Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village

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ANCHOR BOOKS EDITIONS, 1969, 1989

Copyright © 1965 by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House,

Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada

Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by

Doubleday in 1965. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with

Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock.

Guests of the Sheik: an ethnography of an

Iraqi village / 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

eISBN: 978-0-307-77378-4

Copyright © 1965 by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1

For My Mother,

Elizabeth Warnock

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Other Books by This Author

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Cast of Characters

PART I

Chapter 1. Night Journey: Arrival in the Village

Chapter 2. The Sheik’s Harem

Chapter 3. Women of the Tribe

Chapter 4. Women of the Town

Chapter 5. Gypsies

Chapter 6. Housekeeping in El Nahra

Chapter 7. Problems of Purdah

Chapter 8. I Meet the Sheik

PART II

Chapter 9. Ramadan

Chapter 10. The Feast

Chapter 11. Moussa’s House

Chapter 12. Weddings

Chapter 13. Salima

Chapter 14. One Wife or Four

PART III

Chapter 15. Summer

Chapter 16. Hussein

Chapter 17. Muharram

Chapter 18. Pilgrimage to Karbala

PART IV

Chapter 19. Autumn

Chapter 20. An Excursion into the Country

PART V

Chapter 21. Winter

Chapter 22. Jabbar Becomes Engaged

Chapter 23. Death in the Tribe and in the Town

Chapter 24. At Home in El Nahra

PART VI

Chapter 25. Back to Baghdad

Chapter 26. Leave-taking

Post Script

Glossary of Arabic Terms

About the Author

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 walls. 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 this page 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 Fernea, 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.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

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 veiled and lived in the strictest seclusion.

No Western woman had ever lived in El Nahra before and

very few had even been seen there, Bob said, which meant I

would be something of a curiosity. I wasn’t sure I wanted to

be. And we were to be guests of Sheik Hamid Abdul Emir el

Hussein, chief of the El Eshadda tribe, who had offered us a

mud house with a walled garden. Our first home, said Bob—a

honeymoon house. But who had ever heard of a honeymoon

house made of mud?

“Hil-lal Diwaniya! Samawa! Bas-ra!” bawled the

conductors.
“Yallah!”
The train began to move past the

station and the line of waiting taxis and horse-drawn carriages.

“Well, we’re off,” announced Bob, a little too heartily. He

motioned to the hovering porter and ordered some beer to

celebrate our departure. “Maybe we’ll have some rain before

we get to Diwaniya.” He stood up to peer out of the window.

I looked out, too—expecting what? A friend to wave

goodbye? Three months ago I had come to Baghdad as a bride

and the city had seemed strange and alien to me then, a place

so far removed from my experience that I had nothing with

which to compare it. Now, headed for an unknown tribal

village, I did not want to miss my last glimpse of Baghdad,

which seemed a dear familiar place.

Clouds hung low and dark in the bit of sky I could see

between the buildings and the townspeople and tribesmen,

carriages, cars and donkey carts that moved more and more

quickly past the train window. The winter night was coming

fast, and as we left the Tigris River behind, the lights were on

in all the hotels along its banks—the Semiramis, the Zia, the

Sindbad. We passed rows of mud-and-mat
serifa
huts with

kerosene lanterns flickering in their doorways, a series of

smoking brick kilns, a mosque with a lighted minaret, more

serifa huts, and then there was nothing to see but the dark

horizon and a few date palms and the wide, empty plain.

“Aren’t you excited?” asked Bob. “I can’t understand you

at all. Here we’ve been waiting and planning all these weeks

for you to come down, dear, and now that we’re on our way at

last, you sit there as calmly as though you were going

shopping or something.”

At least I look calm, I thought; that’s good.

“Yes,” I brought out. “I am excited.” We sipped our beer.

And also scared, I added to myself. I had to get along well in

El Nahra so I could help Bob with his work. But would I be