Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (5 page)

She’s carrying camel dung,” he added matter-of-factly.

“Camel dung?”

“They make it into cakes like that and dry it in the sun for

fuel,” he explained.

And when I looked back, that was what the woman was

doing, arranging the dung cakes in geometric regularity on the

sunny side of the road.

“Just keep walking,” said Bob.

“But this empty street is kind of eerie,” I answered. I simply

could not resist looking around once more. As I did, a kind of

whispered laugh or exclamation went up and down the street,

where women in black abayahs stood by the walls or peered

out of the doors of nearly all the houses, looking after me.

“The women are all standing at their doors, staring,” I said

to Bob.

“Never mind, it’s not much farther. Look, there’s the

sheik’s mudhif!”

Ahead was a clearing, at the edge of which earth had been

built up to form a large square platform. On this stood the

sheik’s guest house or mudhif, framed by a grove of date

palms, green and lustrous in the dun-colored landscape. I had

not expected the guest house to be so big. The tribesmen near

the entrance were dwarfed by the thirty-foot arch of the

mudhif, which looked like an enormous quonset hut open at

both ends. Great bundles of swamp reeds, arched over and

anchored in the ground, formed the ribs of the structure which

stretched at least 150 feet back toward the palm grove. Only in

the entrance arch was the bunching visible for overlapping

reed mats covered the sides and roof. We heard afterward

from archaeologist friends that the plan and structure of the

mudhif have origins in antiquity and that some of the earliest

Sumerian temples may have been of just this shape.

Flying from the capstone of the entrance arch was a white

flag with a crescent and star appliquéd upon it in red.

“I think that may be the tribal flag, or perhaps the sheik’s

personal flag,” whispered Bob.

A few horses were tethered near the mudhif and more men,

in aba and agal and kaffiyeh, were gathering in the clearing.

As we approached, a tall man disengaged himself from one of

the groups and came toward us. Bob turned off to meet him.

“Good luck,” he whispered, and I was left alone to follow Ali,

who bore left, away from the mudhif, toward a large square

mud-brick building which I had not noticed before.

This must be the harem, I told myself; it was here that all of

the sheik’s family lived, though Bob had said that in the past it

had been used as a fortress in tribal wars and later against

Ottoman and finally British soldiers. The gun emplacements

could still be seen on the roof and the thick mud-brick walls

were honey-combed with holes just large enough to

accommodate a rifle barrel.

Ali led me all the way around the fortress to a narrow

opening and motioned me through. I was standing alone in a

large open courtyard, the hard-packed earth of which had been

carefully swept just that morning, for I could see the marks of

the broom in wide swathing arcs on the ground. The only

visible object was a central water tap with a small brick wall

around its base. To my right, to my left, and in front of me

stood low, square houses built out into the courtyard from the

shelter of the compound’s high mud-brick walls. These, I was

to discover later, were the apartments where each of the

sheik’s wives lived separately with her children. Through the

entry-ways of these flat-roofed apartments, arched and

plastered with mud, I could see daylight in other, small inner

courts.

Where was everyone? The entire compound seemed empty.

I turned back, but Ali was gone and I faced the courtyard

alone, where now, from doors all around the court, women

and children began to emerge. Little girls in long-sleeved print

dresses and boys in candy-striped dishdashas ran and leaped

toward me, then ran away giggling only to turn in a wider

circle and come forward once more. The women—it seemed

like hundreds of them—advanced more slowly, in their

flowing black abayahs, their heads coifed and bound in black,

all smiling and repeating,
“Ahlan wusahlan
[welcome].
Ahlan,

ahlan. Ahlan wusahlan.”
Most of them came at a dignified

pace, but the younger women could not contain their

excitement, it seemed, for they would caper a bit, look at each

other, choke with laughter and then cover their faces with their

abayahs as the woman with the dung cakes had done. I stood

still, not certain whether I should advance, until an old woman

came close and put a motherly hand on my shoulder. She

looked into my face and smiled broadly, which warmed her

deeply wrinkled face with a kind and friendly expression

despite the fact that many of her front teeth were missing. She

had three blue dots, tattoo marks, in the cleft of her sun-tanned

chin. She nodded and, still with her hand on my shoulder,

steered me across the court.

We went in procession, the women closing ranks around

me, the children still jumping and leaping on the outskirts of

the group, past the water tap, to a shorter mud wall. Here, at

an open doorway, a lovely, quite fleshy young woman awaited

us; she was a startling contrast to the women about me, for she

wore no abayah, only a dress of sky-blue satin patterned with

crescents and stars. She had tied a black fringed scarf around

her head like a cap, leaving her long black curly hair free to

fall loosely around her shoulders.

“Ahlan wusahlan,”
she said and shook hands with me,

laughing in a pleased way, to show perfect teeth. Heir dark

eyes were outlined heavily with kohl.

“Selma, Selma,” called the children, “let us come in too.”

“Away with you,” she said good-naturedly, but made no

attempt to back up her words as she led the way, through her

small inner court, to a screen door where I was ushered into

what seemed to be a big bedroom.

“Go on. Out! Out!” she said to the children, but they

crowded in anyway after the women. There was only one

chair in the room and Selma motioned me to it. I sat down and

found myself face to face with a roomful of women and

children, squatting opposite me on the mat-covered floor and

staring up at me intently.

Selma had taken my abayah and hung it on a peg near the

door. “You won’t need it here,” she said, pointing to herself,

although she was the only woman there without it. She sat

down at my feet. I felt uncomfortable sitting in a chair while

everyone else sat on the floor, so I got up and sat down on the

floor with them.

