Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (3 page)

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.