Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (22 page)

occasionally I could reply to the sarcastic taunts that came my

way, and this repartee succeeded brilliantly where my former

bland and accommodating manner had not. Many months later

Laila told a visiting Iraqi friend of mine that in the early stages

of my residence in El Nahra the women had wondered

whether I was deaf and dumb, or just not quite bright, because

I smiled but often did not seem to hear what was said to me.

Afterward, reported Laila, I had come to life and my company

had improved immensely.

12

Weddings

Four weddings were to be held in the tribal settlement at the

same time, and the families involved had pooled their meager

finances to provide a more spectacular feast and

entertainment.

“They are even bringing dancers from Diwaniya,” said

Laila. “You must ask Mr. Bob if you can come with me to see

everything.”

“Of course I can,” I said. Laila looked exasperated.

“Ask him,” she insisted, and when I looked puzzled she

said, “It’s at night, don’t you understand? My father never lets

us go out at night except to krayas during Ramadan and

Muharram—no women do—but because of the weddings he

might let us, especially if I tell him that Mr. Bob says you can

go. Will you ask him?” So I agreed.

One of the prospective bridegrooms was Hassan, the son of

Sheddir and Ali, the sheik’s gardener. Bob reported that Ali

had finally completed marriage arrangements with his brother.

Ali’s brother’s son would come to El Nahra, bringing his

sister who would marry Hassan. When the boy returned to his

own village, he would take back as his bride Sahura, Hassan’s

sister, who would be dressed in her bridal finery in her

father’s house, but would not be married in El Nahra. There

would be a token exchange of money, two marriage contracts

would be signed, and the two couples would be united. So,

said Laila, we would see both the traditional arrival and leave-

taking of a bride. In addition we could visit the three other

brides who were scheduled to be married the same night and

compare their clothes, their jewelry and their beauty!

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” said Laila. “We

haven’t had four weddings together for a long time.”

On the appointed day Laila and I went together after lunch

to Ali’s house, where Sahura sat in state in her wedding

finery, awaiting her bridegroom. The little court had been

carefully cleaned for the occasion, and the scrawny chickens

who usually scratched in the hard-packed earth were penned

up in one corner. Women and children come to view the bride

were passing in and out of the courtyard and pressing against

the door of the one-room house. Qanda, filling a tray of

glasses from a clay water jar by the door, looked up and

smiled in welcome as we entered.

“Ahlan wusahlan,”
she said. “Come right in.” She handed

the tray of glasses to a young girl, and came running over to

take me by the arm in a grasp of iron.

“Why didn’t you come and see the bride I did the other

day?”

I started to explain but she hurried on without listening.

“That was a really good job, if I do say so myself. A fine

tattoo between the breasts and rosebuds on both calves (I did

them for her last year, when she became engaged). And the

face of that girl—what plump cheeks, what eyes! I had some

new kohl from Diwaniya and we hennaed her feet and

hands—not too much, just enough. Ah, I wish you could have

seen her,” she sighed, as one whose masterpiece had just been

destroyed by fire. “But now,” she added in a changed tone,

“come and see Sahura.” She led us through the crowd around

the door.

Sahura, all in white, sat against the far wall, cross-legged

and very stiff-necked, on a small square of new matting

covered with an embroidered sheet. Before I realized what

was happening, Qanda had propelled us through the throng of

women and children and we were plopped down on the

ground, shoulder to shoulder with the old women of the family

who had been given places of honor near the bride. Sahura

stared straight ahead of her and did not turn her head as we

entered. Laila whispered that the bride was not supposed to

notice anything on her wedding day. Qanda had pressed

through the crowd with us and knelt now at Sahura’s side; she

had picked up the girl’s long braid of glossy brown hair and

was balancing it in her hand.

“Look at that!” she shouted, in order to be heard above the

din in the tiny room. “A braid of hair as thick as an arm. Her

husband will be glad to see that, I can tell you!” For a moment

I winced at Qanda’s tone, weighing Sahura’s hair like a

commodity and then I realized that, good diplomat and

saleswoman that she was, Qanda had selected Sahura’s one

good feature and was emphasizing it in order to encourage the

poor girl and help her to relax during her day-long vigil before

the wedding.

For Sahura was certainly no beauty. A big-boned girl with

broad shoulders and heavy arms, she would be a good

assistant to her husband in the fields. But she had tiny eyes set

close together and a long, plain face which was usually

redeemed by her cheerful expression. Now, however, her face

was fixed in a tense look of waiting; the badly fitting white

dress did nothing for her and the black kohl carefully painted

around her eyes seemed to make them even smaller. Her

hands and feet were hennaed, but there tradition ended; Qanda

had used Western lipstick to redden the wide mouth, had

powdered Sahura’s skin a deadly white. I heard Qanda telling

another newcomer how magnificent Sahura’s hair was. “See

how Well it is oiled,” she was saying, and I looked again at

Sahura and hoped her husband would not be too hard on her

when he lifted her veil for the first time and discovered he had

not married a beauty.

Now the conversation turned to Sahura’s jewelry, her own

personal dowry bought with money given to the bride by her

female relatives and female friends. She had silver ankle

bracelets and heavy gold earrings and a pendant of silver into

which had been set a large uneven turquoise.

The old women near us were discussing Sahura’s faults and

virtues, the chances of her husband’s being handsome or at

least kindhearted, her prospects in her future home. I gathered

they did not think much of the latter, a small clan settlement

hours away by horse, with no market, only a few houses and a

small mudhif and a clump of palm trees in the middle of the

sandy plain.

