Introduction

​ Ethnographer and anthropologist Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (1927-2008) was noted for her work with Shiite Iraqi women, living and working among them in the small village of El Nahra from 1956-1958.  In 1969 she subsequently published Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village.  Her ethnography delves into the secluded lifeways of Shiite Iraqi women living under a Sheikdom in rural Iraq, exploring the hardships and rewards of existing as a woman in what was stereotypically perceived as an oppressive state of patriarchal, sexual domination by husbands and rulers of the community.

​ But Fernea’s brief, two-year stay was even more remarkable for the fact that she insisted on living a secluded, veiled existence that was entrenched in Shiite culture and that all of the other women in Iraq had maintained for centuries.  In this essay, through the words of a fictitious Shiite Iraqi woman named Fatima reflecting on Western culture, a discussion on the veil and self-determination in the harems where women socialize, and with a brief discussion on how the number of women in a village like El Nahra presents challenges in the local economy, an image of the culture and very lifeways of societies like the 1950’s Shiite Iraqi’s begins to emerge.  This image reflects Fernea’s work in exposing the nuance in women’s roles around the world, which aimed to tear down stereotypes about oppression and build up a social sciences theory regarding the power of women in society relative to wealth, property ownership, and the production of subsistence goods.

Fatima

My name is Fatima.  I am a 43-year-old widowed woman living in El Nahra with my sister and her family.  Here in El Nahra we women are busy day and night.  We tend to children, livestock, meals, clothing, embroidery, marriages, and ceremonies.  Our family unit sustains us.  A nearby market and occasional goods brought back from cities aid us in our traditional subsistence culture and lifeways.

​ A few years ago, in the late 1950’s, an American anthropologist, Elizabeth Fernea, or Beejay as we know her, came to visit our town, and lived among us, adopting our traditional lifeways.  She donned the abayah, secluded herself from her anthropologist husband and the men of the village, socialized and worked with the women here in our harems, and travelled with us to local ceremonies as well as celebrations in the city.  She was exceedingly kind, and very respectful of our traditions.  Nevertheless, she never quite fit, with her heavy shoes and short, cut bangs.  Her mannerisms and timidity reflected a deep difference in our cultures, it was a sadness in her for she had no children, and her mother was far away.

​ In El Nahra women hardly ever see men.  We see our husbands or other men at dinnertime, and at night for lovemaking.  Otherwise, we live among ourselves, usually in the harem, or women’s quarters.  Here we can tend to children and manage the household, each of us contributing to the functioning of what is often an exceptionally large family unit.  It may be that central to Beejay’s differences in culture is that our whole lives as women here in El Nahra are bound up in the duty and honor of raising family and caring for our older relatives, while she only dreams of children, working in a far-away place from her home, her mother, and her extended family.

​ Beejay came to our village looking so plain, with short bangs, the thick heavy shoes that I mentioned, like men wear, and with no ornamental gold, which she inexplicably left at her home in America.  Her husband was with her, but what if he took another wife?  What if he left her?  In Iraq, our family units and the ornamental gold we women collect are insurance against disasters such as these.  Even in tough times, and for the most impoverished in our communities, we collectively provide food and shelter for women and children.  For example, one of my beautiful young friends was paid a heavy bride price in much gold, but her husband left her unexpectedly soon after the marriage. Now she has been taken in by a Sheik to live in a harem, where she tends to and sells sheep, goats, and chickens, marketing eggs and wool when they’re ready.

​ Beejay told us an awful story about nursing homes, where people in America deliver their aging relatives to retire and to be cared for by hired caretakers.  But there is always a support network in place for women in traditional Iraqi Shiite culture.  Besides raising money to support themselves and help the family, they can embroider and make clothing and other household items.  There is no other place for women outside the family house, it is respectable to stay inside at home, a place where she will have a role and status.  And in her old age she will be served with the men, and relieved of much of the work to be done around the household, as a respite from raising children and having endured the busy life of maintaining a household.

​ Our lifeways have been in place for hundreds of years and serve to cement women’s influential status as decision makers in the family unit, including whom our sons will marry and whether a child goes to school.  We are above reproach on these issues.  This cohesive, collective system of seclusion and household-based industry, solely inhabited by women in our society, revolves around supporting property and marriages.  With customs dictating kin-based marriage and often not enough men to marry all the women in a village, the community is honor-bound to allow the harem to flourish.  It is not unlike an insurance policy to guard against unforeseen problems in life.

​ We also honor our families and God by remaining covered and secluded.  We are not ogled by men, and the strict customs surrounding the mixing of the sexes only serves to enhance the cohesive and communal nature of not only the harem, but the village.  I simply cannot understand why Western culture would prefer an individualistic approach to life and relationships, as opposed to the insurance our harem, and, additionally, our bride-price, provides. 

American women, scantily clad and individualistic may cause change and disruption in society that is not tolerated here in Iraq.  Our lifeways, customs, and very sustenance depend on this superior community-based approach to supporting and promoting a healthy existence for all women in Iraqi society.

