Читать книгу Iraq's Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden - Edward L. Ochsenschlager - Страница 9
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THE PEOPLE OF AL-HIBA
The people of al-Hiba lived far removed from the outside world. The trip to Shatra, the nearest town, was at its shortest when there was sufficient water in the main canal to float the large motorized boats which carried passengers, animals, and produce from the outlying areas to market. It still required a 2.5 hour trip aboard a motorized boat to a mud bank docking place and from there a taxi ride of 15 to 20 minutes. From January through March, during the rainy season, it took much longer since it was necessary to walk through deep mud from the dock to the nearest place approachable by taxi, a process that could take 1–2 hours. During the dry season, in late fall and early winter, the trip was longer still, 4 hours or more, since the villagers first had to walk to the place where the local canal joined the main Shatra canal (Abu Simech) from where they could hire a tarada (bitumen-covered boat poled through the water with long bamboo or reed poles) that would take them to the point where they could be picked up by the motorized boat. The motorized boat would then take them to the Shatra docking place.
Thus, people in the villages surrounding al-Hiba were relatively immobile. A trip to Shatra was a major event reserved for those occasions when they wanted to sell something—carpets, reed mats, wool, produce, an animal for butchering—that could not be sold or traded in the village, when they wanted to buy a major item such as a plow, a knife, or a gun, or when they needed to visit the doctor at the hospital. In most families the doctor or hospital visit was a desperate last attempt when other kinds of local treatment had failed. Villagers believed that sick people who went to the hospital inevitably died. They often delayed so long in taking a sick person for treatment that their beliefs became self-fulfilling prophesies.
The early years of our excavation, in the late 1960s, were times of unbelievable poverty for the people of al-Hiba. The sheikhs, who were politically active and prospered under the monarchy, were treated with great suspicion by the Baathists who used every opportunity to eradicate them and their influence, leaving a void in the management of farmlands. The irrigation system in the area, which had previously been one of the sheikhs’ major responsibilities, was now often in disrepair and inadequately regulated. Money was beginning to replace barter for some commodities, and people in the villages, who had little opportunity to acquire cash, were at a great disadvantage. In those days one could often see women gathering grass and sedge from the edges of the marsh and the canals, not for fodder for their animals, but to be boiled and served as the main dish for their families’ dinners.
The villagers in the area around al-Hiba fell into three different groups. First, the Bedouin pitched their tents on the seasonal marshland from late August to the beginning of the rains in late December. Second, the Beni Hasan dwelled in seven villages of 200 to 250 people each within walking or boating distance of the site. Third, five small villages of the Mi’dan, or Marsh Arabs, dotted the southern part of the mound. In addition three Mi’dan households, each isolated from the others, were perched on a narrow spit of land in the extreme southeast. Other villages of the Beni Hasan were located on the margins of the marshes, and some Mi’dan villages were found in the marshes where they had created patches of dried land by alternating layers of mud quarried from the marsh bottom with reed mats. All these settlements could be reached by boat.
The Mi’dan, or Marsh Arabs, have in particular attracted considerable attention. Fulanain (Hedgecock and Hedgecock) captured much of the atmosphere and social interaction in the marsh Arab world in a highly personalized account of a marsh dweller in The Marsh Arab Haji Rikkan (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1927).* Gertrude Bell, who had encouraged the book, was unable to write a promised foreword because of her untimely death. The Marsh Arabs (New York: Dutton, 1964), by Wilfred Thesiger, and People of the Reeds (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957),† by Gavin Maxwell, provided very personal narratives of adventurous journeys through the same land. Both Thesiger and Maxwell were keen observers and wrote accurately, often poetically, of the lives and customs of the Mi’dan. Both works are also lavishly illustrated with fine photographs. The most useful account for the modern anthropologist is that of S. M. Salim (Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta (London: Athlone, 1962), a carefully documented field study conducted in ech-Chibayish (which lies at a considerable distance from al-Hiba) of the values and social rules whereby the lives of the Marsh Arabs are sustained, and it records the significant social changes in Mi’dan society due to commercial and external influence. It does not concern itself with the mechanical detail of material culture.
