Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (17 page)

food was good, it was obvious; people ate it, and there was

little of it left. Why should one talk about it? I half realized

this, even at the time, but I needed reassurance.

Finally we heard the men leaving, Bob walking to the gate

with them, and then the sound of his footsteps running back

up the path. He burst into the kitchen quite jubilantly.

“The food was good, B.J.,” he announced, “and what

impressed them even more was that you cooked that dinner all

by yourself.”

“Mohammed helped, you know.”

“Yes, but Sheik Hamid said it would have taken seven or

eight women in his house to produce that much food. He was

quite struck by your industry.”

“Let’s hope he mentions it to
his
women,” I replied.

“Maybe they will begin to think I’m good for something.”

“Well, they’ll hear it one way or another,” said Bob. He

stopped and considered.

“I think the whole thing went off all right, don’t you?” he

asked, and we sat down to review, play by play, the incidents

of the great occasion. We were very pleased with ourselves.

Mohammed continued to wash dishes, glancing up at us only

occasionally with what I thought was an indulgent smile.

PART II

9

Ramadan

Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and penitence, fell in

April that year. We had been well briefed about Ramadan by

our friends in El Nahra, who described the strict fast—no

food, water or cigarettes from sunup to sundown. After the

breaking of the fast, regular religious readings
(krayas)
were

held, conducted by mullahs, men and women religious

teachers who served the segregated sexes. Gay evenings of

visiting, socializing and tea drinking inevitably followed the

krayas and the long days of abstinence. This year particularly,

people welcomed Ramadan, for it was to come in a relatively

cool month. As the lunar calendar, by which the Islamic feasts

are calculated, moves forward through the seasons, Ramadan

falls at a different time each year. When it comes in the

summer, in the turning heat of July or August, it is a great

hardship on the faithful fellahin who must work all day in the

fields without a drink of water or a mouthful of food. Many of

the old and sick die during a summer Ramadan, but if this

happens, the souls are assured of immediate entrance to

heaven, for death has occurred when the believer was fasting

and hence in a state of grace.

The beginning of Ramadan is marked by the appearance of

the new moon. The mullahs in the holy shrines of

Khadhimain, Najaf and Karbala watch the sky for several

days, and when the chief mullah announces that he has indeed

seen the crescent moon, however briefly, the beginning of the

month is officially declared from the minarets of the mosques.

The news travels quickly by radio, by taxi and horseback

throughout the surrounding countryside.

Two nights in a row Mohammed came with the evening jug

of water to announce that he thought Ramadan would begin

the next day; two mornings he appeared to say he had been

mistaken. The third night the skies opened and it poured. Bob

and I had considered waiting up to see if the new moon really

would appear, but the rain discouraged us and we went to bed

early.

In the middle of the night our doorbell began to ring. I

heard it first, an insistent buzzing that went on and on, audible

over the steady beat of the rain on the roof. I woke Bob. Who

could be at the door at this hour? The bell went on buzzing. It

was an eerie sound at three in the morning, in the darkness and

the rain. Finally Bob got up, slipped on rubbers and a raincoat

and went to investigate. No one was there, but the bell

continued to buzz. After standing in the garden for a few

minutes listening to the noise, Bob suddenly realized that the

rain had short-circuited the bell. He tried to fix it and failed,

and finally, drenched and furious, he simply ripped out the

connection. The bell stopped ringing. He dried himself off and

got back into bed, grumbling and annoyed. We fell asleep

almost at once. Perhaps a half hour later we were startled

awake by a thunderous noise of drum beats, rifle shots, shouts

and a loud knocking on the door. Bob sat bolt upright in bed.

“Don’t go out there,” I suggested, quite frightened.

Bob deliberated for a moment. He too had been startled by

the unaccustomed noises and also had just spent fifteen

minutes in the muck trying to disconnect the doorbell, but

finally he put on his wet raincoat and rubbers again. At the

door he paused, rummaged in the cupboard until he found a

hammer, and headed out.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“Well,” he smiled sheepishly, and I realized he was

probably a bit uncertain about what he might find. We had no

weapon in the house.

Out he slogged into the pouring rain, while I sat in bed

shivering, hugging the blankets around me, and listening for

telltale sounds. The knocking had stopped, but the rifle shots

continued and the drum beating became even louder.

In five minutes he was back, laughing. He tossed the

hammer on the table. “What is it?” I asked, but he sat at the

table while the water dripped down his face, and laughed and

laughed.

“It’s Ramadan,” he announced. “The mullah must have

seen the new moon, and the old man up the alley is making

sure that everyone knows it.”

“But why the knocking on our door?” I persisted.

“He’s knocking on every door,” Bob answered, “to remind

the people to get up and eat breakfast before the sun rises.

He’s the neighborhood alarm clock.”

Bob dried himself once more and climbed into bed, still

smiling to himself. “You were really frightened, I think,” he

chided me.

“Well, what did you carry that hammer out for?” I answered

accusingly, and he laughed again. We fell asleep and didn’t

wake until Mohammed knocked on our door. It was half past

eight.

“It’s Ramadan,” announced Mohammed.

“Yes, we know,” said Bob.

Ramadan had been under way for a week when Mohammed

asked me if I would like to go to an evening kraya with his

sister Sherifa. It would be a big kraya, he said, held in the

house of a distant relative who lived on the other side of the

canal, with the
ahl-es-suq
, or people of the market. Bob had

already been to several krayas for men, and I was eager to go,

for the women talked about the krayas as great social as well

as religious events.

