Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (45 page)

cooking, dragged a kitchen chair out to the mud wall, climbed

up and peered through the screen of camel-thorn. A funeral

procession was passing. The coffin, wrapped in a red-

patterned rug, bobbed only a few feet below the top of my

wall, carried aloft on the shoulders of several men. I wondered

who had died, for the sheik himself and his older brother

Abdulla were among the pallbearers, followed by a large

slow-moving crowd of men and boys. Behind them came the

women, their faces covered with abayahs, wailing as they

walked. Their piercing cries rose above all the other sounds of

the winter morning, as though the whole settlement heard and

waited.

While I watched, one of the pallbearers, a very old

tribesman with a short white beard, stumbled and the coffin

bobbed slightly. A boy ran up to steady the old man at the

elbow and the procession turned along the canal to town,

heading for the center of El Nahra where a taxi would be

waiting to take the body to Najaf. Two men, Bob had said,

always accompanied the body to Najaf, the holy city where all

pious Shiites hope to be buried, staying to see that burial rites

were carried out properly, the body wrapped in its rug to be

placed in a tomb or grave near the mosque. The coffin would

return to be used again.

I could see, from my kitchen chair, people on the canal road

stopping and waiting in silence as the procession passed by.

Halfway to the bridge the women from the settlement paused

and let the coffin continue its slow journey without them. But,

crowded together shivering on the bank, they continued to

wail. I could not see the coffin loaded onto the roof of the taxi,

but I knew when it left El Nahra, for the wailing rose higher

and higher and then stopped. The women dispersed to their

houses in twos and threes. I stayed to watch until the men, too,

returned to the settlement, conversing in quiet voices as they

passed my wall. A little girl skipped along the path, carrying a

bar of soap and a paper funnel full of tomatoes. The grain

mill, silenced during the funeral procession, began its strident

wheet-wheet-wheet
, and the sounds of the settlement resumed.

It was an ordinary morning once more.

Who had lain in the coffin? Someone important enough to

be carried on the shoulders of the sheik of the tribe. Bob said

at lunchtime that it had been the wife of Hamid’s father, the

crippled little old woman had been living in the sheik’s

compound.

Further details were supplied by Laila, when she came that

afternoon with her bag of embroidery. “See, Beeja, we have a

set of sheets and pillowcases to do for a girl who is to be

married soon. They will pay well for it, almost a pound.”

“What about the old woman?”

“Yes, well, she was very old. She just stopped breathing

this morning. You remember at the Iid she could hardly sit up

to eat her lunch. She was Sheik Abdul Emir’s second wife, not

Haji’s mother; but when the last of her children died about ten

years ago, Haji offered her a room in his house. They say she

was a very good woman; her mother was from the Bedouin.”

“So she wasn’t related to Sheik Abdul Emir?”

“Oh yes,” said Laila. “Her father was a brother of Abdul

Emir’s father, so she was his bint-amm. But her mother was

from the Bedouin.”

There was no ceremony for the old woman beyond the

procession. Within a fortnight another death took place and

official mourning ceremonies were announced. The mother of

Um Saad, the mayor’s wife, had died far away in Baghdad

after a long illness. When Um Saad returned to El Nahra, her

mother had been dead nearly three weeks, and Um Saad had

gone through the ritual mourning period in Baghdad; she was

destined to go through it for five days more. Everyone was

expected to call at the house of Um Saad and offer

condolences. On the third day I put on my darkest clothes

under my abayah and set out.

The servant who answered the door at Um Saad’s neat

house gave me a strange look as I entered. Could Um Saad not

be at home? I wondered. Was someone sick? The servant said

no, no one was sick, Um Saad was at home. She hesitated a

moment, then simply told me to keep my abayah on, and

ushered me into the living room.

I was unprepared for what met me. Since Um Saad and I

had so much in common, I assumed that our attitudes toward

death might also be similar, that this condolence call would be

much like the ones I had paid in my own country. I was quite,

quite wrong.

All of Um Saad’s Western-style furniture had been pushed

against the wall, and two lengths of carpeting covered with

pillows had been laid out in parallel lines on the floor. Seated

cross-legged on these pillows were ten or twelve women, clad

in black. Um Saad herself sat at the head of one of the rows;

she, too, wore black, and not her smart black suits or dresses,

but a long, loose garment. Her hair, usually arranged so

fashionably, was bound up in the traditional head scarf and

chin scarf. Her face was worn and red-eyed from weeping,

and she clutched an abayah around her shoulders. I hardly

recognized her, she looked so much like the women who

surrounded her.

I hesitated at the entrance, still unsure. Should I go up to

Um Saad, take her hand and offer my sympathies? Apparently

the answer was no. The servant pointed to the rows of shoes at

the door. I took mine off, was guided to an empty pillow and

sat down. There were no greetings. The women opposite

stared at me in silence and I stared back. After a moment or

two one of the women said something, half to herself, half to

the group, which I understood as a generalized eulogy of

motherhood. The woman seated next to me took it up.

“What is there to replace one’s mother? Nothing, nothing,”

she chanted. “Nothing, nothing.”

“True, very true.”

“There is nothing to replace a mother.”

My neighbor rocked back and forth on her heels and

moaned, “Nothing can ever take the place of your mother, Um

Saad.” She sniffled, sniffled again, and burst into tears.

At this, every woman present began to cry systematically.

Most of them threw their abayahs over their heads and sobbed

in private, but the woman directly across from me sat

impassively while tears ran down her cheeks.

My initial uneasiness had gradually given way to

melancholy at the sight of poor Um Saad and the somber

grief-stricken women, and I was close to tears when the

weeping began to subside. Faces were uncovered, the women

dried their eyes and blew their noses, and a silence fell once

more on the room.

