Guests Of The Sheik Summary

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea wrote Guests of the Sheik based on her experiences living with her husband in a rural village in Iraq for two years. This book details Fernea's experiences as she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman while delving into a form of life rarely explored due to its isolation and emphasis on privacy. Fernea, herself, was not an anthropologist, but the Guests of the Sheik can be considered an ethnography that far surpasses the practices of its time. Fernea's desire to belong and live as a harem women allows her to experience and understand a culture far too often judged as oppressive and overly conservative. Fernea seeks to enlighten readers of the rich lives the women of El Nahra maintain, despite their adherence

This book differs from most ethnographies in that it was not authored by an anthropologist. Fernea originally set out to accompany her husband as he completed research for his doctorate in social anthropology from the University Chicago. Henceforth, Fernea did not enter the field with any specific goals, hypotheses, or particular interests. In many ways, Guests of the Sheik reads as a personal narrative, describing Ferneas struggles integrating into a society that has vastly different expectations and guidelines for women. Fernea recalls the culture shock she first experienced as well as her eagerness to overcome it. Her goals were mainly of a human nature: she wanted to feel a sense of belonging, to have friends, and to establish a life in El Nahra. The first part of Guests of the Sheik largely mimics Fernea's own journey to feeling accepted as it introduces readers to the various groups of women who soon become Fernea's close friends and confidants, most importantly Laila, who will later introduce many aspects of Muslim culture to Fernea. Throughout the book, each chapter emphasizes a different aspect of life as Fernea discovers it, or details an important event. As such, readers experience Ramadan and Eid, two staples of the Muslim culture, Weddings and marriage arrangements, discussions of monogamy and polygamy, the Pilgrimage to Karbala, and many other customs

Fernea writes, "I discovered, friendships among women were much more important and much more intense in this segregated society than in our own….The women have to depend on each other for company, for support, and for advice" (255). Fernea ascribes the increased importance of female friendship to the segregated nature of El Nahra, where the men spend most of the day away from the women, even their wives. She continues to state, "A man might be a devoted father or brother or a loving husband, but in El Nahra he was seldom, if ever, a companion" (255). Therefore, women turned to each other for companionship. This juxtaposes with Fernea's own perspective because she does consider her husband to be a companion. This revelation of the unique nature of friendships, in which the fidelity and loyalty between friends was a far greater concern that between couples, aids in Fernea's desire to expose multidimensional layers of life for the women of El Nahra. She countered the belief that women could not have meaningful, emotional, and equal relationships with their husbands by revealing women did have such relationships, they just occurred in friendships rather than romantic