I am concerned here primarily with the material culture of the tribes living in the area, not only with the Mi’dan but with the Bedouin and the Beni Hasan, and I am especially concerned with their relations to each other. As the project originated in the desire to known more about our archaeological finds on the excavation, it is only natural that material culture should play the leading role, but that does not mean that other aspects could be ignored for they also had archaeological implications
Each of these three groups occupied an important ecological niche in the area, and all three had much in common. The general character and basic beliefs of each, especially in the area of family organization and patterns of living, were very similar. Rather than repeat fundamental elements common to each of the three groups, I shall describe first the Beni Hasan and note later how the Mi’dan and Bedouin differ from them.
Beni Hasan
The Beni Hasan, who belonged to the Shia branch of Islam, lived on dry land at the edge of the marshes. Only an occasional tribal sheikh preserved anything like the power he had previously possessed and he was strictly responsible to the government for every decision he made. Most of the local sheikhs had fled south, some as fugitives from government pressure, into Kuwait or even Saudi Arabia. Others had moved permanently to Baghdad where, through cooperation with the government, they sought to protect the little they had salvaged from their former holdings. Two minor sheikhs still functioned in the area due in part to their personal charisma, in part to their adroit political maneuvering, and in part to the location of their peoples in a part of the country at the time considered less politically important than other areas.
During the summer, the Beni Hasan raised rice and millet, and in winter, barley and wheat unless prevented from doing so by either lack of rain or a greater flood than usual. They cultivated vegetables—especially a kind of spinach, turnips, onions, beans, eggplant, and some tomatoes on land near the banks of a canal or the edge of the marshes. The young leaves of many wild plants were gathered and eaten raw as salads.
Fields for crops were usually protected by manmade ramparts of mud and straw that varied in size according to their location. Those areas against the marsh bank or along the borders of a canal were usually significantly higher than those farther from the water. The largest bank in the area, in a place especially prone to flooding, stood about 3 m high and about 4 m wide at its base. Maintaining these embankments during the rainy season was a constant chore. The vegetable garden for some families was small, growing just enough for family use. For other families the area of the garden was larger and the produce was sold or bartered. Most Beni Hasan also had small herds of sheep, flocks of chickens, and sometimes turkeys and small herds of cattle. The sheep produced meat, wool, milk, and dung, the birds both meat and eggs, and the cattle meat, dung, milk, butter, and cheese. Fish, largely carp netted in the marshes, provided many families with their major income or trade good.
Then as now men wore a kuffiya (headcloth) fastened on their heads with a plaited camel hair or wool cord, and a dishdasha (long, straight garment) under a recycled western suit jacket, which is in turn covered with an aba (wool cloak). Underwear, consisting of white cotton drawers with drawstring waists, came midway between the knee and ankle. Very few people regularly wore shoes, except on holidays and other special occasions. So callused were men’s feet that they warmed them in winter by putting them on the hearth an inch or two from the burning coals. All men carried rifles over their shoulders, wore colorful ammunition belts around their waists and often over their shoulders, and carried a mugwar (reed and bitumen club). Women wore an abaya (shapeless black cloak) that covered them from head to foot. Under the cloak they wore a loose-fitting black garment similar to the dishdasha.
The Family
Family organization is patriarchal and patrilocal. The father is the head of the household, which usually consists of himself, his wife or wives, his sons and unmarried daughters, his sons’ wives, his grandsons and unmarried granddaughters, and possibly his sons’ sons’ sons, their wives, and great-great-grandsons and unmarried great-great-granddaughters. Usually the whole family lives in one compound or in two or more adjoining compounds (see p 100–101). In theory, the father has absolute power over his extended family. He decides which members of the family will perform which work, whom his sons and daughters would marry, what the living arrangements inside the compound would be, and how any extra produce for barter or money would be used. He is also the absolute judge of his family’s behavior, and he can punish them in petty ways by withholding food and privileges, and in substantive ways by disowning them or even having them killed or killing them himself. The most severe punishments are applied only in cases of extreme violation of honor. There was little to distinguish between exile and death: life without the family is considered a kind of living death.
The family is thought to have sharaf (a collective honor). The ideology of honor comprises responsibility—especially in obedience to religious laws—a strong work ethic, charity, chastity, and modesty. Each member of the family is responsible for the acts of every other member, and the dishonorable conduct of one member reflects upon the honor of all. Ideally men and women are expected to live by standards of conduct that reward generosity, sincerity, honesty, loyalty to friends, and vow keeping. Parents, of course, are supposed to instill these values in their children so they will grow up to be good Muslims. In addition, men are expected to provide financial support and to protect the family against external harm. Women must preserve their reputation for sexual morality by strict adherence to social mores, self-control, and modesty. If men fail in their obligations, their women lose honor. If women fail, men lose honor. Therefore “honor” is interlocked, and all members are responsible for the honor of the entire family or household. Much the same code of honor and sexual behavior is found throughout the Mediterranean and Latin America. It was brought to Spain by the Arab conquest and to Latin America by the Spanish.