I do envy Beejay occasionally, with her Western style living facilities for single women and the occasional congenial companionship that arises unexpectedly.  And we sure would like to have a cinema in town where the women could see Hollywood-style films.  But overall, our communities and harems have served to honor our culture, heritage, ancestors, and women in a way that manages and enhances our entire lifecycle with honor and a sense of dignity that is more valuable than Beejay’s fleeting and uncertain Western lifeways.​

A Veil

As Fatima notes, the abayah, a piece of clothing that covers the body from head to toe is commonly worn among rural Shiite Muslim women.  And, noted as well in the McKee lectures, the custom of veiling and secluding women in Middle Eastern cultures long predates Islam.  There are several reasons why veiling is widespread among these cultures that distance it from preconceived and stereotypical ideas regarding oppression and women’s rights.  These include protecting property rights in lineal kin groups, assuring the honor and esteem of the families holding title and passing on property or controlling resources, and assuring that sexuality does not upset traditional and balanced lifeways that define the cultures. 

​ In the many poor villages dotting the Iraqi countryside land is cultivated and used to raise livestock.  Ownership is passed down to the eldest son (primogeniture) making lineage a core feature of the culture of landowners in rural Iraq and, indeed, elsewhere around the world, even in America.  (McKee, Lecture 9) And the development of the Iraqi culture, through changing political and social climes, demanded a strong, honorable claim to title, especially for small landowners who typically lived in a village overseen by a Shiek, a wealthy and powerful landowner and benefactor of the village.  Women in this society were encouraged to marry a first cousin on their father’s side – protecting the family lineage and honoring it by remaining close to the family unit, ensuring male heirs were raised and cared for generously.  Veiling and secluding women in the household protected them from advances by other men or other non-allowed contact, thereby ensuring the honor of the lineage and its claim to title.

​ Other ancient and archaic cultures did not exhibit lineal patterns in kinship, rather focusing on immediate relationships that were wide and far reaching, or kindred.  (McKee, Lecture 8)  A kindred understanding of one’s family relationships allows people to focus on relatives and relationships everywhere, such as in indigenous groups in Africa including the Zhun/twasi.  With family in nomadic kin groups that act as resources and sources of marriage, and ownership of watering locations as prime components of women’s roles in these societies, the lineal aspect of family histories among these groups differed from cultures such as the Shiite Iraqis. 

In El Nahra, the lineage of a family could go back hundreds of years or more, and property ownership, rights to the land, were grounded in this lineal relationship.  Veiling and seclusion of women and the culture surrounding the harem that defines Fatima’s lifeways did not develop in other early societies because of the importance placed on kindred understanding of families and communities, unlike the lineal system that prevails in the Middle East.

​ Perhaps the most compelling theory regarding the use of the veil and seclusions in various cultures around the world revolves around what is called “The Brahmin Problem,” whereby too many educated and eligible women have been born into a society, and so secluding them, keeping them chaste, and providing for them for their entire lifecycles represents an enlightened solution to a problem that may otherwise see women reduced to poverty and homelessness, or worse.  But by engaging in the traditional customs of veiling and seclusion, women helped ensure survival for their community in feast or famine.

“The Brahmin Problem”

​ As seen in Chinese and other societies, the births of too many female children can result in infanticide.  In other cases, too many women bearing children by “unmarried fathers” can cause homeless and destitution for the women and children.  In response to this problem of an excess of eligible brides and other female-identified members of society, the early cultures in the Middle East adopted polygyny and instituted the communal system in the form of harems that dominated the countryside for centuries.  In El Nahra, as the White Revolution began to take root under a struggling dynasty agitated by rural farmers, women were leaving for Baghdad and other cosmopolitan areas and coming back educated and as eligible brides, sometimes as modern women that could generate an income.  Here, then, “The Brahmin Problem” surfaced in Middle Eastern society as it has for centuries.  To secure the lineage of their families, integrate into local society, and engage with the economy or even marry, women in Iraq adopted the local customs and practices and engaged life within the comforting and supportive harem of a relative or husband.

​ Veiled and secluded, secure in and securing the lineage system, and protected from infanticide or poverty, the combined system of polygyny, arranged marriage within kin groups, harems, and the veiling and seclusion of women provided for a humane response to the pressure referred to as “The Brahmin Problem.”  Of course, the Koran admonishes women to dress modestly, and so religion only segues nicely with an otherwise human response to a very human problem, rather than Islam defining the practice of veiling or otherwise having developed it to use as a cudgel and threaten the oppression of women.  In fact, veiling and seclusion of women all over the world has proven an effective and elegant solution to a very human problem.  

Conclusion

​ From Fatima, to veiling and seclusion as a means of honorably securing property, to the general notion of the many ways in which societies have dealt with an imbalance in available marriage arrangements it becomes apparent how Fernea came to understand the Shiite culture from a woman’s perspective as one of honor, and especially property ownership and subsistence living in Middle Eastern farming villages and other societies worldwide.  While preconceived ideations and prejudices may persist regarding the veiling and seclusion of women in Islamic and Middle Eastern culture, there is, in fact, a more nuanced and subtle reasoning that undergirds the purpose of these cloistered, closed community Sheikdoms and harems.

​ Fernea is very insightful, not only regarding the role of women in sustaining and legitimizing property rights in rural Iraq, but also in her understanding of how gender roles are assigned in various cultures and societies based on their histories and the numerous pressures that result from them. As is evidenced by the more egalitarian societies that value and depend on kindred relationships such as the Zhun/twasi of Africa, the lineal, property-based system that resulted in these characteristics of women’s lifeways in rural Iraq arose out of the permanence of place for families and communities, where women play a crucial and respected role in the life and health of every member, young and old.