came the day before we were scheduled to leave and

announced that she was not going. She cut short my

expressions of sympathy. Her father had ruled that it was too

expensive for so many to go. Fatima was to represent the

family, accompanied by Rajat (who could travel for half fare)

and I would accompany them.

“It is good that Fatima should go,” Laila said. “She works

hardest at home and she is the most religious girl in the

family.”

“Now,” she said, changing the subject, “let me see what you

are taking to Sitt Najat.”

I brought out two freshly baked cakes and a basket of fruit

to be inspected, and Laila pronounced them adequate. The bus

left at six the next morning; I must not be late, she said.

Bob and I rose at five. The sun was just up and we

breakfasted in the garden, hearing already a babble of excited

voices near our gate, where the bus was loading.

Bob had earlier felt a little uncertain about the wisdom of

my pilgrimage. Now, on the last morning, he repeated his

fears.

“Are you sure you want to go?”

“I’m sure.”

“It will be hard, probably.”

“Yes, but it’s only five days.”

“Well, be careful,” he said. “I really think everything will

go well, especially since you’re staying with Moussa’s

relatives. I’ll telephone you tonight to make sure you arrived

safely.”

“What will you do if I haven’t?” I was only half joking.

“Come myself, notify the Karbala police—I’ll think of

something.”

I nodded, thinking that in spite of all the perils I had

imagined and Bob had imagined, I really wanted very much to

go. The excited voices outside infected me with a great new

sense of freedom and possible adventure.

At five-thirty Mohammed arrived with a jug of water, and

told us his brothers were going, and would look out for me if I

should need anything. Then Laila came, smiling and gay as

though she were leading the pilgrimage personally; she and

her sister Fatima had saved me a place in the bus near the back

window and I was not to hurry over my breakfast. “After all,”

she said, “you will be away from home for five whole days;

it’s a very long time.”

“Goodbye dear.” I kissed Bob and clung to him for a

moment. The pilgrim city with its golden mosque was a long

way from our little mud house. What would I find there?

At the bus my arrival, with a hand satchel and a basket

containing the fruit and cakes, increased the commotion.

“Look, look, the Amerikiya is making the pilgrimage!”

“What is she taking with her?”

“See, she wears the veil!”

“Where will she sit?”

The latter question signaled the opening of a pitched battle

of words between Moussa’s daughters and a neighbor woman

who had managed to pile her bedroll, a basket of food and two

small children in the space Laila had presumably reserved for

me. Laila appealed to the woman’s honor, to her sense of

hospitality, the honor of her family and the honor of her as yet

unborn children; the woman remained unmoved. Laila looked

defeated and things appeared to have reached an impasse

when the woman suddenly rose, dragged the children onto her

lap and passed her luggage out the window to be placed on the

roof. I felt myself pushed forward and down into a place

which might have been comfortable for an emaciated eight-

year-old. Then Rajat clambered in on top of me and curled up

on the floor at my feet.

The bus was actually a covered wooden truck which had

been converted to the passenger trade by the addition of a few

wretchedly narrow wooden benches, placed so close together

that one was forced to turn one’s legs sideways if the seat

opposite was occupied. The seating capacity was about

twenty, but I counted forty-five men, women and children

inside that morning, not to mention babes in arms. Even as I

counted, more young boys were clambering up onto the roof.

The driver was haggling with a man who wanted to carry

four sheep on top of the lorry. A two-year-old began to wail

and was handed out the window to do his business. I waved at

Bob, but he did not respond. He later told me he could hardly

distinguish me from the other women. Not having been

brought up with women who wore the costume, he was unable

to detect the subtle details—the way the head is turned, the

gesture with which the abayah is adjusted—by which men

recognized their mothers, their sisters and their wives in a

large crowd of identically attired and veiled women.

Finally the driver climbed up into his seat and slammed the

decrepit wooden door. The crowd which had gathered to

watch us leave shouted last-minute instructions and farewells;

a chorus of traditional blessings—“Allah go with you,”

“Maasalaama,” “Fiimaanila”—
followed us as the truck, full

of people hanging out the glassless windows and waving

handkerchiefs as though they would never again see their

beloved families and friends, rounded the corner on two

wheels and we were off.

It was seven-thirty and already hot. The road followed the

canal, where women washing their breakfast pots or doing the

morning’s laundry looked up at us as we rattled by. The date

palms on the opposite bank were gray with the accumulated

dust of the desert summer and the fields we passed were

brown and dry. Only the stubble of the small summer crop

remained. On each side of the road the flat, dun-colored land

stretched away for miles, broken only by the cuts of small

waterways carrying water to the fields and the dips of old

canals, their dry hollows green with a little shrubbery

nourished by some dampness remaining in the soil. Here and

there a single fellah was visible against the horizon; his

dishdasha tied up around his waist to allow freedom of

movement, he broke the dry ground with a hand hoe,

preparing the land for autumn planting. Clusters of green date

palms marked the clan settlements, each with its mudhif, the

high round arches of bound reeds dried to sand color. We

passed one mudhif which was leaning sharply and which

looked ready to collapse. My sullen neighbor roused herself to

point it out as an abandoned settlement where the land was too

salty to produce a crop. We could see the white patches of