Violations of the honor code are taken very seriously, and the threat of severe punishment seems to deter dishonorable behavior. In the villages with which I am best acquainted, exile, but not death, was occasionally inflicted. Out-of-wedlock pregnancy was among the greatest sins; its punishment was death to the woman by stoning at the hands of her relatives. I am aware of two such serious breaches of honor. In both cases the pregnant young women were sent to visit distant relatives and returned after several months to report that their distant married cousins had given birth to new babies. Neither of the two girls was physically harmed.
Despite evidence to the contrary, all inhabitants of the village knew—or pretended to know—that the death penalty had been invoked in a nearby village during their lifetime. The stories of these punishments were narrated in a very dramatic fashion, leaving one to wonder if these cautionary tales, true or not, were an important part of the deterrent.
On two occasions when problems of honor were not resolved through public discourse or through proper punishment exacted by the father, violence erupted. In one case, a young fisher boy spoke to a girl gathering fodder in the marshes. This conduct, regarded as dishonorable on his part but not on hers, since she had not answered him, was not adequately punished by the boy’s father. That night the girl’s family, armed with rifles, attacked the boy’s family compound and a battle ensued in which two people were wounded. To my knowledge, this case has not yet been resolved, and there is still bitter antagonism between the two families over an event that happened in 1978.
The second case, involving two families living in different villages, revolved around a boy who had blocked the path of a young girl and tried to make her speak to him. In the ensuing fight between men of the two villages who were armed with guns and knives, one member of the girl’s family was killed, and the transgression was only mitigated when the boy was sent into exile and a large payment exacted from the boy’s clan was paid to the girl’s family. This kind of payment commands the financial support of every clan member and often brings extreme hardship to more distant members who, even though they are not involved in the altercation, are obliged to pay their share. An unpaid obligation for a breach of honor may produce a blood feud that can continue for several generations. When a crime is committed against a member of another lineage, each member of the perpetrator’s lineage must pay in equal amounts his portion of the penalty. All men over 15 are considered as full members for the purpose of compensation, so a father of young men may have to pay several shares to satisfy his family’s portion of the penalty.
One of the problems that hampers ethnoarchaeological investigation among the people of al-Hiba is that men must be extremely careful in speaking to women to whom they are not related, since a woman who allows or encourages such conduct brings a serious stigma to her family’s honor. A good friend of the family might be allowed to speak to a widowed elderly grandmother, but only in public and only if she talks to him first. Indeed, several senior women relished the opportunity of expanding their knowledge of the outside world by asking me questions and at least two of them expressed interest in helping me find a suitable bride.
It is also quite all right for men to talk to little girls. Little boys and girls gathered around me wherever I went, intensely curious about the nature of this creature from outer space. They laughed, giggled, and asked questions, made hesitant statements or observations that brightened up my day. They were a beginner’s best teachers of Arabic for they had a limited but basic vocabulary and took delight in repetition. Although they often laughingly collapsed at my mispronunciations and other mistakes, they never tired of chatting and helping. Between the ages of 8 and 12, however, little girls grew up, spent more time at home, and were no longer supposed to socialize with boys or men. No male outsider was permitted to talk directly to a woman between childhood and old age. It was even considered bad manners to indicate he had noticed her presence or passing. Sometimes, with special permission, it was possible to talk to a woman through her husband or son, but usually only in the most public place. In the 23 years that Muhammad was my guide and best friend in the area, I never saw his wife except as a fleeting shadow about the house or courtyard, and the shadow was always fully veiled.
Although the father has a right and duty to punish family members for improper behavior, social controls function to keep his punishment within acceptable bounds. The essence of these controls is the man’s own honor: to act unjustly or to punish unjustly is also considered dishonorable. Those who disagree with the punishment the father chooses must convince him that what he is doing is improper and thus dishonorable. The most potent controller of behavior is perhaps public opinion, which is usually shaped by gossip initiated within the man’s own household. A man’s mother, his brothers, or his wife’s brothers are also considered to have important influence.
