Guests Of The Sheik:
An Ethnography Of An Iraqi Village

Cover

Title Guests Of The Sheik: An Ethnography Of An Iraqi Village

Author Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

ISBN 0-385-01485-6

Publisher Anchor Books

Category Nonfiction: Middle Eastern Culture, History

Shira's Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)

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What It's About

In the 1950's, a newly-married American woman named Elizabeth Warnock Fernea accompanied her husband to a rural Iraqi village, where he was performing field research for his doctorate in anthropology. This book describes her experiences. The adjustment for her was profound, because she lived in a mud hut with no indoor plumbing, didn't speak the local language, and found it advisable to wear the veil in order to fit in with the local conservative Islamic community.

In this book, the author covers the day-to-day life of the women in the tribe, the process of slowly making friends with them as she learned their language, and the local Shiite religious observances that she shared in. She talks about the veiling of women, the practice of polygamy, the hard manual labor that is part of everyone's life, the religious customs, the food that people eat, the structure of society, and the encroachment of modern "civilized" life on the traditional rural culture.

Its Good Points

I really liked this book! It provided a fascinating glimpse into the day-to-day life of women in one part of the Middle East. The author held nothing back--she told of both the positive aspects of the village life and the negative, but did so in a respectful way.

The information offered in the book is very detailed. In many cases, the author talks about not only what the local customs are, but also why people do what they do. For example, in describing the religious festival Muharram, she describes the historical events that are commemorated by the festival, why it is observed only by the Shiites and not other Muslim sects, and what people do in their observance of it and why.

Before I actually started reading the book, I saw the cover marked with the words "Anthropology/Social Sciences" and feared it might be written in the ponderous academic style that I find so hard to read. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to discover that the style was more in the tone of a friend writing me letters telling me her experiences and reactions to them. It's the kind of book I could relax and enjoy even when I was tired after a day of work.

The author wasn't afraid to describe some serious mistakes she made living among the local culture, and what consequences ensued as a result of those mistakes. I respected her willingness to expose her own fallibility.

The very beginning of the book offers a list of the people described in the book and their relationships with each other. It's a tremendous help in keeping track of the everyone as their stories are told. The end of the book offers a glossary of Arabic terms and a complete index. These reference tools are all very helpful.

The final chapter, Post Script, talks about what became of many of the villagers after the Ferneas left to return to their home in the U.S. It provides a nice closing touch to the book.

On The Negative Side....

There are no photographs in this book, which I found disappointing. I would have liked to have seen pictures of the huts that the village lived in, pictures of the men in their dishdashas or women in their abayas, etc.