Selma looked upset and leaped to her feet.

“No, no, the chair is for you,” she said and took my hand to

pull me back up. “You are the guest.”

I sat down in the overstuffed chair once more.

There was a brief pause.

“Ahlam wusahlan,”
said Selma in the silence.

“Ahlan, ahlan wusahlan,”
chorused the roomful of women.

I cleared my throat. “You are Selma?”

“Yes,” she said, laughing again in that pleased and very

attractive way. “How did you know?”

“Everyone knows because you are the favorite wife of the

sheik,” replied an admiring young girl, and tweaked at

Selma’s blue satin skirt. She was a bit embarrassed, but

pleasantly so, and swiped mildly at the girl, who ducked

successfully and then giggled.

“And what is your name?” Selma asked me politely.

“Elizabeth.”

“Alith-a-bess,” she stumbled over the unfamiliar

combination of syllables, and several others tried out the word

and failed.

Selma laughed. “That is a difficult name. We can’t say it.”

“I have another name,” I offered, knowing that diminutive

names were often used here. “It’s B.J.”

She picked that up as “Beeja.” “She is called Beeja,” she

said, and so I was named.

I asked the name of the girl sitting closest to me.

“Basima,” she answered and pointed to her neighbor.

“Fadhila. Hathaya. Fatima. Rajat. Samira. Nejla. Sabiha.

Bassoul. Sahura. Sheddir. Laila. Bahiga.” How would I ever

remember who they were? They looked that day so

remarkably alike in their identical black head scarves, black

chin scarves, and black abayahs. It was months later that I

began to notice the subtle differences that the women

managed to introduce into the costume: Fadhila always wore a

fringed scarf, Laila’s abayahs were edged with black satin

braid; Samira’s chin scarf was fastened on top of her head

with a tiny gold pin in the shape of a lotus blossom.

But the dominant presence in the room, watched by every

eye including mine, was the dazzling Selma, of ample but

well-defined proportions, her air of authority softened by

laughter. Mohammed had told me that Selma had five

children. From her face, I guessed she could not yet be thirty,

but childbearing had already blurred the lines of what once

must have been a remarkable and voluptuous figure. The blue

satin dress was cut Western style, but longer and looser; it

moved in several directions when she moved, for Selma

apparently felt that corsets were unnecessary. Her feet were

bare (she had left her clogs at the door), but each slim, bare

ankle bore a heavy gold bracelet. Gold bracelets were on both

arms, several heavy gold necklaces swung against the blue

satin dress, and long dangling gold filigree earrings caught the

light when she moved. In her gold jewelry and blue satin and

black silk head scarf, her eyes gay and almost black in her

white face (whiter than that of any other woman in the room),

she was attractive by anyone’s standard and must once have

been startlingly beautiful. I felt quite dowdy in my skirt and

sweater and short-cut hair, and was only glad I had put on fake

pearls and gold earrings.

Selma offered me a long thin cigarette, which I refused; she

pressed me again, but I said I did not smoke.

“It is better not to smoke,” said the old woman who had

guided me to Selma’s door. “Haji Hamid does not like women

who smoke.”

Selma looked at the old woman. “Kulthum,” she said, “Haji

Hamid is my husband as well as yours,” and then deliberately

lit cigarettes for herself and several others. In a few minutes

the room was full of sweetish smoke, unlike any cigarette

smoke I had smelled before. Kulthum said nothing, but I

noticed she did not smoke.

I looked around me at the scrupulously clean room. Its

mud-brick walls were newly whitewashed. I pointed upward,

trying to indicate that the beams here were the same as the

ones in my house. This was a fairly complex idea to get

across, for at first the women thought I had seen something

lodged in the beams and everyone peered and whispered. One

woman stood up to get a better look. When they finally

realized what I was struggling to communicate, they laughed,

no doubt at the simple-mindedness of the conversational tidbit

I had contributed. Later I found that every house in the village

was built in exactly the same manner, so obviously my house

had beams like this one!

“Haji Hamid’s bed, the sheik’s,” said a girl, pointing to the

large double bed.

“And Selma’s,” said one of the girls, snickering. She

showed me in mime how they lay together in a close embrace.

Everyone laughed and Selma blushed with pleasure. I glanced

at Kulthum, but her wrinkled face showed nothing.

The intricate ironwork of the high-posted bedstead had been

gilded, suggesting an opulence which was reinforced by the

bright pink satin spread falling in flounces to the floor. The

same pink satin had been used to cover a small radio on the

night table. Over the bed hung an oil painting of a mosque;

above that was a large faded photograph of Emir Feisal, father

of the Iraqi dynasty, on horseback. A pair of large crossed

Iraqi flags topped the king.

Selma noticed me looking about and got up to identify the

many photographs and pictures which covered the walls. The

man with the strong bearded face was Abdul Emir, Hamid’s

father. I had heard of Abdul Emir, for he was a famous

warrior in Iraq who had led the 1933 insurrection of the

Diwaniya tribes against the British-backed Iraqi Government.

The rebellion had been so nearly successful that the British

had been obliged to cut the area’s water supply in order to put

the tribesmen down. According to Bob, people in Diwaniya

still spoke of this event, and it was whispered that the

government continued to punish the tribal confederation by

refusing to pave roads and by delaying electricity and other

modern services as long as possible.

In another photograph Abdul Emir sat in a chair in a

garden, flanked by nurses and surrounded by well-dressed

tribesmen. He looked thin and ill, but he sat rigidly forward,

gripping his knees with long, bony hands. The men in the

picture were leaders of the tribes united in the confederation