Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (37 page)

now I felt panicky. I was tired and hot and hungry and my leg

hurt. But what could I do about it? First, I had no bedding, as

Laila had told me I would be staying with her uncle and hence

would need none. Second, I had the cakes and fruit, and

thirdly, Bob was supposed to telephone me that evening at

Uncle Yehia’s. These all seemed points in my favor, and I

decided to confront Fatima with my case and ask if we might

at least go to Uncle Yehia’s house and say hello; I had no idea

where he lived or even what his full name was. Then I would

have an address at least in case of trouble, and perhaps Sitt

Najat, the wife (who I had heard was a trained nurse) would

be sophisticated enough to perceive my dilemma and invite

me to stay there. It was worth a try.

When Fatima returned, I outlined the plan: we could visit

Uncle Yehia and give him greetings from the family. I would

leave the cakes and fruit as presents, and we would tell Sitt

Najat that Bob was to call, and she could tell him I was all

right, in fact having a fine time. Otherwise, I pointed out

boldly, Bob might get in touch with her father if he did not

hear from me. The latter seemed the clinching argument, and

Fatima agreed we might go after lunch. I offered to help

prepare the meal, but the women urged me to wash and rest. I

had been steeling myself for an appearance in the courtyard

full of strange women and this seemed the time, so I wrapped

my abayah around me, made a quick trip to the muddy filthy

enclosure which served as the toilet and then stood at the

common tap to wash my hands and face. It was quite a trick to

get everything clean, and still keep the abayah out of the mud

and covering one decently. I developed new respect for the

many skills which my friends took for granted.

Suddenly all conversation stopped, and I heard a horrible

inhuman barking sound. It came from the throat of an

adolescent girl who was hopping and jerking her head as she

came forward, her insanity so obvious that a woman near me

involuntarily murmured,
“Mashallah.”
The girl pursued

another woman who was teasing her. Someone snickered, and

then a small child snatched an object from the woman’s hand

and returned it to the insane girl; she subsided, coughing and

hiccuping, in a corner. I stumbled back to our room where Um

Ali was saying her prayers. Fatima unpacked her bag and

produced a couple of cold chickens and some hard-boiled

eggs. After two glasses of hot tea, I asked if we might go to

see Uncle Yehia. To my great relief, Fatima said yes. We

would leave our baggage with Um Ali and go for a very brief

visit.

We started back the way we had come, past the family of

children, where the old woman had curled up to sleep on the

mat, past the fever-ridden boy whose old father still fanned

him. We turned into a small street and knocked on a narrow

wooden door, set up three short steps from the street.

Someone looked out and said Uncle Yehia was not home.

Then another woman came and she and Fatima argued for a

while about whether we would go in and have tea. For one

terrible moment it looked as though the door would shut in our

faces, but finally someone’s charity for poor relations

prevailed and we straggled in, past some visitors sitting cross-

legged in the central court, into the sirdab, or summer cellar

room. We sat on a clean mat and drank strong tea. I offered

my cakes and oranges. Sitt Najat, a short stocky woman with

very white skin and short shining straight black hair looked at

the cakes, looked at me and smiled in welcome. I felt my plan

had worked and I was right. I was presented with a
fait

accompli
. Fatima said I
must
stay with Sitt Najat (courteous

weak protest from me, fortunately overruled) and she would

come for me in the morning. She would have a definite place

to stay then.

We made another trip to the house of the insane girl to

bring my bag (we had not brought it the first time, of course,

as it would have looked as though we were asking for

hospitality). Night was coming as I plodded down the street of

the shrine for the third time that day, and the neon lights cast a

weird phosphorescent glow on the flags and banners. When I

sank down for the second time in Sitt Najat’s sirdab, I felt that

the pilgrimage might not have been in vain as far as my

spiritual education was concerned. I had endured bumping and

banging, jostling and burning already; now I was being given

the absolution of privacy and a good meal in this charitable

Moslem house, and later, oh joy unbelievable, a bed on the

roof under the stars. Sitt Najat’s understanding was profound,

I thought, as she led me up to the roof, past the cots of her four

children, her husband and herself, and the beds which had

been set up for her five visiting relatives, to a cot strategically

placed in a corner, away from the multitude. I could hear the

Koran still blaring from the loudspeakers, mingling with the

chants of the taaziyas, whose performances had begun. From

the roof I could see part of the mosque, the very top of the

main golden dome and the spires of the minarets, but tonight I

was too tired to appreciate the view, too tired to begin to

digest the impressions of the long day. I lay down on the iron

cot, its cotton mattress covered with a spotless white sheet.

“Sleep here and good health,” the familiar adage, was

embroidered on my pillowcase, in a pattern of vines and

flowers.

Bob never did phone. I realized why, after a quarter of an

hour in Sitt Najat’s house. There was no telephone. Bob later

told me that he had, desperately, called the hospital and asked

for Uncle Yehia, only to be told that there was no doctor by

that name on the house staff. This was correct. Yehia was only

a dresser in the hospital, a sort of male nurse, but his devoted

relatives in El Nahra had promoted him to the status of a full-

fledged physician and he probably did not deny it. Finally Bob

had turned to the sheik and to Jabbar, asking what he should

do. They both had told him that if I was staying with Moussa’s

relatives, I would be all right.

