Guests of the Sheik

This chapter is devoted to the strange story of Jabbar’s engagement. Elizabeth begins the story by noting that Jabbar and Bob have become very close friends despite the fact that Jabbar was vehemently anti-Western in his politics and highly suspicious of what Bob was doing in El Nahra. The two debate political topics often, especially the merits of speedy industrialization and democratization in Russia versus gradual industrialization and democratization in America and Europe. Bob is closely clued in to Jabbar’s process of finding a wife, a process that is somewhat complicated by his desire to find “a girl who was also modern, who had been educated and who would be his partner in helping to build the new Iraq” (283). Jabbar decides between two marriages that are offered by friends. One friend attempts to set him up with a girl from a more conservative and politically-active Iraqi family, and another friend attempts to set him up with his sister. Jabbar ends up becoming engaged to the former.

Elizabeth discusses two separate instances of death in El Nahra. In the first instance, she witnesses a funeral procession for an old woman who is attached to Haji Hamid’s household. The woman was a wife of Haji Hamid’s father and, like many other Shia Muslims, is being taken to the holy city of Najaf to be buried. In the second instance, Elizabeth visits the bereaved Um Saad, the wife of the mayor, whose mother died in Baghdad. Because Elizabeth considers Um Saad to be a modern woman with whom she has much in common, she is surprised by her visit and “unprepared for what met me” (191). During her visit, Um Saad and other visitors sat on carpets and pillows and lamented the loss of her mother. They cried and ruminated on how crucial mothers are, asking “What is there to replace one’s mother? Nothing, nothing…” (191). Elizabeth finds herself feeling “sorry for Um Saad, sorry for her mother, sorry for myself even, far from home and my own mother” (192). She juxtaposes the emotional burden of the wake and the fact that Um Saad “was near exhaustion” with Um Saad’s belief that the wake was cathartic and essential. 

Elizabeth reveals that she and Bob will return to Baghdad so that Bob can do library research before they return to the United States. She thinks about her friendship with Laila and about how Laila “still thought of me as a protégé with a great deal to learn” (295). Elizabeth sees Laila as “too sharp, too curious, too stubborn, difficult as well as plain” to make a good wife, and she thinks it is for the best that Laila will probably never marry. Instead, she believes that Laila will “grow into the role she was beginning to assume already, a small pillar in the women’s society” (296). Elizabeth also describes some of her last encounters with Selma and Aziza. She and Bob both admit that they are sad about leaving El Nahra, and they resolve to visit the tribe before they return to the United States in June.