Interestingly enough, a man’s mother can be directly influenced by the man’s wife or wives, who also hold sway over their brothers. Brothers are brought around through their wives, and wives of brothers commonly work hard at building close relationships, perhaps for this very reason. The power of gossip and the building of close relationships with people who hold social power give women more control over their world than is at first evident (see Weaving, p. 242–244). This control is applied with such tact and diplomacy that husbands often think they are acting on their own ideas. Women never withhold their sexual favors or refuse to do their household jobs, but they can show their displeasure by approaching these activities in so listless, joyless, and bored a fashion that husbands often openly search for a way to restore equanimity and tranquility to the household.
Marriage
Marriages are arranged, and the father has authority over the choice of spouse. Other family members, however, often heavily influence his decision. The ideal, and most prestigious bride for those families who can afford it, is said to be a Bedouin (see p. 29, 238). This aspiration would seem to be, at least in the villages near al-Hiba, mostly a dream. In the course of my work I know of only one Bedouin engagement and as you will see below it never came to fruition. Otherwise a father usually looks first to his brothers’ children for potential mates. Such marriages have the benefit of (1) costing less to arrange because the bride price and dowry can be kept to a minimum, (2) aiding the patrilineal kinship organization by keeping this distributed property in the family unit, (3) providing the comfort of a familiar environment for both marriage partners who know their in-laws well and have been brought up in much the same way. For the father, the fact that he accepts a low bride price for his daughters is offset by the fact that he can acquire wives for his sons at the same reduced rate.
Often an older woman of the village serves as matchmaker, searching out appropriate and prestigious mates. The women of the family also play a significant, often-crucial role: they are able to report on aspects of the potential partner’s personality and upbringing to which the father has no direct access. Women seem to prefer marriage in their own lineage for they fear they might be badly treated if they are forced to move far enough away to void the protection of their own family. They also believe that they are less likely to be divorced or made second wives by further marriages if their relatives are close by.
The ideal young woman is sturdy and has long legs, large hips, small waist, large breasts, long neck, large, liquid eyes (“the size of eggs”), and long, thick black hair. She is strong and healthy, a well-trained housekeeper, shows promise of being a good mother, and is responsible and modest. Young men are admired for wiry builds, aquiline features, flashing white teeth, and piercing eyes that look with such intensity that they “burn a hole through the walls of the mudhif.” They are also responsible and modest, and they have superior farming, fishing, and hunting skills. For males, overweight is considered a bizarre deformity; fat men are the butt of unkind jokes as are men with extremely pale skin. Blue eyes are considered full of potential evil and in this reflective of their owner’s soul. The color of my eyes, a bluish-green, meant that I almost always made a bad first impression and had to work very hard to overcome attitudes that had persisted for generations.
Marriages are arranged in a series of visits between the fathers of the prospective couple, and presents are exchanged. After the subject is broached, the fathers continue discussions to determine the dowry and the bride price. In 1968, the bride price paid by the father of the groom to the father of the bride, and the dowry, the personal possessions brought to the marriage by the new bride from outside the lineage were about equal in value, ranging from about 400 Iraqi ID (Iraqi Dinars) for a village wife to 1,000 ID for a Bedouin (then about $800 to $2,000). The intra-lineage price ranged from 25 to 50 ID. In 1990 prices up to 5,000 ID were being asked for outside the lineage brides, but seldom paid. The war between Iraq and Iran had greatly reduced the number of eligible males, and families were lucky to find husbands for all their young girls. A bride is more expensive if she is especially beautiful or if the groom to be has a bad reputation. Although not exorbitant by later standards, the amounts for outside brides were often large enough to keep men from marriage several years longer than they or their parents wished.
After the details of the bride price, dowry, and ceremony are finalized, the marriage contract is usually signed by the two fathers and a witness for each family, at the sheikh’s mudhif or at the bride’s home in the presence of the sheikh, a religious man, or a Sayidi, a descendent of the Prophet Muhammed. The contract usually reads: “I marry my daughter to [name], accepting the payment which both sides involved have agreed in the manner prescribed by the Quran.” A meal prepared by the mother and female relatives of the bride is served to the men. Unseen by the men and gathered in a nearby structure, the female members of both families also feast, sing, and ululate. The next day the groom takes a basket of meat, dried fish, sweets, fruit, nuts, and other treats to the bride’s house, and the basket is returned with gifts for the groom’s family. The actual marriage day is set during the next few days through discussions in the sheikh’s or town’s mudhif.
