Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (25 page)

loveliness balladeers in any country might sing. Her face was

almost perfect, sharply cut like a precious stone, with elegant

hollows and planes. In contrast, her slight body had an

unfinished look; she was full-breasted, yet had the thin arms

and knobby knees of a child. Even the face, despite the full

lips and deep-set black eyes framed by sooty lashes and

“eyebrows like swords,” in the words of the Arab poet, was

quite empty of any expression other than genuine childish

enthusiasm at the presence of guests. She and Laila giggled

together over past school mischief and busily spat out

pumpkin seed husks onto the floor. Salima was not completely

unknowing, however. She wore a tight-bodiced dress of wine-

red velvet, rumpled and somewhat spotted, but the color gave

luster to her long black hair and warmed her dusky skin with a

glow like a shine on an apple. And though she wore no eye

make-up, I noticed her hands and feet were dyed with henna

and she had stained her lips with brown-red bark juice, the

favorite lip rouge of the village coquettes.

Neighbor women came and endless numbers of small

children, to sit and stare and chatter awhile. A pail of gray ice,

in which nestled several bottles of Pepsi-Cola, was handed in

from the courtyard. Everyone exclaimed at Salima’s

extravagance, for ice was expensive in the heat of June, but

she laughed and said it was for her dear friend Laila and her

guest. Laila blushed and looked terribly pleased. Little sister

brought tea; the baby woke and Salima nursed it. I looked to

Laila for a sign of departure, but she sat contentedly on the

sofa as though she might never move again. The talk circled

and eddied around me, and I looked from one face to

another—a neighbor woman, worn and drawn; little sister,

big-eyed, with traces of Salima’s beauty; the fat baby, drowsy

with milk and warmth; and Salima herself, the perfect face set

on the half-grown body. I remembered the story of Salima’s

marriage, which had been the talk of El Nahra for more than a

year.

Khalil was not related to Salima, and that was the first

surprising thing. Within the El Eshadda such a union would

have been unheard of, for tribesmen boasted with pride that

they never let their womenfolk marry outside the kin group or

the larger circle of the tribe. Among the merchants of the

village the codes were less strict, but still the preferred

marriage was that between first cousins on the father’s side.

The boy always had first claim to one of his father’s brother’s

daughters
(bint-amm)
, and if for some reason the girl was to

marry another relative, the boy cousin
(ibn-amm)
first had to

relinquish his claim.

Salima had been a beautiful child, and Khalil had noticed

her playing near her father’s shop and scurrying through the

village on errands for her mother. One day she grew up and

donned the abayah. Like many little girls in their first abayah,

she went to extremes, covering her face with a fold of the

abayah whenever she passed men or boys, keeping the

garment tightly about her at all times. Yet the abayah did not

cover the wide black eyes, and as Salima walked, the swishing

folds of the garment would often part to reveal a slim ankle

bound in silver, or a delicate arm as Salima reached for the

hand of her younger sister. Khalil fell in love and waited,

Laila said, for four years until Salima was fourteen. Then,

fearful that her father would marry her to her cousin, he

decided on a bold course of action. Without consulting his

mother (another unusual circumstance which had, in the end,

worked to his detriment, for the old woman was furious and

took out her fury on the new bride), he went to Salima’s father

and formally requested her hand.

According to Laila, Salima’s father had been confused and

perplexed by Khalil’s action. No daughter of his had ever

married outside the family before. True, Salima’s ibnamm was

an older man and already married, but he still had a claim on

the girl, and even if he agreed to give her up, there were still

many eligible young men in the family who would have been

happy to pay a large bride price for his beautiful daughter.

Also, Salima was very young. Her father, loving her as he did,

felt she should not be married until she was seventeen at least.

Yet he was honored by Khalil’s request. As a schoolteacher,

Khalil was a step above Salima’s family of artisans and

shopkeepers. In all of El Nahra there was not a young man of

better prospects—a devout Moslem, a good son, a respected

man in the community, serious, polite, advancing socially and,

most importantly, assured of an income for the rest of his life.

He asked Khalil to wait until Salima was fifteen, but Khalil,

wildly in love by this time, was afraid of a trick and refused.

The negotiations were broken off. Through mutual friends,

Salima’s father was made to realize why Khalil was so eager.

The father wrote to Salima’s cousin asking him to renounce

his claim, which he did. Khalil discovered what the old man

had done, again through friends, and went once more, in his

best suit, to Salima’s house and asked her father for her hand.

The father promised Salima to Khalil provided the young man

would wait another year. Khalil agreed.

Although the negotiations were supposed to be secret, they

leaked out through Salima’s mother, and Salima had a

delightful last year at school, the center of attention,

surrounded by admiring friends who helped her plan her

trousseau and sat with her constantly, giving advice and

congratulating her on her good fortune in having such a

handsome fiancé. Salima’s father went all the way to Baghdad

to buy brocade—wine-and-gold, blue-and-silver, white-and-

gold—for her wedding clothes. Soon after Salima’s fifteenth

birthday the young people were married and went on a

honeymoon (for Khalil was sophisticated by local standards)

to Baghdad, where they made a pilgrimage to the tomb of the

Imam at Kadhimain. Salima produced a photograph to show

me, taken in Baghdad, of the two of them staring in

astonishment at the camera. Salima wore a flower in her hair,

Khalil had one in his buttonhole. Laila pronounced it very

attractive. All of these exciting events had been recounted

again and again to Laila, who had visited her friend constantly

at first in her new home, then less and less as Salima became

busier with her household, her child and her authoritarian and

relentless mother-in-law.

