Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (50 page)

you been here?” she asked.

“Almost two years.”

She pursed her lips and nodded slowly. “She’s coming

along all right,” she announced to the rest of the women.

“See, Beeja,” said Kulthum, “you’re learning. Stay one

more year and you’ll be just like us. Ask Mr. Bob to bring

your mother and then you’ll never have to leave us and go

back to America.”

The moment was broken by the arrival of Feisal with a note

from Bob. “Since there seems to be no other way of meeting,”

he wrote, “I have arranged that you and I are to take a walk

and look at the fields behind the palm grove. After lunch,

when everyone is napping, come to the door of the compound

and I’ll be waiting nearby.” I laughed, recalling all the

abduction-from-the-seraglio melodramas I had ever read.

“What is it? What’s so funny?” clamored the women.

“Have you no manners?” Selma asked. “It’s not polite to

ask.” Then she laughed herself. “But what is it, Beeja?”

“My husband wants to see me after lunch outside the

compound.”

“He must miss you,” teased Laila.

“Doesn’t like to sleep alone,” Amina squeaked.

“El hamdillah!”
pronounced Kulthum firmly over the

raucous remark which Amina was adding to a giggling

audience. Feisal snatched up my written reply and ran.

The sun was still high when Bob and I stepped out together

along the edge of the palm grove. The children could not resist

following, and we had a small band running along behind, but

keeping a reasonably respectable distance. Before us stretched

a network of canals, their banks making a tracery, hillock-

high, which marked off the tiny plots of farmland like squares

on a checkerboard. Only harvest stubble was left in the

ground, but there was still water in the canals so we picked

our way along the uneven ground of the banks.

“I’ve never been this far out before,” I said.

“You haven’t, of course—I never thought,” Bob answered.

“I wanted to talk to you and this seemed the easiest way.

How’s it going?”

“I don’t look forward to leaving, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t either,” he replied, “though I wouldn’t mind being

out of the dust.”

“It’s not so bad now the wind has died.”

We walked steadily along. Crows rose from the harvested

fields and when we looked back, the mudhif was hidden by

palms. Where the big canal turned, a thick clump of camel-

thorn grew out and over the water, creating a fairly large

shaded area on the bank.

“This must be where the women come in summer to take

baths,” I told Bob. “They’ve told me about this place; it’s

hidden from the mudhif and they have a little shelter from the

camel-thorn.”

“How do they take baths? In the canal?”

“Yes, they wait till sunset and come in groups. They bathe

in the canal with all their clothes on, then go home and put on

clean clothes. Quite ingenious.”

“Are the women curious about your life in Baghdad?”

“Not at all,” I answered. “It seems as though I haven’t been

away.”

We were skirting the settlement, heading back along a

roundabout road which, Bob said, led to the big bridge

spanning the El Nahra canal. The children had dropped behind

long ago.

“Mr. Bob, Mr. Bob,” someone was shouting. Two

tribesmen were running and gesticulating at us. Bob walked

toward them and I stood with my back to the men, gazing out

at the long, flat brown landscape, cut into tiny squares by the

canal banks, the enormous sky dwarfing it and yet protecting

it as well. The winds came from the desert and blew away the

loam in the spring, but some sank into the canal and was

thrown up again as silt in the fall. The sun burned the earth till

it cracked, but the winter rains filled it until it could live again.

Every fall the fellahin planted grain in the square plots, and

the Euphrates River water, piped into these small canals,

watered the grain and the people lived for another season.

Thus it had been for more than five thousand years. The

women were part of it, too, part of an enduring and traditional

way of life that had developed in response to conditions in the

valley, a way of life in which the women were secure and

generally content.

They had never envied me, only made me fit, as well as I

was able, into their patterns. I had done so, learning something

about myself along the way. It had been a rewarding

honeymoon, I thought, if not precisely what the bridal

consultants in Chicago would have advised. But then their

view of marriage, like that of my friends in El Nahra, was a

limited one.

I turned to Bob, but he was already speaking. Never mind, I

would tell him another time.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have to get back. There are

guests from Baghdad in the mudhif and Sheik Hamid wants

me.”

We parted at the compound.

That night Laila appeared after supper. “You must come to

us,” she said. We sat together in the sewing room, the sisters

and their cousins from across the alley, and ate fruit and drank

tea. Suddenly there was a furious pounding on the door, and a

figure in man’s clothing advanced threateningly upon us,

striking the air with a huge stick.

“Here, you silly girls, why are you sitting idle when you

should be working?” shouted a thickly disguised voice. “Have

you finished cleaning all that rice?”

The heavy stick swung above us, and while we all paused

uncertainly, Basima tugged at the kaffiyeh covering the

figure’s face and her sister Nejla was revealed, choking with

laughter.

“You were scared, Beeja. You didn’t know who it was.”

“Nejla is very good,” said Laila.

“Yes, very good indeed.” For a second I had been unsure.

“Do Abdulla,” suggested Fatima.

Nejla’s stance changed. She stood straight and tall and

appeared suddenly thin as she walked proudly around the

room, swinging the stick slightly, the man’s aba flowing

behind her; it was a remarkable imitation.

Once more there was a pounding on the door. Basima rose

to open it. Alwiyah and Samira and Selma stood there.

Fatima exclaimed in surprise. “Selma!” she said, striking

her forehead with the back of her hand in mock amazement.

“To what do we owe this honor? You haven’t been in this

house since your last daughter was born, three years ago.

Girls, look what we have here, the favorite wife of our

esteemed uncle, Haji Hamid!”

“We heard that Nejla was entertaining,” answered Selma

flippantly. “We wouldn’t dream of missing that. Besides, isn’t

Beeja leaving tomorrow?” She threw off her abayah, wrapped

it round her knees and sat down in the center of the group,

which moved aside to make way for her.