Between the signing of the marriage contract and the actual wedding, the groom, his family, and friends construct an addition to the family compound for the newlyweds. A room is usually added onto the main structure of the family home, with an entrance from the courtyard, not from the structure to which it is attached. The volunteer workmen—young male relatives and friends of the groom—are fed by the women of the groom’s family, but the women usually stay apart from the building activities which are accompanied by many jokes, some of them crude. Before the wedding day, the bridegroom and his male relatives make the rounds of the village inviting people to the wedding.
On the day of the wedding the groom bathes, dresses in his best clothes, and is joined in celebrating by his male relatives and friends. The bride is washed, perfumed, hennaed, and usually dressed in a special glittery, metallic cloth with strong, bright colors called “turn-out-the-lights-and-catch-me-fabric.” She is then placed atop a platform at one end of her house where she is surrounded by girls of her own age (usually between 12 and 15) singing wedding songs that extol the bride’s virtues and beauty and often the groom’s virtues as well.
There are two types of wedding celebrations. In an ordinary wedding, the bride’s relatives meet and celebrate at her home. They then conduct the bride and her dowry to the groom’s house. The procession, preferably with the bride mounted on a horse, is accompanied by music and singing.
In the second kind of wedding, both sets of relatives participate in the celebration at the bride’s home. When the groom arrives, astride a horse and amidst a volley of gunshots triggered by his friends, a battle ensues between the two sets of relatives for possession of the bride. The groom’s family always wins, but there is often no pretense about the strength of the blows delivered on both sides. The groom seizes the bride, carries her outside, throws her across the horse’s shoulders in front of him, and gallops home. Both sets of guests follow directly, but more slowly, singing and dancing, and the most important members of the girl’s family accompany the dowry. The second kind of wedding is usual in families that emphasize their nomadic ancestry and in addition have considerable material resources, not least for the horse required for the ceremony. Renting a horse in an area where few exist (and those that do are treasured as members of the family) is very difficult and extremely expensive. It costs three times as much to rent one for an “abduction” as there is always fear that the horse will be injured or terrified in the midst of the struggle.
On arrival at the groom’s house after either kinds of wedding, the bride is immediately ushered into the new room by her mother and the mother of the groom, and sometimes by aunts and great-aunts as well. The men congregate in the mudhif or the main reception room of the family, and small groups or even the entire family of the bride or groom leap to their feet from time to time to sing and dance hosas, songs in which the leader makes up a verse that is then repeated by the other singers. Men lift and stamp their feet in rhythm with the words, swaying in unison backwards and forwards or in a circle as they perform the ancient dance. The women gather in the kitchen area where they also sing and dance and, in addition, ululate. The groom’s father carefully checks the dowry: it is as dishonorable for him to be fooled as it is for the bride’s father to try to fool him.
The bride, mother of the bride, mother of the groom, and sometimes an aunt or two retire to the bride and groom’s new bedroom, where they await the groom. When the groom enters the wedding chamber, a silence falls over the entire party. The two mothers remove the girl’s undergarments and hold her legs apart. The groom then takes a length of white cloth prepared for him by his mother, wraps it around his index finger, and breaks his bride’s hymen, decorating the cloth with her virginal blood. Rumor has it that a chicken is always kept in the wedding chamber in case the bride does not bleed freely enough, for there is a tendency to equate the quantity of blood with the quality of the virginity. The groom leaves the room to display the cloth to the men while his mother shows it to the women. Gunshots erupt amidst piercing ululations and loud hosas. The groom reenters the chamber alone to consummate the marriage and then returns to the party to be again greeted with ululation, hosas, music, and song. The bride is waited on hand and foot by her mother-in-law and new relatives. Her own mother and family will not see her again for an entire week so that she can adjust without interference to her new family and new life.
A husband can divorce his wife any time for any reason. If the husband has a legitimate reason for doing so, such as adultery, barrenness, bad behavior, or misuse of household money, he has the right to the return of the bride price from the bride’s family. Divorcees usually return to live with their natal families and have few prospects for an additional marriage. Adulterous wives are usually secretly killed after their return. Both their own family and the family of their deceased husband, on the other hand, treat widows, with great respect.
