Read Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village Online
Authors: Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #General
recognize our responsibility when, on our account, other
people were exposed to blame or shame or worse.
How little I really knew about the society in which I was
living! During the year I had made friends, I had listened and
talked and learned, I thought, a great deal, but the pattern of
custom and tradition which governed the lives of my friends
was far more subtle and complex than I had imagined. It was
like the old image of the iceberg, the small, easily
recognizable face on the surface of the water giving no idea of
the size or shape or texture of what lies beneath.
PART V
21
Winter
Winter came down upon us with a sudden rainstorm. All day
clouds had been gathering in the skies, the first time for
months and months, and at sunset the rain poured onto the
land. Everyone rejoiced, for an early heavy rain was good for
the crops. We went to sleep that night lulled by the refreshing
sound of rain beating on our roof after the dry heat of the
summer.
At the end of the third day it was still raining. By now the
road was a morass of mud, and I did not leave the house. Even
at home it was difficult enough. Every time we went from one
room to another or across the garden to the bathroom or the
garbage pit, we would slip and slide on the mucky ground.
Mohammed was not so lucky. He still had to haul our water
several times a day and bring food from the market, and he
finally stopped wearing shoes altogether. He would hoist his
dishdasha up and double his aba over his head against the rain,
but his legs were always splashed with mud up to the knees
when he finally arrived.
Our roof began to leak and we would wake in the middle of
the night to feel the splash of rain on our faces, on the floor,
the chairs and table. Until the sun shone again the mud roof
could not be repaired, so I set pots and pans in strategic places
on the floor and we covered our bed with a tarpaulin and our
heads with raincoats when we slept.
By the fourth day, even Bob decided to stay indoors and
work on his notes. Our diet had become very monotonous, for
none of the farmers were bringing produce to market. The
taxis from Diwaniya had stopped running, so no canned foods
or jam or cigarettes came into El Nahra, and the supplies in
the shops dwindled steadily. The post office was closed and
the telephone line was out of order.
The Biblical story of the deluge, which is supposed to have
taken place very near El Nahra, seemed very real. We were
quite cut off. Who would have thought that rain would be a
problem in the middle of the desert? But it was. Horses could
make very little headway in the thick, deep mud, the cattle
could barely walk, and everyone who could stayed indoors
and tended the eroding mud walls and roofs. The men were
worried about the crops, said Mohammed. The water table had
been high to begin with, and too much rain at one time could
easily drown the young shoots of grain. We knew now why
Haji had built our little house on a slight rise in the garden.
Mohammed, our only link with the other people in the
settlement, reported that the floors in some houses were
already wet. If the rain didn’t stop soon, many people would
be flooded out.
Fortunately, on the sixth morning, it did stop. We woke to
bright sunshine and an unexpected amount of noise. At first
we could not account for the burst of noise, and then we
realized that the settlement, which had become quieter and
quieter during the rain, was merely emerging from its
enforced retreat. Children were running up and down the road
again, servants were setting out for the suq, and the livestock,
driven out of their enclosures for the first time in days, were
mooing and braying with joy.
Mohammed came to say that Haji had invited us to lunch.
To celebrate the end of the rains, Selma was making
faisanjan
, or Persian chicken, and Sheik Hamid wanted us to
sample the special dish. At noon I put on my abayah and tried
to pick my way up the road through the slimy mud and the
deep puddles. Through Saleh the weaver’s open door I could
see Hathaya, his daughter, and his old mother laying reed mats
over the muddy ground, to protect the wool which Saleh was
stringing back and forth from the loom to the pegs at the end
of the court. All the houses along the road had rows of fresh
dung cakes spread out to dry for fuel on the wall tops; the
housewives had been busy that morning.
Laundry was underway in Haji’s house. The daughters were
hanging up clothes, children’s dishdashas, sheets, towels and
dresses on lines stretching all around the big central court. A
pot of white clothes still boiled over an open fire and Amina,
stirring with a long reed stick, nodded to me cheerfully as I
came in.
From Selma’s own apartment drifted an odor strong enough
to drown the smells of wet dung, mud and laundry, a lovely
odor which came from the kitchen. Here the chicken
simmered on a Primus stove while Selma stirred and tasted.
Faisanjan was a worthy delicacy to celebrate our release
from the rain. The preparation took hours. First walnuts were
pounded and pounded in a mortar until nothing was left but
the oil. The chicken was jointed and browned in the oil and
then a little salt was added and water in which dried
pomegranate seeds had been soaking. In this fragrant broth the
chicken cooked slowly until the broth thickened to a nut-
brown sauce and the chicken fell from its bones. Walnuts and
dried pomegranate seeds and salt proved to be an
unexpectedly delicious combination of flavors. I told Selma
that it was excellent and she smiled.
“No one in El Nahra can make faisanjan like Selma,” said
Samira.
Selma did not protest.
Three days later, when no more rain had fallen, Mohammed
said he thought it safe to repair our roof. Two men came from
the suq with buckets and ladders. I watched from behind a
half-closed shutter while they hauled up buckets of mud. I
heard the sound of the mud being slapped on the roof and
smoothed by hand. A few drops of mud plopped down past
the window. The men climbed down and took away the
ladders. Our roof repair (which would last for five years, they
said stoutly) cost exactly $1.25, and had taken about an hour.
Sherifa, Mohammed’s sister, had been ill for several days.
Mohammed described her symptoms as fever, chills, coughing
and vomiting. I asked whether I could visit her.
