Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (49 page)

has come a long way in this awful dust and is tired? Bring her

inside.” She emerged, smiling all over her wrinkled face, the

three blue tattoo dots still clear in the cleft of her chin. “Come,

my dear,” she said, taking me by the arm and leading me

through the court.

I sat down in Haji Hamid’s bedroom, the same pink satin

bedspread covering the gilt four-poster, the neatly folded

bedding piled to the ceiling, the oil painting of the mosque in

sunlight, photographs of Sheik Hamid and Sheik Abdul Emir,

and of King Feisal I on horseback, with the Iraqi flags crossed

above him. It seemed very pleasant and very familiar.

“She did come back,” repeated Laila.

“Well, we thought you’d
want
to come back,” Kulthum

said, “but we knew you couldn’t come unless Mr. Bob

brought you, so we couldn’t be sure.”

Selma bustled in out of breath and wrung my hand

violently. She was very pregnant and very fat; the seams of

her ordinarily loose dress appeared to be at bursting point.

“See how big Selma is! Her baby should be enormous!”

Medina had followed Selma into the room and rapped her

smartly on the behind. The company laughed delightedly and

Selma turned and tweaked Medina’s abayah.

“Have some respect for pregnant women,” she said lightly.

“You have some respect, my girl,” retorted Medina, “for

old age. I’m so old I can say anything I want. Ah me, but I’m

tired, I have to admit it.” She advanced into the room, erect

and graceful still, carrying herself so that her rusty black

garments billowed behind her like a court train. She sat down

and took my hand. Hers was bony and warm. “How are you,

Beeja?” she asked.

“Ya Selma,” she called, “ya wife of Sheik Hamid,”

inflecting her words in such a way that one could not help but

laugh, “do you think the house of your illustrious husband is

bounteous enough to offer me a cigarette?” Selma threw one

to her, took one herself and sat down with us.

“Where’s Sherifa?” I asked.

“She’ll be coming as soon as she’s milked the cow. She

knows you’re here.”

“Tea, Amina,” said Selma, “and then, Beeja, we’ll show

you where you’re to sleep.”

Amina brought a huge tray. The little glasses in their china

saucers clinked and tinkled as we stirred the sugar.

“I’m very glad to be back,” I said.

After tea the group escorted me to my quarters, the

storeroom just off Selma’s court which had once been

Bahiga’s bedroom, when she was still bearing children for

Haji. Clean mats covered the floor, and furniture had been

moved in, a bed and a cupboard, a washstand, a table and an

armchair. Samira walked around the room, touching each

piece of furniture and telling me where it came from, while

the company in admiration kept exclaiming “Al-lah!” Laila

pointed out that it was our old bed they had brought in for me.

“So you’ll be more comfortable,” explained Kulthum.

“Nour thought of the table, because he knows you write letters

and do things like that. Samira and I brought the minor, and

Selma said they should bring the armchair, too.” She turned to

me expectantly.

For a moment I did not know what to say. I was moved by

the women’s thoughtfulness and concern for my comfort. I

was also struck, for some reason, by the armchair. How I had

fought, long ago, to sit on the floor with the women rather

than in that lonely armchair in Haji’s room. My friends, in

trying to provide for my needs, had again pointed up the basic

dissimilarities in habits which would always exist between us.

But now it no longer mattered. I felt they had prepared the

room and made it comfortable for me out of mutual respect

and affection, and beside that reality, our differences seemed

unimportant.

My hesitation was misinterpreted. Selma said anxiously,

“What’s wrong? Is there something we’ve forgotten?”

“Oh no, it’s lovely, thank you all.” I paused, and decided to

blurt it out. “I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t.”

Blank faces greeted me.

Oh no, I thought, let us not have our communications break

down now. I rushed on, “I mean I’m so glad to be with you

again that I couldn’t speak for a moment.”

Still no comprehension. I began to feel quite desperate as I

searched the faces of my friends. It was Selma, as she had

done so many times before, who saved me. She had narrowed

her eyes suddenly and I saw that she had grasped the sense of

what I was trying to say. She spoke quickly to the women and

they turned back to me smiling.

“Ahlan wusahlan,”
they said.
“Ahlan. Ahlan.”

A sudden gust of wind whipped the door open and

distributed a swirl of sand about the room. The women rushed

to slam the door shut. “You’ll be much more comfortable than

Mr. Bob,” Laila pointed out. “The mudhif is full of dust.” She

settled herself with the other women beside me on the mat-

covered floor. Shut in from the storm, we felt safe and well

tended.

“Shlonich
, Beeja, how are you?” asked Alwiyah.

“Well, thanks be to God. And how are you?”

“Well, thanks be to God.”

“I’m afraid I cause trouble by my presence,” I offered.

“No, no, we are honored to have you visit us,” returned

Alwiyah.

“Shlonich
, Beeja?” asked Samira, and so we went,

reestablishing our relationship in the formal phrases of custom

and ceremony.

“Do you remember the bird that hit you in the head?” Laila

giggled.

I nodded.

“Has Mr. Bob seen any birds like that in Baghdad?”

Laila watched me, winking and nodding at the other

women.

“Not yet,” I smiled, “but maybe there are some there, who

knows? Have you seen any here, Laila?”

Laila was taken by surprise. “Who, me? I’m not even

married.” The women whooped. Laila looked at first

disconcerted, but gradually her expression changed to one of

pleasure, and she sat nodding happily, presumably, I thought,

in satisfaction at my good performance.

Nothing had changed. I might never have been away. We

talked, as we had talked before, of children and marriage, of

cooking, of things that had happened while I had been gone;

they were gradually easing me back into my old life here.

I was awakened by the sound of children laughing. At first I

couldn’t imagine where I was—gray mud walls high around

me, unfamiliar quilts and embroidered sheets, closed wooden

shutters admitting thin bars of daylight through the cracks.

