Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (51 page)

I smiled to myself. “The birds have come back,” I said to

Laila, and started to explain. Before I had finished, someone

began banging steadily on the gate.

“It’s Ali,” called Fatima. “The taxi is waiting outside the

mudhif.”

My bag had already been passed out to Mohammed and

stored in the trunk. The women had gathered at the door of the

compound, and I, determined to be gay, had started down the

line to shake hands, murmur traditional farewells and thanks

for their hospitality. When I came to Selma, heavy and clumsy

with the child she was carrying, she smiled politely in a set

way and then as I smiled back, her face changed and she threw

her arms around me and cried aloud. At this my own reserve

broke and I found myself weeping, passing from one abayah-

clad figure to another in a welter of embraces and tears.

“Go, go, Mr. Bob is waiting,” hissed Ali from the other side

of the doorway, and I flung myself out the door, past the

mudhif where the tribesmen stood and into the taxi. I had only

a glimpse of Bob’s startled face, of Nour bending to shake his

hand, before the door was closed, the taxi started, and I heard

behind me, echoed in my own sobs, the sound of a swelling

cry of ululation. It came from the compound. In that high wail,

the expression of joy or excitement or grief which is

inherently the women’s own, they were bidding me goodbye.

Post Script

My husband has just returned from a brief business trip to

Iraq, the first visit either of us has made since leaving in 1958.

Bob went back to El Nahra, wondering apprehensively how

our friends had fared during the revolutions which have taken

place in the six years we have been gone. He found the village

much the same. Sheik Hamid has weathered the political

storms fairly well; the life of the tribe seemed substantially

unchanged. The mudhif still dominates the settlement, but the

sheik has also built himself a modern brick guest house,

behind the harem and near the palm grove. A regular bus

service links the village with Diwaniya and the old mud road

has been raised and graded. A new intermediate school for

boys has been built. Otherwise, except for the ease and speed

of his trip from Baghdad, Bob said he felt as though he had

been away from El Nahra for six months, not six years.

Naturally Bob did not see my friends the women, but just

before he left, an extraordinary bundle was delivered to him,

together with three letters for me. The bundle contained gifts:

from Moussa’s house came a large plastic bag, carefully

stitched together at both ends on a home sewing machine.

Inside was a cotton skirt made by Laila, a pink embroidered

blouse from Fatima and Basima, and lengths of material for

my children from Um Fatima. The women of Mohammed’s

house, Sherifa, Medina and Fadhila, sent a hiriz, a charm of

gold set with tiny turquoises, “to hang from the hair of your

youngest child and protect her from the Evil Eye, as is our

custom here.” Selma sent a lovely gold ring, set with five

delicate seed pearls.

The letters were full of news, which supplemented the

information I have received over the years in letters from

Laila.

Sherifa, the deserted wife, has been divorced and has

married again, “to a good man this time,” she writes. She has a

son.

Mohammed is in the Iraqi Army, an officers’ orderly.

Abad, the boy who used to study his lessons under the street

lamp, is doing well in his last year of secondary school in

Diwaniya.

Jabbar and his new bride Suheir were both tragically killed

in an auto accident on the Baghdad-Diwaniya road, only five

months after their marriage.

Hussein, our guard, has a construction job in El Nahra. His

wife Sajjida has at last borne a healthy boy.

Ahmed, Abdulla’s son, married Haji Hamid’s fair-skinned

daughter Sabiha and works in a bank in Diwaniya.

Laila herself is still unmarried and sews at home.

Sanaa did marry Haji Hamid’s son Ahmar. She has a son.

Nejla got her fat man, a rich merchant in Diwaniya. “She

can eat all the rice she wants,” reports Laila, “and she has a

very sweet daughter.”

Basima is now Sitt Basima, principal of a girls’ primary

school in a nearby village.

Selma has had three children since I left, one a boy. Bob

saw this little son of Selma’s dressed up in an American

cowboy suit Sheik Hamid had brought back from Lebanon; he

pronounced him the best-looking of all of Hamid’s good-

looking boys. “Dear sister, Um Laura Ann,” begins Selma’s

letter. (Since I am a mother now too, she greets me as the

mother of my oldest child.) “My dear, I was very much

pleased to see the pictures of your children which Mr. Bob

brought. I pray they are in good health. When will you be

coming to see us? All of the family send our love and we are

kissing the eyes of your children. Your sister, Um Feisal.”

Cairo, 1964

GLOSSARY OF ARABIC TERMS

aba
– a long cloak worn traditionally by Iraqi men.

abayah
– the long black cloak worn traditionally by Iraqi

women.

abu
– father.

agal
– a dark rope which holds an Arab tribesman’s head scarf

(kaffiyeh) in place.

ahlan wusahlan
– welcome.

ahl-es-suq
– people of the market.

