Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (18 page)

heard, then perhaps twenty women had covered their heads

with their abayahs and were weeping; in a few minutes the

whole crowd was crying and sobbing loudly. When the mullah

reached the most tragic parts of the story, she would stop and

lead the congregation in a group chant, which started low and

increased in volume until it reached the pitch of a full-fledged

wail. Then she would stop dead again, and the result would

be, by this time, a sincere sobbing and weeping as the women

broke down after the tension of the wail.

I sat silently, frozen by the intensity of it all, and hoping

that none of the women, and especially the mullah, would

notice that I was sitting without beating my breast, without

chanting or weeping—in fact without participating at all. I

contemplated throwing my abayah over my head, as all the

other women had done, so the hawk-eyed mullah would not be

able to tell whether I was crying or not, but by this time I

thought she was sufficiently carried away by the force of her

own words so that she wouldn’t have cared. I was right. Real

tears were coursing down that hard, shrewd face as she told,

for the hundred thousandth time probably, the story of the

death of the martyr.

Abruptly the weeping stopped, the women were drying their

eyes and everyone stood up. I nearly tripped and fell as I tried

to rise, for my abayah was caught under me and one leg had

fallen asleep in the cramped position in which I had been

sitting for the past hour. Sherifa caught my shoulder as I

stumbled—fortunately, for the mullah was beginning the third

stage of the kraya. Flanked by her two novices, she stood in

the center of the court rocking forward with her whole body at

each beat, slowly but regularly, until the crowds of women

formed concentric circles around her, and they too rocked in

unison, singing and beating their breasts. Three older women

joined the mullah in the center, throwing aside their chin veils

so they might slap their bared chests.

“A-hoo-ha!” sounded the responses.

All her veils flying as she rocked, the mullah struck her

book with her right hand to indicate a faster tempo, and the

novices clapped and watched to make sure that all were

following correctly. I shrank back out as the circles of women

began to move counterclockwise in a near-ceremonial dance.

A step to the left, accompanied by head-nodding, breast-

beating, the clapping of the novices, the slap of the mullah’s

hard hand against the book, and the responses of “A-hoo-ha!”

“
Ya Hussein,”
they cried. The mullah increased the tempo

again, the cries mounted in volume and intensity, the old

women in the center bobbed in time to the beat, there was a

loud slap against the Koran, a high long-drawn-out chant from

the mullah, and everyone stopped in her tracks. The three old

ladies who had bared their chests readjusted their veils, and

many of the women stood silently for a moment, their eyes

raised, their open hands held upward in an attitude of prayer

and supplication. But the mullah was already conferring with

her novices. The kraya was over.

The women began to stream out, smiling and chattering,

drawing their veils over their faces and bidding each other

good night. Sherifa was laughing with one of the novices.

Fadhila led me over to our hostess, where we sat down for a

final chat and cigarette before departing. It was hard to believe

that these decorous and dignified ladies were the same women

who, five minutes ago, had thrown themselves into a ritual of

sorrow for the martyr. I was quite overcome by the episode

and found it difficult to respond easily to the conversational

overtures being made by my hostess.

Finally we rose to go. It was ten o’clock. The old woman on

the bed in the corner, I noticed, had not stirred throughout the

whole ceremony. As we began to leave, a crowd of little girls

surrounded me, grabbed me, pulled my abayah apart to see my

dress and stared rudely into my face. “Haven’t you ever seen a

woman before?” asked the hostess, quite annoyed, trying to

hustle the children out, but they would not go. Sherifa tried to

push through, but the crowd of girls was too dense around me.

At this the mullah became enraged, and shoved her towering,

threatening figure through the crowd, setting on the little girls,

beating them with her fists and with the Koran and sending

them screaming and hollering, half in pain, half in excitement,

out into the night. I thanked her. The women also were

amused by this display of the mullah’s temper, and talked

about it on the way home, imitating to each other her gestures

with the Koran and laughing among themselves.

“Was the kraya good?” asked Sherifa.

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“This mullah is a strong one; she talks well,” she said

appreciatively, and I agreed.

Almost every evening during Ramadan I went to krayas—at

the sheik’s house, at Laila’s house, at Abdulla’s and

Mohammed’s. The tone of each kraya depended on the

personality of the mullah, but the basic ritual remained the

same: The
latmya
invocation with preliminary chant and

breast-beating; the sermon, different for each day of Ramadan,

but followed by the telling of Hussein’s betrayal
(hadith);
the

latmya again, at a faster pace, with the circles of women

moving together in strict tempo, the spontaneous cries and

wails, the profession of inspired penitence by the few women

who join the mullah in the inner circle and finally the
da-a
, or

moment of silence and prayer at the end. This final moment is

considered to be the climax of the kraya, I was told, for then,

in a state of purification, the women may ask great favors

from Allah and expect to have them granted. Often these

favors are requested conditionally. A woman may pray for a

son, and vow that if her prayer is granted, she will hold krayas

in her house during Ramadan for a stipulated number of years.

Such vows are sacred, and if for some reason the woman

cannot fulfill them, she may be released only by a gift to the

mosque or to the mullah.

The krayas are comparatively recent innovations into Shiite

ritual, dating from the sixteenth century, when the Ottoman

Turks conquered Mesopotamia and imposed their sometimes

harsh and unjust rule on the people of Iraq. The Turks were

Moslems, but Sunni Moslems; they were hated doubly by the

Shiites, as conquerors and as representatives of a rival sect.