Looking Out for Others
Although the Quran permits a man up to four wives at the same time, multiple wives are fairly unusual in the al-Hiba area. Among the villagers, most men who take second wives do so as a way of maintaining family bonds. Should a man die, for instance, leaving behind a wife and children, it is not unusual for his brother to marry the widow. This marriage is not one of love but a very important device for preserving family connections and making certain that the deceased’s wife and children are provided for in an appropriate manner. The next largest group of men with multiple wives consists of families in which the first wife convinces the husband that he needs a second wife. Two wives, of course, meant that women’s duties in the household could be shared, and the first wife would have only half as much work as before. This is not to say that there was not the occasional marriage of passion. These were arranged by the husband and were likely to stimulate jealousy, competition, and other unhealthy emotions in each of the two wives. Other men in the village seldom envied the home life of a husband who took a second wife for love.
People are bound by rules of generosity to look after each other’s needs. Widows, old men, and other needy people have the right to ask younger members of the village for help in arduous tasks, and the younger person has a strict moral responsibility to comply. Helping someone else is very much in a person’s own interest. If he refuses he will not be able to find anyone to help him when he is in need of assistance. There are other regulatory devices in the community that keep self-centered acts to a minimum. One such is the function of gossip in so tight-knit a community and the stigmatization that results if egocentric behavior persists. Only those who live in impervious shells can pretend that they are not the focus of gossip for their antisocial behavior. Craftspeople, in addition to providing a setting for gossip in the places where they ply their trade, often afford a forum for the discussion of an individual’s over-all behavior in the community (see p. 184–5, 243). As both these proceedings are entirely public and generate comment from other members of the community, their messages are difficult to avoid.
Most impressive is the compassion with which mentally deficient people are cared for in the village. Looking out for such a person, whether an adult or a child, is the concern of everyone in the community. Whoever sees a mentally challenged individual in trouble drops everything to help him. Persons with such disabilities are thought to be touched by God and are observed and listened to with special interest, for who can tell what this special one might be trying to foretell or proclaim. As a result the afflicted person has round-the-clock care and a very special social status in the community. They were looked upon with both pride and a bit of apprehension, and far from being treated as outsiders or monstrosities, were treated with respect and an element of awe.
Education for Life
Aspirations of most young people in the late 1960s and 1970s were somewhat limited. The main goal of adolescents seemed to be to grow up to be like their mothers and fathers, but only if their parents had honor. Young people’s practical education consisted of learning how to accomplish the expectations of their same-sex family members. Industry and responsibility were stressed. Girls learned to prepare food from scratch, to manage household chores like cleaning the compound, laundering, and making dung patties for fuel, to collect reeds, to care for chickens or turkeys, to assist in the harvest, and, perhaps most important of all, to guard the family resources. Women had to assure that resources lasted from one harvest (or, rarely, one paycheck) to the next. Girls also learned proper behavior, which included the subtle influencing of male behavior and the outcome of events. Boys learned agricultural methods, the care of livestock, fishing and hunting, proper village behavior—especially the etiquette for participation in discussions in the mudhif—and the special crafts, if any, of their fathers. During their training, children learned what it means to be a man or woman through close and extended association with the parent of their own sex.
Children go to work at a very early age, learning and doing at once. There are many helpful jobs a child of seven or eight can do—herding animals, looking for eggs, and helping to plant or cook. Through constant association with their father or mother children learn their proper roles in the household and the village; they learn to be useful and to contribute to the family’s well being. Children as young as 7 or 8 usually participate in serious family decisions; they are very much a part of the family unit, providing services and sometimes wages which help to make the family economically viable.
Formal schools for both boys and girls, provided by the central government, are within walking distance of most villages. These schools teach the skills of reading, writing, and figuring, and they give students some knowledge of their government and some understanding of the Quran. The most common method of learning is to recite the lesson aloud. Foreign teachers, usually from Egypt, almost inevitably staff schools and children attend them for several years: girls until about 8 or 9 and boys until about 12 or 13. Local parents curtail their daughters’ education because they are concerned about the girls’ honor. Bright boys are able to graduate from the country schools to regular or technical secondary schools in nearby towns.
