Guests of the Sheik
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Anchor Books
A delightful, extremely well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, Guests of the Sheik is an account of the author’s two-year stay in the tiny rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq. To help her anthropologist husband gather data, Mrs. Fernea agreed to dress only in the all-enveloping black veils of the women of the harem. Although she shared a small mud-brick cottage with her husband, her daily life was spent only with the women of the town, for in this polygamous society there existed no social communication between the sexes. The hardships were many but the rewards greater, especially for the readers of this extraordinary narrative: this volume gives a unique insight into a part of Middle Eastern life seldom seen by the West—a life of the women who have no outwardly apparent role in society, but whose thoughts and ideas are now emerging with force and helping to shape modern Middle Eastern society.
Contents
Introduction / ix
Cast of Characters / xi
Part I
1. Night Journey: Arrival in the Village / 3
2. The Sheik’s Harem / 34
3. Women of the Tribe / 40
4. Women of the Town / 49
5. Gypsies / 57
6. Housekeeping in El Nahra / 65
7. Problems of Purdah / 83
8. I Meet the Sheik
Part II
9. Ramadan / 105
10. The Feast / 116
11. Moussa’s House / 126
12. Weddings / 136
13. Salima / 150
14. One Wife or Four / 161
Part III
15. Summer / 173
16. Hussein / 188
17. Muharram / 194
18. Pilgrimage to Karbala / 216
Part IV
19. Autumn / 251
20. An Excursion into the Country / 256
Part V
21. Winter / 269
22. Jabbar Becomes Engaged / 281
33. Death in the Tribe and in the Town / 289
34. At Home in El Nahra / 294
Part VI
25. Bach to Baghdad / 305
26. Leave-taking / 315
Post Script / 332
Glossary of Arabic Terms / 334
Index / 338
INTRODUCTION
I spent the first two years of my married life in a tribal settlement on the edge of a village in southern Iraq. My husband, a social anthropologist, was doing research for his doctorate from the University of Chicago.
This book is a personal narrative of those years, especially of my life with the veiled women who, like me, lived in mud-brick houses surrounded by high mud Avails.
I am not an anthropologist. Before going to Iraq, I knew no Arabic and almost nothing of the Middle East, its religion and its culture. I have tried to set down faithfully my reactions to a new world; any inaccuracies are my own.
The village, the tribe and all of the people who appear in the following pages are real, as are the incidents. However, I have changed the names so that no one may be embarrassed, although I doubt that any of my women friends in the village will ever read my book.
Without their friendship and hospitality, and that of other Iraqi and American friends too numerous to mention, this book quite literally would never have been written. I want to thank my friend Nicholas B. Millet for drafting the sketch-map which has been used on pages 20 and 21 in this book. I owe a special debt of gratitude to two people. Audrey Walz (Mrs. Jay Walz) read the incomplete manuscript and advised me to finish it. Her enthusiasm, together with her sound judgment and critical ear, have aided the book’s progress immeasurably. My husband, Robert Femea, first encouraged me to write Guests of the Sheik. His interest and his intellectual honesty helped me face the realities of living in El Nahra and, later, of trying to shape that experience into the book which follows.
Guests of the Sheik
Part I
1
Night Journey: Arrival in the Village
The night train from Baghdad to Basra was already hissing and creaking in its tracks when Bob and I arrived at the platform.
Clouds of steam billowing from the engine hung suspended in the cold January air as we hurried across, laden with suitcases, bundles, string bags and an angel-food cake in a cardboard box, a farewell present from a thoughtful American friend. We were on the last lap of our journey, and I found myself half dreading and half anticipating the adventure we had come almost ten thousand miles to begin.
“Diwaniya! Diwaniya!”
“Those are the coaches we want," said Bob, taking my arm and steering me down the platform past crowds of tribesmen arguing heatedly or sitting in tight quiet groups, their wives swathed in black to the eyebrows, with children on hip and shoulder; past the white-collar Iraqi effendis in Western suits and past the shouting German tourists.
An attendant in an ill-fitting khaki wool uniform helped us board and guided us to a compartment, where he dusted the worn leather seats with his coat sleeve. We sat down. I found my stomach was churning and I glanced quickly at Bob to see how he was taking the long-awaited departure.
I knew he was nervous about my reception in El Nahra, the remote village where we were now headed and where he had been living and working as an anthropologist for the past three months. He was no more nervous than I, who knew little of El Nahra except that no one spoke English there, that the people were of the conservative Shiite sect of Islam, and that the women were heavily …
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Guests of the Sheik
Anchor Books
Anchor Books
Published by Doubleday
Guests of the Sheik
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
Doubleday
New York - London - Toronto - Sydney - Auckland
An Anchor Book
Published by Doubleday
a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103
Anchor Books, Doubleday, and the portrayal of an anchor
are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
Guests of the Sheik was originally published in hardcover by
Doubleday in 1965. The Anchor Books edition is
published by arrangement with Doubleday.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Femea, Elizabeth Warnock.
Guests of the Sheik: an ethnography of an
Iraqi village I Elizabeth Warnock Fernea.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: 1969.
1. Women—Iraq—Nahr. 2. Nahr(Iraq)—
Social life and customs.
I. Title.
HQ1735.Z9N344 / 1989 / 89-27687
306'.09567'5—dc20 / CIP
ISBN 0-385-01485-6
Copyright © 1965 by Elizabeth Warnock Femea
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Anchor Books Edition: 1969, 1989
RRC