Then I remembered and rose, a muddy taste in my mouth from

the dust that had sifted in during the night, under the door and

through cracks in the shutters and walls. The smell of it was

still thick in my closed room. Bob had probably had a

miserable night lying in the near-open in the mudhif.

It was the first day of the feast. When I opened my door, the

wind had died and the sun was shining weakly through the

dust that still drifted gently in the air. In the court all of the

children of the compound were frolicking, gay in their new

clothes. A crowd had gathered around a baby gazelle which

one of the boys was coaxing to drink from a bottle; Selma’s

son Feisal picked up the milk-white kid and brought it over.

He set it down on its gangly legs and the kid’s eyes, brown

and much too big for its small pointed face, focused

uncertainly on me.

“Abdulla found it in the bush,” Feisal said.

“Its mother was dead,” explained Abbas. “Abdulla heard

the baby crying when he was out hunting.”

Amina advanced with a tray. “Out of the way, out of the

way,” she hollered at the children. “Do you want me to slop

the Sitt’s breakfast tea?”

Grinning, she set the tray on the wooden table, wiped her

hands on her dusty abayah and held them out to me.

“Ayyamak sa’ida
, Beeja,” she said.

“Ayyamak sa’ida!”
More of my housemates were entering

the room, dropping their clogs on the doorstep as they came

forward to shake hands for the feast.

Selma said,
“Enshallah walad
, Beeja [God willing, you will

have a boy].”

“Do, Beeja,” urged Laila. “After all, you’ve been married

two years now. You don’t want Mr. Bob to divorce you, do

you?”

“When she gets back to America and is with her mother,

then she’ll have a boy,
enshallah,”
pronounced Kulthum. She

patted my knee.

To turn the attention away from myself, I said, “Selma, it is

you we’re thinking about.
Enshallah
you will have a boy.”

“It’ll be another girl,” put in Selma quickly. “Just because

Haji especially wants a boy this time.”

“No, no Selma, don’t talk like that,” the women shouted.

Selma raised her heavy bulk from the floor with some

difficulty. “Time to get back to work,” she reminded the

group.

Soon the women were busy with preparations for the

gigantic noon meal to be served in the mudhif. The butcher

had come and gone while I slept. Kulthum sat in her old place,

cutting up the slippery meat while the younger daughters

pared vegetables and the children ran errands between the

compound and the mudhif. Laila and I went up on the roof

again to watch the gathering of the tribesmen. I could see Bob,

looking a bit rumpled from his night in the mudhif, standing

with Sheik Hamid and Nour. The men of the El Eshadda

circled in the figures of the hosa, paused to chant their poems

of praise to the sheik and to the tribe and raised their rifles for

a salute. The shots rang out in the hot, dusty air. In a few

minutes we were called down to help load the trays, and then

we returned to the roof to watch the procession to the mudhif,

men balancing on their heads the heavy trays of rice, meat,

stew—enough food for two hundred people.

The next day I lunched at Moussa’s house and here I felt

even more at home, slipping along the dark passageway into

the open court where the sisters had assembled to greet me. I

turned toward the sewing room, where we had sat so many

times together, but the girls ushered me into their mother’s

sitting room where Um Fatima herself waited to lead me to a

pillow.

After lunch, Um Fatima conveyed the momentous news that

Basima would enter the girls’ secondary school in Diwaniya

the following autumn. She would live with a cousin of her

father’s and come home weekends.

“That’s wonderful,” I said sincerely. “In a few years she’ll

be a teacher like Sitt Aziza, maybe even a principal.”

“Enshallah,”
said Basima modestly, but I could tell by the

look in her eyes that she agreed with me.

“Our father says that Rajat will go too, when she finishes

primary school here,” added Fatima. The shy Rajat dropped

her head in embarrassment.

“Sitt Aziza said Rajat is doing very well in her studies,” put

in Sanaa. Rajat dropped her head even lower.

We discussed Basima’s fall wardrobe. Laila was making

her three dresses.

“That won’t be nearly enough,” said Basima. “I’ve heard

that the girls in Diwaniya wear a different dress every day. I

can’t buy that many, but I must have at least five, and a

jacket.” She was quite self-important about it, and her mother

spoke sharply.

“You are lucky to go to school at all, Basima,” she said,

“and you’ll be lucky to have one dress, let alone three.”

This seemed a good moment to bring out the small presents

I had bought in Baghdad—perfume, cloth, sweets—something

expected from anyone coming home from a trip.

After tea I professed weariness, but Laila would not listen.

“You can sleep in America,” she said. “Let’s not waste these

days. This afternoon we are going to see Salima. The teachers

are in Diwaniya for the feast, but I promised Salima we’d

come.”

So went the feast. Next day we visited Sherifa and Medina

and Fadhila, Mohammed sitting with us and smiling

constantly while we drank lemon tea. “Send me a charm from

America so I can have a child, Beeja,” said Fadhila, “and so

Sherifa can marry again.” From Mohammed’s house we went

on to Ali’s and that afternoon Hussein took me down the canal

to his clan settlement. Sajjida was pregnant again.
“Enshallah

walad,”
I offered.
“Enshallah,”
she rejoined. The little girls

looked on solemnly. In the evenings the women came to my

room in Haji’s compound, and I spent all the money in my

purse on cigarettes and pumpkin seeds. Amina brewed tea

with cloves. One morning a very old woman I had never seen

before entered the room.
“Ayyamak sa’ida,”
she said in a

cracked voice. I rose to greet her in return and added, almost

without thinking,
“Enshallah hejjiya
[God willing you will

make the pilgrimage].”

The old lady settled herself, groaning and grunting with the

effort, on the floor, and then peered at me. “How long have