A major rite for boys is circumcision. In two of the villages around al-Hiba in the late 1960s circumcision took place near the age of puberty, somewhat later than in most places in the Middle East. Children expect it and prepared for it by mastering self-control. The local barber usually performs the operation in the village square. He uses a razor, but no anesthetic. Stoicism is required: boys are expected not to wince or make a sound or even let a tear inadvertently escape their eye. By showing no signs of pain during the operation, boys prove themselves brave men. Unfortunately, infections often set in because the procedure was carried out under far from sterile conditions. Some of these infections were serious enough to cause deformity or even death. Once the magic of our antibiotic powders was discovered, nearby villages tended to postpone these ceremonies until the excavation was running, assuring themselves access to our supplies if they are needed for their sons. The man who performs the circumcision in the nearest village makes the donated antibiotic powder a part of the official proceedings.
With the onset of puberty, boys usually enjoy greater freedom than they had known in their youth. They are almost never punished now: they have learned to act according to the dictates of honor, to work well and industriously, and never to pilfer from members of friendly clans. When they complete their assigned work they are free to come and go as they please without explanation. Such freedom is considered necessary for men in order to develop self-control.
Girls, on the other hand, have their freedom restricted at puberty. Even a slightly sullied reputation seriously limits a young girl’s marital choices, if it does not preclude her marriage altogether. Therefore girls seldom leave the immediate neighborhood. When they venture out of their family’s courtyard they usually do so to work in their family’s fields or to collect reeds and sedges from the marshes near their homes. Even then they must wear the abaya and use it to hide their faces as well as their bodies.
In the area of al-Hiba where the dictates of religion are seriously adhered to, the onset of puberty can make life very difficult for young people. The Quran completely forbids any sort of sexual pleasure outside of marriage. There is no practice of masturbation, nor is there a word for it. One young man who worked for the excavation went into the most abject despondence I have ever seen, which lasted for nearly two weeks. When I inquired about the reason, Muhammad told me that the boy had exploded, that is, he had experienced a wet dream. His shame over this experience was acute. To avoid unwanted thoughts, it seemed to me, young men became punctilious about their religious conduct, spending their evening hours studying the Quran or singing religious songs.
Death
When an individual approaches death he or she is rolled onto their right side facing Mecca. Gunshots and the wailing of grief-stricken family members signal death. While the corpse is being washed by the womenfolk and wrapped in cloth, family friends go down to the banks of the canal to arrange transportation for the corpse to the huge cemetery in the holy city of Najaf, in southern Iraq, where those Shia who can afford it are buried near the tomb of the martyr Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Those whose families could not afford the trip, more women than men, were buried in a local cemetery. The dead person, whose family could afford it, was accompanied to the boat by male relatives and friends, shooting their guns and singing hosas of mourning. The ululation and mourning of the women could be heard from the dead person’s home where women wailed, scratched their faces with their fingernails, and heaped dirt on their heads. The bodies of men and those few women who were to be buried at Najaf were accompanied aboard the boat by grieving relatives and transported to the dock near Shatra. There a taxicab driver, who brought a wooden coffin, met the corpse, the coffin most often belonged to the driver, and he rented it to the grieving relatives for the trip to Najaf. The body was placed in the coffin, which was then lashed to the roof of the taxi for the trip. The deceased was accompanied by relatives, but fewer than those who had accompanied the body to the dock, for the number of mourners were usually limited to those who could fit inside the taxi. When the body reached its final destination, I was told, it was removed from the coffin and buried in the soil in its cloth wrapping. The owner of the coffin retrieved it and was free to rent it again. It was the responsibility of the members of the clan to assist with the expenses of transporting the body to Najaf and those of the three-day mourning period. All families who had either a relationship with the dead person or with other members of the immediate family were expected to attend the mourning ceremonies and offer gifts, which were usually cigarettes or coffee.
For most women and those men unable to afford transportation and burial at Najaf, the only alternative was a small cemetery on the village outskirts. Although some locally buried bodies were bedecked with mud imitations of the jewelry they wore in life, this never occurred, to my knowledge, with the bodies sent to Najaf.
Local burials were quickly made in the 1960s, and those family members lucky enough to have a job soon returned to their daily activities. One of our pot washers, a lad about 9 years old, asked one day if we would permit him to have an hour off. A few moments later I saw him with a small group of people on “cemetery hill.” He returned in about 45 minutes.
“Did someone in your family die?” I asked him.
“Oh yes,” he said, “my mother.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. “Please take the day off. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh no,” he said. “That’s not necessary, God is good.”
He sat down before a pile of potsherds and went on with his work.