Allah wiyach
– God be with you (feminine form).

asha
– woman’s head scarf.

ayb
– shame.

ayyamak sa’ida
– May your day be happy (a greeting used on

feast days in Iraq).

baksheesh
– a tip.

bayt, byut
– house, houses.

bint-amm
– female cousin, father’s brother’s daughter.

bint-khaal
– female cousin, mother’s brother’s daughter.

chobi
– a line dance performed by men or boys.

dabka
– a man’s line dance.

dafna
– burying ceremony.

dishdasha
– the basic garment which is part of the street wear

of both sexes in Iraq; a long garment made like a nightshirt.

diwan
– reception room.

effendi
– originally a Turkish civil servant; now generally an

educated man who wears Western clothes.

el hamdillah
– thanks be to God.

enshallah
– God willing.

faisanjan
– a Persian chicken dish, with walnut oil and the

juice of dried promegranate seeds.

fellah, fellahin
– farmer; farmers.

fiimaanila
– goodbye; literally, “go with God’s blessing.”

fils
– a coin worth about three cents; 100 fils make up the Iraqi

sterling pound or dinar, worth $2.85.

foota
– scarf; used by Iraqi women to mean chin scarf.

gaymar
– the butterfat remaining on top of water-buffalo milk

after it has been boiled and cooled.

ghee
– clarified butter.

haji, hijjiya –
terms of address for the man or woman who has

completed the pilgrimage to Mecca.

hajj
– the pilgnmage to Mecca.

halal
– ritually permissible, as opposed to haram.

haram
– ritually forbidden; sin.

hashmiya
– a loose gown worn by southern Iraqi women on

ceremonial occasions.

hilwa
– attractive (fem.),
hiluu
(masc.).

hiriz
– a charm or amulet.

hosa
– a tribal war dance of southern Iraq.

ibn-amm
– male cousin, father’s brother’s son.

ibn-khaal
– male cousin, mother’s brother’s son.

Iid el-Fitr – the
feast of fast-breaking, following Ramadan.

Iid el-Adha
– the feast of sacrifice; the feast of the tenth day of

the month of pilgrimage.

imam
– a religious leader; may also refer to the shrine or the

tomb of the religious leader.

kaffiyeh
– the head scarf worn by Arab tribesmen.

khubuz
– flat wheat or barley bread.

khubuz laham
– flat bread with meat and spices baked into it.

kohl
– powdered antimony, used as eye make-up.

kraya
– a religious reading, common in Shiite communities.

kubba
– a dish common throughout the Middle East: a paste of

rice, or of meat and cracked wheat, is filled with meat,

onions, spices, raisins, then fried or baked.

leban
– in Iraq, yogurt mixed with water.

maasalaama
– farewell; literally, go in safety.

mashallah
– what wonders God hath willed; i.e., wonderful!

may khallif
– never mind.

minbar
– the niche in the mosque which faces toward Mecca.

mudhif
– tribal guest house in southern Iraq.

muezzin
– the man who, from the minaret of the mosque, calls

the Moslem faithful to prayer.

Muharram
– month in the Islamic lunar calendar during which

Hussein and Ali, the grandsons of the prophet Mohammed,

were slain.

mukhtar
– title given to the man in charge of the market.

mullah
– Moslem religious teacher, man or woman.

mushtamal
– garden cottage in town.

muwadhifin
– government civil servants.

nitwanness
– we are here to enjoy ourselves.

oud – a
stringed instrument, like a lute.

patcha
– Middle Eastern dish, made by boiling the sheep’s

feet, head and stomach.

purdah – an
Indian term generally meaning the seclusion

of women in separate quarters.

Ramadan
– Moslem month of fasting.

salaam alaykum
– peace be unto you.

sammoon haar
– hot bread.

Sayid – a
descendant of the prophet Mohammed.

serifa huts
– rough makeshift houses built of mud and mats.

shabih
– passion play.

Shiite – a
sect of Islam; the followers of Ali.

shlonich
– how are you? (feminine form)

sirdab
– summer cellar; a room dug into the ground for greater

coolness.

Sitt
– term of polite address used for an educated woman.

Sunni
– the largest sect of Islam.

suq
– market.

sura – a
chapter or section of the Koran.

taaziya
– mourning ceremony, including a procession of

young men who ritually flagellate themselves during the

Shiite commemoration of Ashur, the tenth of Muharram,

day when Hussein and Ali were slain.

tamurhindi – a
datelike fruit from India; used in Iraqi cooking

and to make a cold drink.

tiji daayman
– come often.

tikka
– grilled lamb meat.

um
– mother.

yallah
– let’s go.

Note:

Following the suggestion of the publisher, any Arabic words

which appear in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary are spelled

accordingly.

To simplify the problem of transliterating Arabic, I have

omitted, in the Glossary and throughout the book, most of the

diacritical marks usually used to indicate special Arabic

sounds which do not occur in English. The “kh” sound is

roughly equivalent to “ch” in the German “ich;” “gh” to the

“gh” in “Ugh;” “ch” is hard, as in “church;” “dh,” as in

“mudhif,” is close to the “th” sound in “the.”

ELIZABETH WARNOCK FERNEA

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea taught English and Middle Eastern

Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She also produced

a number of films about the lives of Arab women. She is the

author of
Guests of the Sheik, A Street in Marrakech, A View of

the Nile
, and with her husband, Robert A. Fernea,
The Arab

World
. She died in 2008.

Books by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Remembering Childhood in the Middle East: Memoirs

from a Century of Change

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village

The Arab World: Forty Years of Change

(with Robert A. Fernea)

The Struggle for Peace: Israelis and Palestinians

(with Mary Evelyn Hocking)

A Street in Marrakech

Children of the Muslim Middle East

Nubian Ethnographies

(with Robert A. Fernea)

A View of the Nile

Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak

(with Basima Qattan Bezirgan)

Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of

Change

In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global

Journey

Thank You

Want More