“It will be hard for the child,” said the lady sitting nearest to

Sahura. “The water is not good there, I hear. She will be sick

all the time until she becomes accustomed to it.”

“I’m glad my daughter didn’t have to go away when she

married,” put in another. “It’s hard for a girl without her

mother and it’s hard for the mother, too.”

“And then, of course, she doesn’t know anything,” added

the second, leaning forward. “Sahura has been sheltered like a

good girl. She has never even been to Diwaniya.”

The two women clucked in sympathy and rocked back on

their heels. Sahura, only inches away, must have heard this

doleful interchange, but she made no sign, sitting up stiffly

and looking straight ahead of her. We were drinking sherbet, a

sticky sweet concoction with a base of ground-up oranges.

“Doesn’t Sahura drink something?”

“Oh, no,” said Laila. “She had breakfast early this morning

before she was dressed, but she won’t eat till after the

wedding; then she and her husband will have a big meal

together. If he is a good man, he will bring her fruit and

sweets and sherbet.”

Qanda was bustling around, distributing glasses of water

and cigarettes and keeping the crowds of women and children

moving in and out. She looked tired and her own make-up was

streaked with sweat, but part of her job, it appeared, was to

uphold Sahura and her terribly flustered mother Sheddir

through this, their greatest and most difficult experience as

mother and daughter.

“The groom has hired a taxi to take Sahura and her things to

the wedding at his house,” the old woman near me said. “It

should be coming soon.”

It was four-thirty. A little girl ran in and whispered to

Qanda. The crowd of women stirred in anticipation. We heard

a clatter of cans and a banging of drums, followed by a volley

of rifle shots. The bridegroom was approaching to claim his

bride. But he would not come directly to the house; Sahura

would go out to him to show that she was to live with him in

his father’s house.

Qanda was shouting orders at Sheddir, who was distracted

and did not seem to understand. She was staring at Sahura;

finally she leaned over and kissed her daughter on both

cheeks, and burst into tears. Sahura remained impassive.

Qanda quickly leaned over the girl and covered her face, first

with a white veil, then with a black. She motioned

peremptorily to the weeping mother, who handed Qanda the

new black silk bridal abayah; this was draped about Sahura’s

head and shoulders. Qanda put an arm around the girl to pull

her to her feet and, supporting her, led her out of the house. As

Sahura crossed the threshold, never to return again as a

daughter, the women set up a keening wail of sorrow and

farewell, and rose to follow the bride down the alley to the

main road where the taxi was waiting. Crowds of young men

and boys surrounded the car, and we could see the bridegroom

sitting in the back seat. The couple’s new household goods

had been tied to the roof of the taxi: an iron bedstead, painted

orange and blue, a chest, wrapped in bright woven blankets, a

rolled up cotton mattress and several zinced-copper cooking

pans. As Sahura approached on Qanda’s arm, the boys beat

their skin drums furiously and the men fired their rifles into

the air.

At the door of the taxi Sahura turned, and Sheddir,

screaming and crying with pain, ran up and threw her arms

around her daughter. Qanda gently disentangled the sobbing

Sheddir, pushed Sahura into the back seat of the taxi and shut

the door. The taxi bounced in the ruts and the bedstead on top

wobbled; the driver accelerated and the car raced off in a

cloud of dust. Wailing, the women ran after the taxi, and we

walked along with the crowd until the taxi was out of sight on

the canal road; the men were firing a few final rifle shots,

which were pop-popping in the hot still air. In the middle of

the dusty road, Sheddir clung to Qanda and sobbed, but

Sahura had gone.

The wedding drums began to beat before dark. We heard

them as we were finishing our supper in the garden. The

sound of the drummers mingled with the call of the mourning

dove and the shrill cries of the giant black crows high in the

date palms; we could hear the shuffle of many feet on the path

outside. Bob left to meet Mohammed at the Sayids’ mudhif,

which was to be the scene of the festivities. By the time Laila

came for me, the drums were louder and the road was

thronged with people headed for the mudhif. Tribesmen in

their robes walked in twos and threes, children ran shouting,

and black-shrouded women walked close to the walls of the

houses.

Laila had other ideas; she turned us off into an alley which

led away from the mudhif. I protested, but she insisted that we

should see the brides first; after that the party at the mudhif

would be in full swing and there would be so many people

milling about that no one would notice us.

All of the settlement lanterns had been commandeered to

light the bridal houses and the mudhif, and we groped our way

along in the dark, trying to avoid the center gutter, its trickle

of slops and garbage dried to a muck by the day’s hot sun.

Soon the moon would come up, Laila said, guiding me over a

rough spot, and I looked up to see the stars already filling the

summer sky. Women brushed against us, giggling, and we

joined a group on its way to view the first bride, who sat, like

Sahura, on a white-covered mat in her house. There, however,

the similarity ended.

This girl was relaxed and pretty; she arched her body in a

pleased way under our gaze. An old woman pointed out the

bridal bed, hung with white mosquito netting. She picked up

the border for me to feel the heavily embroidered bottom sheet

and pointed to Laila, who pursed her lips and admitted that

she and her sister had embroidered it. I praised it at length and

was rewarded with an exhibition of the top sheet and

pillowcases, all embroidered with the same pattern of bright

red flowers and green leaves, mottoes carefully traced in

Arabic across the pillowcases. “Sleep here, and good health,”

said the mottoes, Laila informed me. The old woman patted

the bed, cackled and looked at the bride, who actually