Fadhila, Sherifa and several younger girls came for me.

They were not wearing their face veils, which surprised me, as

I knew we would be crossing the bridge and passing the suq,

and the tribal women did not walk unveiled in that area.

However, I had underestimated their ingenuity. They did not

want, and did not need, to wear their face veils on the

settlement side of the canal, so they waited until we reached

the bridge before pausing to don their veils.

We crossed the bridge, turned right into an alley

immediately in order to avoid the suq, and again into still

another alley where we knocked on a dark door and were

admitted into a large courtyard. Electric lights were strung

along the mud walls which faced the court, illuminating the

scene of preparations for the kraya. The earth court was

carpeted, and mats were now being laid down in straight rows

and covered with white sheets for the expected guests. Two

women squatted in a far corner, filling with cigarettes a large

plastic box painted with colored flowers. Sherifa and Fadhila

went to the women and embraced them, kissing them on both

cheeks. I shook hands, we were offered cigarettes and then led

to a mat in the center of the court, near the chair where the

mullah was to sit. Fadhila told me she and Sherifa were placed

next to the mullah as a special honor, because they were

descendants of the Prophet.

Against one side of the court which lay in shadow stood a

rickety wooden bed where a woman lay, wrapped from head

to foot in her abayah. She occasionally shifted position and

moaned. Near the bed were five or six clay water jars, from

which the young girls of the household were filling small

aluminum bowls. These bowls of water were passed around,

with the cigarettes, to the growing number of guests.

The kraya, Sherifa said, would begin about half past eight.

It was still only seven-thirty, but fifteen or twenty women and

numerous children were already present. I had never seen any

of the women of ahl-es-suq before, the shopkeepers’ and

artisans’ wives, and I watched them as they filed in, greeted

friends, and kissed with deference the older women present.

Babies slept peacefully in their mothers’ arms, babies

wrapped in yards of white or printed flannelette, and the

toddlers sat quietly, cross-legged and solemn beside their

elders. Only one child was crying, its abnormally large head

lolling against its mother’s shoulder. She jostled it constantly,

but it continued to howl. No one else seemed to notice, for the

women were too busy talking to each other.

For the occasion, young and old had donned their best

black. There were some beautiful abayahs of heavy silk crepe,

and a few of the black head scarves were heavily fringed.

Many wore a wide-sleeved full net or sheer black dress, which

Sherifa identified as the
hashmiya
, the ceremonial gown worn

for krayas and similar religious services. Underneath was a

hint of color; as the women seated themselves cross-legged

and arranged their hashmiyas over their knees, bright satin

petticoats shimmered through the smoky net: green, blue, red.

They wore black stockings, and the rows of clogs left at the

door were almost all black.

This attractive yet austerely dressed company was suddenly

jolted by a new arrival, whose abayah had been pushed back

over her shoulder to reveal a sheer hashmiya surprisingly not

black, but green and white over yellow. Heavily made up, all

her bangles and necklaces jingling, the woman flounced in,

looking defiantly from side to side. The young girls gathered

around her to finger the material of the showy hashmiya, but

the conservative old matrons, without jewelry and without eye

make-up, continued to smoke or chat, not even lifting a

hennaed finger in her direction.

There was a stir: the mullah had arrived, a tall woman with

a hard, strong face, carrying worn copies of the Koran and her

own Book of Krayas. Everyone made way for her as she

strode across the court and seated herself ceremoniously in the

chair near us, the only chair in the room. Sherifa and Fadhila

rose to kiss her hand, and then she spied me and looked again,

narrowing her eyes. I nodded politely, not feeling that it was

appropriate for me to indulge in the customary hand kissing

since I was an unbeliever. She addressed a couple of questions

to me in a loud, shrill voice which I did not understand, but

the hostess stepped in and explained that I was the guest of the

El Eshadda; Sherifa added that I wanted to see a kraya and

they had invited me. The mullah nodded, said “
Ahlan

wusahlan”
perfunctorily and looked away. More women and

children were pouring into the court; we were forced to move

over and make room for two young women who were old

friends of Sherifa and Fadhila. The four of them chattered

together until the mullah interrupted rudely and asked Fadhila

if she was pregnant Fadhila said no.

“Why not?” demanded the mullah.

Fadhila, obviously stricken, murmured, “God knows best,”

in a low voice.

I thought it a cruel question, for Fadhila had been married

for seven years, and everyone in the village knew she was

barren.

Finally, when it seemed that not a single person more could

be jammed into the court, the mullah stood up and clapped her

hands to quiet the crowd. The two young women who sat near

us took their places on each side of her (they were novices, I

later found out, in training to be mullahs themselves) and the

kraya began.

The mullah sat down and the two young girls stood to lead

the congregation in a long, involved song with many

responses. Gradually the women began to beat their breasts

rhythmically, nodding their heads and beating in time to the

pulse of the song, and occasionally joining in the choruses, or

supplying spontaneous responses such as “A-hoo-ha!” or a

long-drawn-out “Ooooooh!” This phase lasted perhaps ten

minutes, the girls sank down into their places, and the mullah

arose to deliver a short sermon. She began retelling the story

of the killing and betrayal of the martyr Hussein, which is told

every night during Ramadan and is the beginning of the

important part of the kraya. At first two or three sobs could be