This, too, was correct. Najat’s house was my home and my

refuge during the five days I spent in Karbala. Fatima and

Rajat came every day and took me out to walk and watch the

taaziyas and see the sights of the town, but they always

brought me back before dark. Fatima could now pray at the

shrine and gossip with her friends without worrying about me.

I was very content. It was an ideal solution for all of us, except

perhaps Najat, but even she insisted it was a pleasure.

However, I know that as a guest I presented problems to

Sitt Najat. She later told me that she had known personally

only two Western women, Englishwomen who had been her

instructors in the nursing college she had attended in her

native Mosul. Neither had ever been a guest in her house. I

could tell she was uncertain that first morning when I came

down. First she jumped up and ran to the bathroom, where she

noisily rattled the water can (to let me know it was full of

clean water) and then emerged to greet me, leaving the door

ajar in order to leave no doubt in my mind about the location

of the facilities in case I did not know the necessary Arabic

words. When I had finished, she jumped up again, ushered me

past the relatives drinking tea in the court and into the sirdab.

A breakfast tray followed, and Najat sat by me as I ate the flat

bread and goat cheese, drank the
leban
(watered yogurt) and

the tea, watching me anxiously and asking every few minutes

whether this was like American breakfasts. Lunch was the

same: I ate in lonely splendor in the sirdab, my only company

a child who had wandered away from the cheerful group

eating from a big tray in the court to take a look at the strange

Amerikiya eating.

I decided this special attention was ridiculous and a

needless burden on my harried hostess. Najat had offered the

hospitality of her house to me, a complete stranger. And now

she was giving me choice bits of food in addition to personal

service when she already had six other guests.

When suppertime came, I sat down firmly on the mat in the

center court and made a valiant effort at bright conversation

with the relatives. By the time Najat had dished up the meal—

rice, stew, pickles, a jointed chicken in tomato sauce, flat

wheat bread for everyone—I was firmly ensconced between

two of the stout older relatives, and declined to leave.

Najat laughed. “You see, she can eat like us. Don’t be

afraid of her,” she told the old ladies.

I pretended not to hear, and from then on we always ate

together, spooning rice and stew from the common bowls,

sharing the basin of leban, finishing off with a glass of tea.

We sat in two groups—the four lady relatives and I, Sitt

Najat and her niece and her five children at one tray, the two

young male relatives, resplendent in their snow-white

dishdashas, at another tray in a far corner of the court. The

men came to the house merely to sleep and eat, and it was

only on the last day, when we were exchanging addresses, that

I discovered the oldest boy spoke fairly good English and

could have simplified my life immeasurably during the five

days I had been there.

But in retrospect I am glad I didn’t know he spoke English

or I might, in my laziness, have depended on him for most of

my communication, and thus have missed many of the stories

and confidences of my hostess and her guests.

The four ladies from Mosul, Najat’s relatives, would

occasionally venture out to pray or to watch the taaziya

processions passing by, but they spent most of their time

sitting on mats in the court, eating, drinking tea and gossiping

endlessly. Their gray hair was long and loose, kept in place by

white or black head scarves tied like caps over the tops of

their heads; they covered their big, shapeless bodies with

ankle-length cotton dresses yoked and smocked at the neck

like nightgowns. They were pleasant, passive old ladies who,

after a lifetime of serving husbands, in-laws and children, had

retired to a comfortable old age in which their sons’ wives and

their other younger female relatives waited on them. During

the entire time they were in Karbala they made no attempt to

help Najat as she scrubbed the house and prepared the meals

for fifteen people, and she did not expect it.

Fortunately Najat was a strong, wiry woman and could

carry the burdens which a household, an influx of seven guests

and a full-time job outside her house placed on her shoulders.

She had five children, and also served as chief nurse in

Karbala’s free, government-run maternity and child welfare

clinic. An adolescent niece of Yehia’s lived with them,

theoretically to look after the children while Najat was at the

clinic, but the niece was much more interested in doing

nothing, and spent most of her time in the house next door

while the nine-year-old daughter watched the children. Najat

told me she kept her job, in spite of the heavy home schedule,

because it got her out of the house and in touch with people.

Otherwise she would have been as secluded as a village

woman. She missed her relatives and friends in faraway

Mosul; she missed the simple escape of the movies, for

Karbala, being a holy city, boasted no cinema. But she

enjoyed life and obviously felt lucky to have found an

approved public outlet for her talents, even in the holy city.

Her neighbors, whom I visited while I was there, spoke

admiringly and respectfully of her, not, I found, because of her

emancipated status as a nurse and wage earner, but because of

her large healthy family, her tireless industry, and her great

store of cheerful good will.

Najat wore no face veil, and only donned the abayah when

she left the house. She had laughed at my veil when I arrived,

and urged me to discard it. “People think that Karbala is a

fanatic city just because it is Shiite,” she said. “It is not true at

all. Everyone is friendly here; you don’t need to wear the veil.

Take it off.”

How much of what she said was traditional Arab courtesy

(she could see how uncomfortable I was in the veil) and how

much she really believed herself, I do not know even now. But

the only occasion I followed her advice and went without the

veil was the evening, at the height of the festival, when she

took me into the city to watch the taaziyas performing near the

mosque. That night she was frightened considerably, I know.

Perhaps until that time she had really believed it was all right

for me, an unbeliever, to go without the veil. Perhaps she got a

new insight into her own countrymen that night, but whatever