Guests of the Sheik

Guests of the Sheik is a nonfiction book set in Iraq in the early years of the Cold War. In 1956, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea accompanies her husband, Bob Fernea, on a two-year, anthropological, dissertation research trip. As a new bride who is entirely unfamiliar with the Middle East or its history and culture, Elizabeth lives in the rural tribal settlement of El Nahra among the El Eshadda tribe. Though she is unable to speak Arabic, Elizabeth gathers crucial information on various aspects of rural Iraqi and tribal culture for two years. In particular, she learns about the complex lives of rural tribal women. Initially, her role is to support her husband as much as possible because he cannot interact with the women of the tribe, who are secluded from men they are not related to. However, Elizabeth ends up creating her very own ethnography as Bob gathers his dissertation research.

Elizabeth’s ethnography focuses very closely on life in El Nahra. Though she feels out of place, irritated, apprehensive, and secluded when she first moves to El Nahra, Elizabeth slowly integrates into the tribal women’s society and forms real friendships with them. Throughout the ethnography, Elizabeth describes everything from local culinary and marital customs and Shia religious traditions to the hopes and aspirations of the local women. In the end, Elizabeth discovers that she has integrated into the tribe incredibly well and that the women of the tribe have accepted her as one of their own.

The ethnography also exists within the larger context of the Cold War. Though Elizabeth never openly discusses the revolutions that impact Iraq after she departs from the country in 1958, she hints at them. She frequently mentions long-suffering peasant farmers, soil salination, rural poverty, national reform, and the severe economic disparity between urban centers and rural areas. Elizabeth also detects threads of Pan-Arabism and the Sunni-Shia divide within Iraq. Though the El Eshadda tribe is Shia, Elizabeth meets individuals who believe that the Sunni-Shia divide is a Cold War bargaining chip maintained by those who seek to hinder Arabs from uniting “as one people” (196). In Chapter 18, Elizabeth mentions that pilgrims who traveled to Karbala in 1957 brought smallpox and cholera with them, and “agents disguised as pilgrims brought in Marxist leaflets” (218). Elizabeth also notes the influx of American and British goods in Iraq, particularly in the bazaars of Karbala. According to her ethnography, Iraq was very much a Cold War battleground.

Throughout the book, Elizabeth also mentions aspects of Iraqi history that occurred before and during the twentieth century. In Chapter 2, she mentions that the house of the local sheik, Haji Hamid, “had been used as a fortress in tribal wars and later against Ottoman and finally British soldiers” (27). Later, she discusses British imperialism and politicking in Palestine. Though Elizabeth’s book mainly focuses on El Nahra, the greater historical and political context of Iraq is ever-present in her ethnography.