I sat and waited.

Um Saad began to talk about her mother’s illness. It

sounded like cancer to me and had gone on for years, she said.

The story of the woman’s suffering, her rallies and relapses,

her sorrow at the death of one son, the departure of another for

studies abroad, her courage in the face of great pain were

recounted, between sobs, by her daughter.

“And I,” finished Um Saad, “was far from her when she

needed me most. I could only be there when she was ready to

die.” She broke down, and the women covered their heads

again and wept with her. This time I did, too, covering my

head with my abayah and sobbing without restraint. I felt

sorry for Um Saad, sorry for her mother, sorry for myself

even, far from home and my own mother.

An hour passed. Women rose, one by one, went up to Um

Saad, pressed her hand, and departed. Um Saad begged me to

stay and have a cup of coffee. Her husband’s niece was with

her, the dietitian for the teacher-training school dormitory in

Diwaniya.

The three of us, over our cups of coffee, held what seemed

to me a surprisingly ordinary conversation in view of the wake

in which we had just participated.

Um Saad began to talk about the ceremony. She admitted

she was near exhaustion. “But it is better this way,” she told

me. “One must have some time alone after a death, and also

time with one’s friends and relatives. Time to mourn is

necessary, but when this is over I shall be ready to return to

work, to everyday things,”

24

At Home in El Nahra

After the wake, I was away from El Nahra for more than two

weeks; Peter, the third son for our missionary friends in Hilla,

was born in late January and I went to stay with Joyce until

she was strong enough to manage her household again.

Before I had been home twenty-four hours, Laila came to

inquire after my friend and give me all the news.

“How is the American lady? Did she have a boy?”

“Yes.”

“El hamdillah,”
said Laila. “Boys are really the best, Beeja;

they can take care of their mother when she’s old. What good

are girls?”

I was shocked. How could Laila talk like this, with her eight

devoted and hard-working sisters? I said so.

“Well, naturally we love each other but we’d all like to

have a brother. Wouldn’t you?”

I nodded.

“So,” said Laila, “and how big was the boy?”

“Seven pounds.”

“Seven pounds! That’s very small. The child won’t live,”

pronounced Laila.

“What do you mean, Laila?” I retorted, in some heat. “Very

small—seven pounds isn’t very small! Of course the child will

live; it’s a very normal size for a child.”

Laila looked at me and smiled mischievously. “Don’t be so

nervous, Beeja—I was only teasing you. Probably,” she said,

“American babies are smaller than ours if all American ladies

are thin like you.”

“Probably.” How could Laila go on like this, when she

knew nothing about it? But I also knew she had long ago

spotted my vulnerable areas and, when she was feeling

lighthearted, felt no compunction about twitting me. For

although she liked me, Laila still thought of me as a protégé

with a great deal to learn. Teasing was a good way of

exposing my prejudices and sharpening my wits at the same

time.

“Don’t you want to hear the news?” asked Laila. “Selma is

pregnant again.”

“Selma?”

“Yes, and she’s not too pleased either, but Haji is. If she has

a boy, it will be his eighth son. And remember Sahura, who

was married last summer? She’s home.”

“What’s the matter with Sahura?” I asked, bringing in a tray

with two glasses of tea.

“She had a miscarriage, and was so sick her husband got

frightened and brought her all the way home across the plain

on horseback. Even my father told my mother he shouldn’t

have done that, because the long ride made Sahura much

worse and maybe she won’t be able to have any more

children. She just lies on the mat in her mother’s house and

doesn’t want to get up.”

I offered Laila a glass of tea. “I’m afraid my visit causes

you a great deal of trouble,” she murmured dutifully, and I had

to offer the tea again before she would take it.

I smiled to myself, thinking that as many times as Laila had

drunk tea with me, the custom of protesting was so strong she

could not drink tea without exercising that custom.

“We had a fine celebration when Abdulla’s youngest boy

was circumcised—the three-year-old who is Bassoul’s son.

The Bedouin second wife. The doctor came from Diwaniya to

do it. His father bought him new shoes and a white dishdasha

and a brown sweater.” Laila paused to put three teaspoons of

sugar in her glass, stirred and sipped her tea.

“Bob tells me Ahmed is here,” I contributed. Ahmed,

Abdulla’s oldest son, was in college in Baghdad and was often

spoken of as the sheik’s successor, especially since Haji’s own

eldest son Nour had poor health and might not be strong

enough to assume the duties of the sheikship.

“Yes,” said Laila. “He came because Khariya, his mother, is

sick. I think I told you long ago that Khariya sold all her gold

jewelry to pay for Ahmed’s college expenses.”

Ahmed himself had told Bob of his mother’s sacrifice. “If it

were not for my mother,” he had said, “I would never have

been able to go to college. Oh, my father is proud of me now,

now that I’m an effendi and have an education, but when I

finished primary school in El Nahra and wanted to go on, he

refused to give me a single fils.”

Laila was saying that Ahmed was going to take his mother

to the woman doctor in Diwaniya.

“Bob says Ahmed is a very bright boy,” I remarked.

“I think he’ll probably marry his bint-amm, Haji’s daughter

Samira, then he will be sure of being sheik,” predicted Laila.

She dipped an English biscuit carefully into her second glass

of tea.

“I’ve saved the most exciting news for last,” added Laila,

“but I really shouldn’t tell.” She sat back and her eyes

twinkled. “In fact, I
can’t
tell you.” She nibbled on the biscuit

unconcernedly.

“Oh please, Laila,” I begged. Laila was always the bearer of