Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (35 page)

salt, like glistening early snow, on the land.

The road was dirt, dried to a fine powder in the summer sun

which was now rising in the sky and beating down on the

wooden roof of the truck. Even though we seemed to be

moving unbelievably slowly, the truck’s speed was just

enough to raise the dust which poured in the windows,

depositing a gray film on our black abayahs, settling on the

children’s hair and faces, and even penetrating the fine black

mesh of my face veil. The young men and boys sang for joy at

the prospect of five days’ holiday. “Ya Hussein, ya Hussein,”

they cried; the women responded with ululating cries and the

children who could move in the crowded truck clapped in

time.

My nose and throat were soon clogged with the dust and I

made an effort to find my thermos bottle, somewhere under

the seat. This operation forced Rajat to get up off the floor and

flatten herself against the wall of the truck, my neighbor to lift

up her children, and the entire row of women to shift position,

which they did with a subdued moan. At first the thermos was

refused politely by everyone, but I insisted, and soon we were

all sipping lukewarm water. My neighbor pulled out her breast

for her year-old boy to suckle, and he nursed away

contentedly while we settled back into our cramped postures

on the benches. I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock.

We were slowing down and the men were hanging but the

windows to see what the obstruction was when the truck

swerved sharply to pass a Bedouin caravan. We came so close

the side of the truck nearly grazed one of the camels, and as

we passed I looked up into the face of a withered old woman,

who in turn stared down at me from the nest of bright rugs in

which she sat on her camel, steadying two small children in

front of her. Copper pots and pans swung from the saddle on

ropes braided of variegated wool. We passed four more

camels, bearing women and children and bundles of

belongings, then donkeys carrying fuel and sacks of grain. The

caravan was moving slowly and we left them behind in the

dust. As we passed I saw one of the men in front on horseback

choking and shaking his rifle at us furiously. The boys in the

truck gleefully laughed and shouted back at him.

By 1958 the road to Hilla, on the way to Karbala, was a

straight paved highway, but at this time it was only a cart track

winding along the canal between stands of date palms which

appeared, because of the lowland, to be growing out of the

water. Rice was grown here near the canal’s edge, my

neighbor volunteered, and pointed out the families of migrant

workers. The men stand all day in mud and water that have a

harmful chemical reaction on the flesh, and thus the workers

are reputed to suffer from an incurable rotting disease. I had

been told that fires are kept burning all night in the swampy

country to keep away the wild jackals who smell decaying

human flesh and come in packs to investigate. I remembered

the stories and looked curiously at the peaceful scene we were

passing—the rows of men, dishdashas tied around their

waists, bent over patches of gleaming mud to pick the lush

green plants into reed baskets. My neighbor was looking too.

She clucked sympathetically. “A difficult life,” she said.

Each hardship that the pilgrim experiences on his way

brings him added grace in the eyes of God. I began to feel that

all forty-five of us, including my infidel self, must be storing

up many indulgences as the morning grew hotter. The dust

continued to pour in, my limbs grew cramped and aching, and

the truck creaked and rolled from side to side, giving me a

good whack in the back of the head with a bare bolt in the

woodwork every time the wheels hit a pothole. The

company’s spirits had wilted in direct proportion to its

discomfort, but when we climbed up out of a rut and onto the

paved part of the road, the boys burst into song again. We

roared along the straight pavement at an incredible speed of

twenty miles an hour, and there was no dust. We were hot,

hungry and dusty but we were going to Karbala!

Excitement mounted when we reached the Karbala-

Baghdad crossroads, which had been transformed by the

pilgrim traffic from a quiet truck and taxi stop into a thronging

metropolis. Buses, trucks, private cars, donkey carts and

walking pilgrims were pausing here for lunch and rest on their

way to the holy city.

Our truck had not even stopped before the sherbet sellers

and the sweets peddlers crowded up to the doors and

windows.

“Sammoon, sammoon haar!”
A little boy bore on his head

a tray of the fish-shaped loaves of white bread.

“Khubuz, khubuz laham,”
croaked an old man.

A clatter of castanets announced the cold drink seller, a

glass barrel of iced liquid strapped to his shoulder, who called,

“Tamurhindi! Tamurhindi!”
and banged his round brass

castanets once more.

The smell of lamb roasting over charcoal braziers reminded

me that I had not eaten since five that morning. With Fatima

and Rajat I made a tour of the stalls which had been hurriedly

set up to handle the pilgrims. We ordered kebab and squatted

down by the roadside, as scores of other women were doing,

to watch our meat wrapped around skewers and put on the

fire, for Fatima, good housewife that she was, would not have

dreamed of eating kebab that was already cooked, that had

been handled by many people and visited by families of flies.

We bought some hot khubuz to hold the kebab and its

traditional accompaniments: tomatoes, onions and young

celery leaves chosen from big blue enamel bowls on the

counter and washed ceremoniously before our eyes by the

hands of the proprietor himself. As a final noble gesture he

threw in a few turnip pickles at no extra charge, and we settled

back by the roadside to enjoy our meal.

After devouring our lunch we bought tea, and Fatima tried

to persuade Rajat to go across the road and down the street to

the public market to buy us a watermelon for dessert. But

Rajat had never been out of El Nahra before and was afraid to

leave us. Fatima cajoled, pleaded, ordered; Rajat remained

stubborn. So, rather than make a public scene, Fatima

gathered her abayah around her, threw a particularly scornful

look at Rajat, and marched across the road where, in an empty

field under some dusty palms, a few of the women from our

truck were taking their ease. We sat beside them and finished

my thermos of lukewarm water.