“Yallah
, Nejla, do Mr. Bob,” she said with a glance at me,

and Nejla obliged, imitating Bob’s long strides and rapid pace

while evervone clapped. She then gave us a very bitter,

accuratem tation of Dr. Ibrahim, followed by a bit of

buffoonery that was obviously Ali, the aging garbner.

“New Mohammed,” and Nejla mimicked Mohammed’s

shambling gait, a mixture of dignity and humility, and his

eternal gesture of adjusting his agal and kaffiyeh, to such

perfection that his sister Sherifa shrieked with laughter.

When Nejla sat down to drink tea, the talk turned to

Basima’s plans to go to secondary school. Selma thought it a

good idea, but said that many women in the settlement did not

feel the same way.

“You must expect that, Basima,” she counseled.

“Many families don’t like to see us going out and getting an

education to better ourselves,” offered Fatima.

Selma looked disdainful. “That isn’t it at all. It’s whether it

is proper for Basima to live in the house of her cousin, where

there are unmarried men her own age.”

Fatima’s eyes blazed. “What do you mean, is it
proper?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” answered Selma,

quite loudly.

The tempers of the two women, usually so balanced,

seemed about to explode into violence, and I could not see

that the words which had passed between them were that

important. Basima, who had been sitting quietly during this

interchange peeling an apple, now cut the apple in half and

held out a piece to each of the angry women. Selma looked

down at the proffered fruit, distracted for a moment, and then

in a sudden furious gesture struck the piece of apple from

Basima’s hand. Fatima drew in her breath in a long, quivering

hiss. The company became very still. It was Nejla who saved

the situation. Picking up the discarded piece of apple from the

floor and taking the second from Basima’s hand, she began to

eat them alternately.

“The reason I am so good-natured and healthy,” she said,

winking at me, “is that I never let good food go to waste.”

Someone snickered, but Selma and Fatima remained tight-

lipped.

“Now you, Selma,” continued Nejla, “you’re fat enough,

it’s true, but Fatima needs to gain weight or she will never

marry.”

She munched the pieces of apple and we all laughed

obediently. Selma turned her head and began to talk to

Medina. Then I remembered the ancient, still unresolved feud

between the men who were heads of the households

represented by Fatima and Selma. Moussa and Hamid had

split many years ago over the question of the succession to the

sheikship. Sheik Hamid had not wanted his son Ahmar to

marry Moussa’s daughter Sanaa, although Ahmar had asked

specifically for Sanaa’s hand. Selma’s sister had eloped with

another son of Sheik Hamid, the one who was to marry

Fatima. In El Nahra, as in any small community, there were

conflicts between families, resentments and bitterness which

were buried deep but which were always ready to flare up in

situations such as this.

I thought, it will not be easy for Basima until she finishes

school, but when she is finally a teacher like Hind and Aziza,

the women of the settlement will forget their jealousies in

mutual admiration of her status as an effendi. Even Selma will

not be able to resist showing off and talking about her

educated relative.

To change the subject, Laila began to talk of my impending

departure, which was the last thing in the world I wanted to

discuss that evening.

“Will you write to us?”

“Of course I will,” I said.

“No you won’t.” Laila sniffed.

“How is the garden?” I asked firmly. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” said Laila, wiping her nose ostentatiously.

“It’s been locked up since you left.”

“Maybe if I asked Haji,” I suggested, “he would open it up

and we could sit and have Coca-Cola there tomorrow

morning.”

The women looked pleased but doubtful.

“Don’t you ask Haji,” Selma counseled. “Ask Mr. Bob to

ask him.”

Bob was successful. Ali, grumbling, unlocked the gate, and

we swept in, Laila, Fatima, Rajat, Sherifa, Samira, Alwiyah

and I. Rajat brought Coca-Cola and we sat in a circle on the

uncut grass, under the shade of the bitter-orange tree. Because

it seemed impossible that I should be leaving my friends

forever, I did not mention the subject; nor did they. We talked

of the past and always when conversation flagged, we talked

of Basima’s going to school in Diwaniya. She was the first

girl of the El Eshadda to go.

“Will you wear an abayah there?” asked Alwiyah.

“Of course she will wear the abayah,” retorted Fatima.

“Every woman in Diwaniya wears one.”

“The woman doctor at the hospital doesn’t wear one,”

Sherifa said. “I saw her when I went to have my chest X-

rayed. You remember, Beeja. She seemed to be a good

doctor.”

“Sitt Aziza says that she and Hind don’t wear the abayah

when they’re in Baghdad,” volunteered Laila.

“But that is haram,” Fatima announced. “It is written in the

Koran that all women must wear the abayah.”

“You’re wrong, Fatima.” It was Basima, younger sister,

contradicting older sister. We all stared at her. “It is not in the

Koran at all. Sitt Aziza says so. And how would you know

anyway, since you can’t read the Koran?”

All things change with time, and in the silence of Fatima as

she looked at her impertinent and yet chosen younger sister

Basima, the past seemed to hang in balance with the present.

But it was Fatima who gave in.

“I will ask the mullah,” she said, but her tone was

unconvincing.

“Let’s see if Beeja’s house is locked,” suggested Laila. I

had no desire at all to inspect my mud house, but there seemed

no alternative as the women rose and we mounted the path

past the palms and the oleanders to the two wooden doors.

They were not locked and we swung them in. The rooms were

empty—even the reed mats had been taken up from the dirt

floors. It was no longer my house. But as I turned to leave, I

heard a faint twittering and some feathers floated down from

the roof beams onto the earth.