In Guests of the Sheik, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea colorfully describes El Nahra, an Iraqi village, through detailed accounts of her experiences and relationships. She offers a brilliant picture of the day-to-day life of the village’s women while recording particular features and customs of the region. The second half of Fernea’s book exhibits signs of growth on her part as she...
more In Guests of the Sheik, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea colorfully describes El Nahra, an Iraqi village, through detailed accounts of her experiences and relationships. She offers a brilliant picture of the day-to-day life of the village’s women while recording particular features and customs of the region. The second half of Fernea’s book exhibits signs of growth on her part as she admits her inability to entirely understand her temporary home. Ultimately, she fails to put her two years in the village in perspective, either in a reactionary or retrospective way. She more frequently admits her failures at understanding the complexity of local custom but disappoints by either limiting or neglecting any reflection on what seem to be potentially revealing emotional moments. The book’s true value is revealed as Fernea comes to terms with the disparity between her expectations and the reality of her encounters.
In “Muharram,†while recounting the Battle of Karbala, Fernea openly reveals her outsider’s perspective. She acknowledges her impatience with and discomfort in the heat as she repeatedly wishes for a Pepsi-Cola. Rather than embodying the spirit of the event and doing as the others do, she demands to know more about the festival. Annoyed by her friends’ unwillingness to give details, she states that the women “were far more interested in family news from down the canal†than in the event at hand (205). Is this a suggestion that the women are more concerned with gossip than history? While elaboration may have left the reader more comfortable with this statement, Fernea fails to explain herself, instead continuing to describe the unbearable heat. Despite being a troubling distraction, this description does lead to Fernea’s acknowledgment of privilege. She states, “if I had not been an outsider, I would have enjoyed the social aspect of the occasion as much as they…†(205). This is an obvious moment of personal growth; she is finally reflecting on an event rather than simply stating what occurred. By the end of “Muharram†Fernea seems to be discussing her relationships in greater detail and forgetting the more impersonal details of her time in El Nahra. Unfortunately, Her un-Iraqi lens reveals itself in the last paragraph as she describes watching her friends go, “two black-robed figures…walking gracefully home†(215). This “othering†of Iraqis, invoking differences rather than similarities, occurs throughout the second half of the book.
In “Pilgrimage to Karbala,†Fernea rudely refers to the holy city’s festival as the “great holiday of the poor†(228). She never explicitly states why this event is defined by poverty, but instead jumps to conclusions. Fernea talks about the sidewalk becoming “temporary households set up for…families who could not afford lodging elsewhere†(228). While frequently referencing the population of Karbala, she never makes the connection that perhaps a town of 30,000 simply does not have lodging for one million or more people. One might wonder if it is possible that some were so devout that, regardless of wealth, they would sleep on the streets rather than miss the festival; Fernea never toys with this idea. The author continues to depict the event as a raucous mess with the “Koran…blaring from the loudspeakers†(235), the “dense mass of people†filing toward the mosque (239), and the blazing neon lights (240). Fernea saves herself from appearing as a close-minded observer by admitting the procession was a “religious experience with which [she] was totally unfamiliar†(242). This is the first confession of what comes to be a theme in the book’s second half: she has a superficial knowledge of her temporary home.
In “An Excursion into the Country,†after discussing the drama surrounding Laila’s unexcused adventure with Fernea, the author offers one of her deepest reflections—that she and Bob “would never be other than foreigners†(266). In spite of what appears to be an epiphany regarding her experience and role in El Nahra, she devolves into her distanced discussions about the village in “Winter.†As rains fall for five days, the author relates the precipitation to the Biblical flood (270). While the flooding was no doubt significant, her reference strives to attach the village to Biblical geography in such an exaggerated way as to make one question Fernea’s motivation. By comparing the rainfall at El Nahra to such a legendary flood, the author is upholding all stereotypes of the Middle East as a place of mystery and myth. This stereotyping does not end with landscape. In “Jabbar Becomes Engaged,†Fernea continues to generalize when she says that Jabbar, “like most Iraqis,†could separate politics from personal judgments (281).
While she confusingly jumps from moments of personal growth and understanding to stereotypes and “othering,†readers do get the sense that Fernea has profound experiences and a knack for describing the world surrounding her. Yet, her narrative is flawed. She perceives of the ideal travel situation as one where cultural gaps are bridged and admits that her Iraqi venture was anything but ideal. She does not realize that the “personal ties†she established with her friends as “individual human beings†are what most effectively increase understanding and respect in the world, rather than serving as some lesser goal or lower hope (314). With this revelation in mind, it becomes clear that Fernea’s generalizations and limited personal reflection are a result of her expectations of profound, intercultural developments rather than interpersonal encounters. Thus, in demonstrating, even unwittingly, that expectations can cloud the travel experience and create struggle, Guests of the Sheik serves as an exemplary work in the category of how not to experience a culture other than one’s own.
In Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea vividly recounts her experiences and relationships while living in the Iraqi village of El Nahra. She provides a fascinating glimpse into the everyday lives of the village’s women while intricately detailing the customs and cultural objects that surround her. The subtitle declares her book to be an ethnography, a scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures. However, there is little science in Fernea’s writing. She uses a variety of ethnographic techniques, from participant observation to interviews varying in length, yet fails to engage in academic reflection, lacking any quantitative explanations for social phenomena. Despite this, Fernea’s approach presents the women among whom she lived as fascinating objects more than complex individuals. No doubt Guests of the Sheik is a useful collection of stories and experiences. However, it falls short of being a truly scientific work while simultaneously failing to offer the self-analysis or in-depth description of characters’ emotions that define a brilliant travel essay. As a result, readers are left with little more than a distorted glimpse of El Nahra. This is most apparent in Fernea’s silence about personal moments and her generalizing descriptions of the women.
In “Housekeeping in El Nahra,†Fernea reveals one of the first truly personal moments between her and one of the village’s women. The author was set to spend a night alone, but the Sheik ordered that his wife’s servant, Amina, stay the evening as company. Just before the two women fell asleep, Amina began quizzing Fernea on her relationship with her husband. Shortly thereafter, the young Iraqi woman began to cry. “I was appalled,†was Fernea’s mental response, demonstrating that she did not wish to engage in such intense personal interactions (73). This is a pattern throughout the book. She frequently states that she is touched by a story or a statement from one of the women, but rarely relates deeper emotions to the reader. As Amina continued to cry, Fernea’s distance becomes more apparent. She states that she wished she knew more Arabic, not so she could find a way to comfort her guest, but so she could understand the story being told. While this may be a normal reaction, her response to the sobbing is not; she asks a probing and insensitive question: “Do you ever see your family?†(73). Amina, of course, renews her crying. Fernea’s impersonality reflects itself again in “One Wife or Four†when she says that she is “touched…considerably†as Kulthum stands up for her against the joking of the other women; there is no elaboration on that “touching†moment (164). It seems Fernea’s goal of befriending an Iraqi woman was not for the sake of developing a deep, personal relationship but for the sake of being accepted, to “get in†to the circle.
Nevertheless, it is not her disinterest in describing the depth of her relationships that is most troublesome. Rather, it is her frequent depictions of El Nahra’s women as a collection of giggling and oftentimes mischievous individuals. In “Housekeeping in El Nahra,†Fernea describes herself coming to “dread the daily visits†to the women’s quarters (71). She describes the women’s smiles as seemingly “artificial and insincere†and her discomfort at the “giggling behind the abayahs†(71). She puts undue emphasis on the abayahs throughout the book, in many ways suggesting it is a central part of thought and discussion in the lives of the women. While this may be the case it seems more likely that Fernea’s obsession with the covering is a result of its newness to her instead of its actual role in the conscious, daily thought of Iraqi women. In “Weddings†the Iraqi women transform from abayah-covered producers of discomfort to giggling deviants. Fernea, Samira, and others sneak out to take a peak at the festivities happening near the mudhif. As they do, the author describes Laila as hissing when she urges the women to sneak out and giggling as she avoids the mud (143). While the story is a cute one, it replicates both earlier and later images in the book of the village’s women as childlike.
When reading Guests of the Sheik one must admire Fernea’s groundbreaking work. Readers must also realize that she cannot see the lens through which she looks, as Ruth Benedict would say. That is to say that she does not perceive herself as clouding the reality of El Nahra by focusing on the abayah or the segregation of the sexes. Even so, readers cannot be expected to feel at ease with her paradoxical book. It is an ethnography dependent entirely on poorly focused, qualitative observations. Equally troubling is that it preserves a feeling of academic distance, never giving the reader a clear image on who Fernea and the women of El Nahra were outside of superficial examination and limited glimpses of personality. Even those glimpses were communicated entirely by limited snippets of dialogue. All things considered, Fernea publishes an admirable work, but fails to offer the well-roundedness of a successful ethnography or the introspection of an enjoyable travel essay.
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