It was pleasant in the shade. We were secluded under the

trees and yet had an excellent view of the comings and goings

at the crossroads. Every few minutes a truckload of young

men and boys would careen around the intersection and head

out the Karbala road. The trucks bore hand-lettered banners

which swelled in the wind as they rounded the corner.

Bareheaded and white-shirted, the boys were standing in the

backs of the trucks. “Ya Hussein, ya Hussein,” they shouted,

clapping, as they rolled by.

“The taaziyas,” murmured Fatima. “I don’t see a banner

from El Nahra.”

“It must be there,” said Rajat.

I remembered the collection taken for the taaziya after its

march to the mudhif on the tenth of Muharram. This was what

it was for, to bring the taaziya or mourning procession to

Karbala for this holiday so that it might, together with all of

the taaziyas from the other southern towns, perform in the

great mosque and in processions through the streets the

ceremonies which the occasion demanded.

Our truck honked its horn warningly, and we repaired to a

canal to wash before resuming the journey. Now every vehicle

we saw on the road was full of pilgrims bound for Karbala.

The men and boys shouted back and forth as the trucks passed

and repassed each other. Someone in front took up the chant

and refrain again, and the women joined in with piercing cries.

Even my neighbor, inspired, drew her veil modestly over her

face and let out a cry that shook us all. Rajat, still on the floor,

got the full force of this shriek but only looked up at the

woman admiringly.

At Twaireej, the last town before Karbala, many pilgrims

had stopped to rest and were washing their feet and hands in

the canal, crowding the old pontoon bridge and its long

stairways leading down to the river. From Twaireej the road

followed the canal, and on both banks we could see pilgrims

on foot, on horse or donkey, heading for Karbala. A party of

five men in the snow-white coats and trousers of Pakistan

strode along under the palms with knapsacks and heavy

walking sticks. The long-suffering women jammed into the

rear benches with me noticed the Pakistanis, and one old lady

pounded me on the knee to tell me they were Shiites from

India come thousands of miles to pray at the shrine of

Hussein, the great Hussein who was so treacherously betrayed

and murdered. She shed a few noisy tears, dried her eyes on

the corner of her abayah and then smiled at me. I nodded in

return and muttered some inane platitude through my veil; she

laughed delightedly and announced in a loud voice to the

truck in general that even the Amerikiya appreciated

Hussein’s sacrifice. As the men in front turned around to look,

I shrank back shyly and whanged my head on the screw again.

Suddenly we rounded a bend, had a glimpse of throngs of

people and colored flags flying and came to a jolting halt in a

narrow street. We had arrived in Karbala, and I could have

wept for joy at the thought of stretching my cramped limbs,

washing my face, discarding the abayah briefly and perhaps

sitting in a cool, quiet place. But other forces were at work,

which fortunately I could not anticipate or I might have

abandoned my adventures then and there and hired a taxi to

take me back to El Nahra.

Everyone crawled out wearily, the old women groaning, the

children wailing, and we stood around in the hot sun,

collecting luggage as it was dragged from under the benches

and tossed through the windows of the truck. The sheep,

bleating in protest, were handed down from the roof, and a

little boy with a stick was commissioned to keep them from

running off crazily in all directions. I assumed that Fatima,

Rajat and I would start out for Uncle Yehia’s house, but

instead we headed with three other women into a dilapidated

mud-brick house almost opposite where the truck had stopped.

Here we climbed a dark, steep stairway into an upstairs room

where we sat down on the only furniture, a length of none-too-

clean reed matting.

Through a broken wood screen we could see into a court

below, where a few scraggy trees provided a minute amount

of shade from the noonday sun. I recognized Abdul Karim and

Abad, Mohammed’s brothers, among the men and boys who

had congregated in the court and were arguing with the man of

the house. We took advantage of the privacy to remove our

veils and wipe some of the dust from our faces. Presently the

mistress of the house appeared, a sloppy fat woman in run-

over clogs and a cheap black shift, spotted by many greasy

lunches. She looked us over and Fatima asked politely for

water. The woman turned her head and shouted to someone,

and a pale young girl, also in a soiled black shift, slunk into

the room with a battered tin bowl which she presented to me. I

drank a little of the water, which was not too clean, and passed

the bowl along. Fatima was conferring with our companions

and did not trouble to conceal her distaste. The woman of the

house kept interrupting and her voice, rising, became an angry

shout. At this Fatima frowned and stood up, adjusting her

abayah and motioning to me to do likewise. We put on our

face veils and trooped down the dank stairway and out into the

street again. It appeared that we had considered taking a room

in the house, but it was dirty as well as expensive and the

woman’s personality had not appealed to Fatima. Rajat took

my basket and I picked up my satchel.

Surely now, I thought, we will head for Uncle’s house, but

Fatima said no, first we would go to the mosque and pay our

respects to the martyr Hussein. I fell back into line,

temporarily resigned to my fate, and we set off single file into

the heart of the city, crowding the cordons marking the area

restricted to pedestrians only, passing khaki-uniformed

policemen holding back the trucks, buses, donkey carts and

horse-drawn carriages.

As we neared the center of town we had difficulty keeping

together in the crowd. For the first time I realized in

consternation that I was totally dependent on Fatima for my

welfare during the days of the pilgrimage. I could not go back

now, as I had no idea where to go. I found myself reluctant to