The krayas had begun as protest, and as they gained in

popularity and acceptance throughout the Shiite world,

became the means by which the Shiites asserted their religious

differences from the Turks and, by implication, their

dissatisfaction with the Ottoman regime.

Today the krayas still provide religious fulfillment for both

men and women, and they also seem important as social

occasions in the lives of the women, who seldom congregate

in large groups. Women gather for two hours before a kraya is

scheduled to begin, and stay long after the mullah has

departed, talking and smoking. No refreshments other than

cigarettes are ever offered.

Women consider it a great honor to hold krayas in their

houses. Usually extra money is needed, to pay for the

cigarettes and to offer a gift to the mullah for her services, and

this money must either come out of the woman’s own savings

or be granted to her by her husband. Often the presents to the

mullahs are made in kind. Laila told me that they always gave

two chickens and a gallon can of clarified butter to the mullah

on the two great feasts, and in return the mullah would

officiate at several krayas, either during Ramadan or

Muharram. But Sherifa and Fadhila might ask the mullah to

come for nothing, for it is considered an honor for the mullah

to hold a kraya in the house of a Sayid.

Mullahs are not necessarily Sayids themselves. However,

the vocation of mullah is usually handed down within a

family. Widows, or young girls who do not expect to marry,

often choose to become mullahs. It is a highly esteemed

profession, and profitable as well—a gifted woman can

support an entire family.

Women mullahs receive their training from older mullahs in

their native villages, going regularly for lessons from the time

of puberty. They learn to read and write and recite the Koran,

they are instructed in the ritual of the krayas, and begin to

memorize the Koranic
suras
, the stories, the historical

background which they incorporate eventually into their own

Book of Krayas. An educated Shiite mullah has a

sophisticated and well-documented source book which she

uses to conduct her krayas. The tribal and village mullahs

depend on legend and oral tradition to supplement the

standard material employed in the sermons and rituals.

A Shiite friend of mine in Baghdad, a girl who was teaching

in the College of Liberal Arts, once told me that her sister

wanted very much to become a mullah, but their father would

not allow it. He felt first, that it was old-fashioned, and also,

with many educated Shiites, that such special vocations and

ceremonies accentuated and aggravated the differences among

the sects of Islam, and that only if the bitterness between

groups in the Arab world, and particularly religious groups,

could be dissipated would Arab unity be possible. My friend

agreed with her father, but she admitted that she still attended

krayas during Ramadan and Muharram.

Why did she go? The memories of childhood were still very

strong, she said, and she found the krayas a common meeting

ground for herself, estranged from the old ways, and her

sisters and cousins, who were still traditional. She enjoyed the

reading of the Koran which followed the krayas. Each of the

women present would take a turn at reading the suras, which

gave everyone an opportunity to participate personally in the

proceedings.

The krayas in El Nahra were not often followed by Koranic

readings, simply because most of the women could not read.

Only at Laila’s house, where the two middle girls, Laila and

Basima, were in the sixth class of the girls’ primary school,

did this take place. The women of the settlement told me that

the krayas at Laila’s house were always good, because of the

Koranic readings at the end. It was considered a great treat:

Basima would read, and Laila, and finally their mother, Um

Fatima, would take the Koran and read a few of the most

important suras. As a girl in her father’s house, Um Fatima

had been taught the rudiments of reading by a mullah, and she

still retained this limited ability. Laila was competent, but

Basima was better than either. More intelligent than Laila and

better educated than her mother, Basima seemed to sense the

power of the words she was reading. They were not just

groups of characters to her, and as she sat on the mat and read

sura after sura in a slow, expressive voice, women would

shake their heads, murmur to themselves, or raise their open

hands to heaven in the traditional gestures of supplication.

When she had finished, there would be a pause, a sort of hush

before the women sighed, gathered their abayahs around them,

and prepared to leave.

10

The Feast

Ramadan was drawing to a close, and the three-day Iid el-Fitr

(the feast of fast-breaking) drew near. This year the end of

Ramadan coincided with the winter harvest, so the festival

was to be celebrated in a season of plenty. Almost everyone

would be able to afford new clothes, traditional for the

occasion, and the three seamstresses in the settlement worked

far into the night.

For the three days of the Iid the sheik’s mudhif would be

the scene of tribal feasting. All members of the El Eshadda

were welcome, in fact expected, to visit the mudhif at least

once during the Iid as a tacit demonstration of their loyalty to

the sheik. Such large tribal gatherings took place only at this

Iid and the Iid el-Adha, which follows Muharram. But then

the men assembled, as they had in the past before wars and

raids of conquest, to sing old songs of the tribe, and, in the

measures of the ancient warriors’ dance or
hosa
, reiterate their

pride in the El Eshadda and its present chief. Climax of the

gathering was an enormous noonday meal in the mudhif,

provided by the sheik with the aid of contributions from other

tribesmen.

The banquet, for from 200 to 800 men, was prepared by the

women of the sheik’s house, assisted by the daughters and

wives and servants of his brothers. The women talked of

nothing else for weeks beforehand, and when the first day of

the feast dawned, I hurried up to the compound to see what

was happening.