Laila confided to me on the way home that it was wonderful

for Salima to have made such a good marriage, but for her

such a thing was impossible. Not only would her father not

dream of marrying her to a man who was unrelated, but she,

Laila, could not imagine a more Horrible fate than being

married to a stranger and sent to live away from her family. I

mentioned one or two tribal girls who had done just this, and

Laila explained they were from poorer families. “But nobody

of the sheik’s family could ever be given to a stranger,” she

said, “unless, like Sheik Hamid’s sister, she married an even

richer and more important sheik than Hamid himself.”

“Who will you marry, then?” I asked. Laila hedged, saying

she didn’t want to marry, because Salima had told her

marriage was nothing but work and not what it was cracked up

to be at all. “But if you did want to, who would you marry?” I

pressed her.

“Oh, my cousin,” she said, “but there aren’t enough to go

around. My sister Basima and I have figured out that there are

one hundred and eighty girls in our section of the El Eshadda

and only a hundred and thirty-five boys.”

“Would you want to marry your cousin?” I asked. “Would

your older sister Sanaa want to marry her cousin?”

Laila looked shocked. “Of course,” she said. “Sanaa is to

marry Sheik Hamid’s son Ahmar. She has always known she

would marry him and she has been in love with him for

years.”

“But how can she be in love with him if she never sees

him?” I asked. “Doesn’t your father arrange the marriage, and

doesn’t she wait until the wedding night to be with him for the

first time?”

“Yes, yes,” said Laila impatiently, “but Sanaa has known

Ahmar since she was a baby. They played together all the time

till Sanaa put on the abayah and went to sit in the house. She

watches for him when he goes by our house; we tease her

about him.” She looked at me oddly. “Naturally she wants to

marry him; who else would she want to marry?”

“No one, I can see that,” I put in hastily. It was nearly dark

along the canal road where the water buffalo were being

driven up the bank out of the water, toward their owners’

lands to be milked. The sun had mercifully set and a vague

breeze stirred the air, but Laila was walking with her head

bent, absorbed in her thoughts.

“I will never marry, Beeja,” she finally brought out.

“Why not?” I asked in surprise.

Laila explained, so quietly I could scarcely hear, that since

she had no brothers, someone would have to care for her

mother when her father died. “Last year my father told me that

he had chosen me,” said Laila, “because I can sew and can

earn a living for both of us.”

“But isn’t there any man who would marry you and come to

live in your house and help you take care of your mother?”

“Ye-es,” said Laila, “there is a special marriage when the

man agrees to come and live in his wife’s house and the

children inherit the land, but most men prefer to stay in their

own house.”

I decided to shift the conversation. “Who will your oldest

sister Fatima marry?”

Laila sighed. “Well, she was supposed to marry Haji

Hamid’s son but he disobeyed his father and eloped with

Selma’s sister, so now Fatima has no one to marry.”

“What about Basima?” I asked, thinking I was on safe

ground, for Basima was still under sixteen.

Laila smiled. “She will marry Jalil, Sheik Hamid’s brother’s

son.”

“But—” I stopped. Several things that had been puzzling

me for a long time were suddenly becoming clear. I had

wondered why Moussa’s beautiful daughters were unmarried,

and also why three of the sheik’s marriageable daughters were

still sitting in the harem. There was no one for them to marry.

Prohibited by the code of their tribe from marrying men other

than first cousins or similar close relations, they were trapped

by circumstance, by social forces within Iraq which they were

powerless to change. One was an unusual case, an elopement.

But the sheik’s sons and his brother’s sons were something

else, something new. These young men had been sent to

Baghdad to study in the new coeducational colleges there and

they had emerged with Westernized ideas. They wanted to

marry educated girls who could be companions as well as

wives and mothers. The boys could find such girls, for Bob

had told me that Jalil was hoping to marry a pretty

schoolteacher in Diwaniya and the sheik’s brother had

reportedly quarreled with his two sons over the issue. The

girls were the ones who suffered, destined to stay year after

year, unmarried, in their fathers’ houses, passed on finally in

their old age to their married brothers to support. An empty

and meaningless life, the reasons for which they would never

be able to understand.

“I don’t think I want to marry anyway,” Laila was going on.

We had reached my gate by this time, and neighbors, passing,

greeted us, but Laila paid little attention. She was intent on

finishing her train of thought. “In our house, we share the

work. If I got married, I would have to do it all. My sisters feel

the same way.”

But I remembered her sister Sanaa’s telling me that ten

years ago everyone had said she was as beautiful as the

sheik’s bride Selma. “Look at me,” she had said. “I’ve been

sitting here, working and waiting for ten years, and my heart

grows narrow and cramped and it begins to show in my face.”

“The thing to do,” continued Laila, “is to go to school and

become a teacher. That is what Basima is going to do. My

father says so. Perhaps he’ll send me to school too”

“But what about your sisters Fatima and Sanaa and Nejla?”

I asked.

“Yes, it is a pity,” she agreed. “When they were little girls,

it was considered great shame to go to school. Now it is not,

and everyone goes, but it is too late for them.”

14

One Wife or Four

Hussna, a woman who lived near the market, was noted for

her bad temper, poor housekeeping, and unkempt children.

During Ramadan Laila had pointed her out to me at one of the

krayas. “Everyone feels sorry for her husband, Abad,” said

Laila. “He is a good man and deserves a better wife.”

In early summer, when the rumor went round the settlement

that Abad was considering taking a second wife, even the