“After a day or two, when she is better,” he suggested.
“Has she been sick like this before?”
“Oh yes, many times,” answered Mohammed, “but it is
worse in winter, the cough especially.”
The day he came to announce that Sherifa was well enough
to see me, I took some aspirins and fruit and went to her. But
if today she was supposed to be better, I wondered what her
illness had been before. The normally cheerful and always
polite Sherifa made little attempt to greet me. From the mat,
where she lay covered with a blanket, she raised a limp hand.
“I’m very sick,” she said.
Her mother Medina was making tea over the tiny charcoal
fire. I asked whether I could bring the doctor for Sherifa.
“No, no, I don’t want him here,” said Sherifa, raising
herself slightly on one elbow. Then she was seized by a fit of
hard, dry coughing and lay back on the mat and turned her
head away from us.
Medina offered me tea, and Fadhila, who was mixing bread
dough for the noon meal, came in to sit for a moment. Fadhila
asked me to stay and watch her bake the bread; she seemed
unmoved by the sight of Sherifa, who was now moaning
continually.
“Poor Sherifa,” I said. “What a pity.”
“Oh yes,” said Fadhila matter-of-factly. “She is always like
this in winter, poor thing. But what can one do?”
“Bring the doctor.”
Fadhila raised her hands.
“Why?” she asked. “If he came, which is quite unlikely, he
would charge a great deal of money, which we don’t have.
And even if we could pay him, then he would prescribe many
expensive medicines, which we can’t afford to buy. God wills
that poor Sherifa be ill, and he grants me, thank God, good
health.”
I still felt that, if necessary, we could bring the doctor for
Sherifa, and asked Bob to discuss it with Mohammed.
Mohammed said he did not want the ill-famed doctor in El
Nahra to come, but that perhaps we could take Sherifa with us
when we went to Diwaniya the next time. He had heard that
the new woman doctor at the free government hospital was
running a good clinic.
“Of course we will take her,” said Bob. To me he added in
English, “She probably has tuberculosis, you know, and what
can we do about that?”
We had already heard of a death from tuberculosis that
winter, a young woman from the market people. The
incidence of tuberculosis was very high in El Nahra, the
doctor had told Bob, but they did not know the exact figures,
for the disease remained more or less quiescent through the
hot summers, but flared up again when the cold rains began.
If anyone had reminded me, in the heat of September, that
soon I would be shivering with the penetrating cold and that
ice would form on the mud puddles outside our door each
night, I would have laughed. Yet here we were again, wearing
four or five layers of clothes all day long in the rooms where
just two months ago we had sweltered in 120-degree heat.
That year we were grateful for our two Aladdin kerosene
heaters, bought secondhand from friends in Baghdad. They
made the rooms fairly comfortable and were a great
improvement over our charcoal brazier, which had smoked so
much that the fumes gave us headaches.
Everywhere I went to visit now, some member of the family
was sick. The women put on heavy black sweaters or imitation
black caracul jackets under their abayahs. Over their
dishdashas the children put on sweaters and wrapped their
heads up in wool scarves and caps.
“If one’s head and neck are warm, all is well,” Mohammed
pronounced. He himself wore a wool tweed sport coat over his
dishdasha, under his aba. It was secondhand but in good
condition, bought from a big bundle of coats and sweaters
which had arrived in the suq, Bob said, when the cold started.
Some enterprising Lebanese businessman, we discovered, had
begun buying up lots of used European and American coats in
New York and London and selling them by the bundle in the
small cities and towns of the Middle East.
But many people in the settlement could not afford such
luxuries. They added another layer of cotton garments,
warmed themselves on good days in the morning sun, drank
glass after glass of hot tea and huddled around small charcoal
braziers at night.
The cold deepened, and the price of charcoal rose higher
and higher in the market. For us this was of minor importance,
but I lay in bed at night listening to the rain and wondering
about the families who went to bed at nightfall simply to keep
warm. At least they would be warm there, I thought,
remembering the pile of blankets that seemed to be the only
major possession I had seen in many houses.
One morning I woke feeling very poorly indeed. By noon I
had a high fever and by nightfall all the symptoms of severe
bronchitis and flu had descended on me. Bob put me to bed
and Mohammed brewed meat broth and mint tea. I could not
remember when I had been so sick.
The next day Laila and Rajat came to visit. Laila had
brought me four eggs; she and Rajat clasped my hand and
murmured words of encouragement. They sat by my bed and
watched me anxiously. When I coughed, Laila coughed; when
I blew my nose, Rajat sniffed in sympathy. By noon I was
exhausted from trying to talk to the girls, and wanted only to
be left alone. When lunchtime came they left, promising to
come back as soon as they could.
“Oh, it’s not necessary, thank you very much,” I said
weakly.
“Beeja,” Laila answered, “how can we leave you alone
when you are sick?”
My protests were useless, and promptly after eating the two
girls returned and sat down by my bed again. The rest of the
day passed in a haze of fever. I finally could not even manage
social pleasantries, and would doze off periodically and
through my half sleep hear Laila and Rajat discussing my
illness. I remembered the scene at Feisal’s bedside when the
crowds of women and children had assembled to keep him
company while he fought typhoid fever. Someone had once
told me that in this society loneliness was one of the greatest
of misfortunes, for it meant that your family had deserted you,
and you had no one sufficiently concerned for your welfare to
stay with you. Where I felt I needed solitude to recover from