The Mi’dan
The Mi’dan, sometimes known as Marsh Arabs, depend on the watery environment of the marshes for their way of life. They keep water buffalo, which provide them with fuel and milk, and have even taught these semi-domesticated creatures how to forage beneath the water’s surface for succulent reed shoots and sedges.
Animals such as the water buffalo cannot really be considered domesticated if their owners fail to supervise their mating, and the Mi’dan did not consider this their business. Houses of the Mi’dan are built either in the marsh itself atop man-made islands of reed mats layered with mud or on the very edge of the marsh where they and their animals have easy access to the marsh vegetation. Both women and men are practiced at harvesting reeds and turning them into reed mats and baskets, which they sell or trade to itinerant trades people. Additional sustenance is derived from sowing rice during the spring in the seasonal marshland formed by the annual inundation. The most important source of outside income, however, comes from the making of reed mats and from the dairy products of their water buffalo. The Mi’dan fished for their own consumption but despised nets and thought that the only manly way to catch fish was to spear them.
Both the Bedouin and the Beni-Hasan looked down on the Mi’dan for keeping water buffalo, which both regarded as disgusting. Over the years serious scandals arose when the Bedouin or Beni-Hasan thought local butchers had substituted the meat of a water buffalo for the meat of domestic cattle. The Beni Hasan also thought that the Mi’dan were incomprehensibly silly to spend so much time trying to spear a few fish when they could catch many more with nets.
Aside from these distinctions and their different dwelling areas and subsistence modes, essential patterns of Mi’dan culture such as family organization, life-crisis ceremonies, division of labor, and notions of good and evil are very similar to those of the Beni-Hasan. One instantly noticeable difference is the custom of the Mi’dan women to go about their work without the abaya.
The architecture of the Beni Hasan and the Mi’dan, which was markedly different when the al-Hiba expedition began its work, grew more similar as time passed (see p. 100–101). Most members of the Mi’dan did not consider some so-called Mi’dan who lived in isolation or semi-isolation in the marshes as Mi’dan. These people often had been in some trouble with the law and had come south to lose themselves in the marshlands. On the surface, at least, their way of life was identical to that of the Mid’an, and they were held by their hosts to the same religious and moral standards of conduct. In the many years of our work in the area, I never heard of the smallest violation of conduct on the part of these outsiders. They were very dependent on the Mi’dan’s early warning system which effectively alerted everyone that an outsider was coming and usually identified the newcomer. At least an hour before the police could arrive at their homes, those in trouble with the law would melt into the marshes. It took me a long time to figure out how this was done, but it seems that signals were sent by a complicated system of gunshots, drums, and sometimes children’s whistles in a code based on the number of shots or notes and the time intervals between them.
The typical family has very few household possessions. They can, in a few short hours, roll up the reed mats which provide them shelter, put their few possessions into their boat or boats, and, driving their water buffalo before them disappear into the marshes, sometimes to isolated islands sometimes to hide in the water itself among the giant reeds.
Bedouin
From August through January the edges of the mound and its surrounding area were also inhabited by a clan of the nomadic Hadij, a Bedouin tribe, whose tents usually dotted the landscape in groups of three or more. Their nomadic wanderings brought them to al-Hiba when the recession of the marshes furnished pasturage for their herds. When the winter rains and the increasing floods from the irrigation canals began to empty into the marshes and expand them, the Hadij moved west into Syria, then south to Kuwait, and finally into the deserts of Saudi Arabia before returning to the area near al-Hiba during the hottest part of the summer.
Some Bedouin encampments were within walking distance of al-Hiba, others could be visited by a combination of boat and camel. All Hadij were members of the same clan, but they split into smaller groups to take advantage of the emerging grasslands fodder at the edge of the marsh. All were also Sunni Moslems, and although they were of a different sect, the Bedouin were welcomed here by both Beni Hasan and the Mi’dan. They inhabited and used for their pasturage only that part of the land not used by the others—the part that was beneath the water level of the marshes during the rest of the year.
Most Beni Hasan and Mi’dan believed that they themselves were descended from nomads who had settled here in earlier days; thus they thought they were close relatives of the Bedouin. The Hadij were especially respected because the Prophet Mohammed had descended from these desert nomads and because they were people whose unsurpassed honor was obvious in their women’s purity, their men’s honesty, and their meticulous observation of rules of hospitality. If a villager wished to choose a bride from among the Bedouin—and many so aspired—he must be prepared to pay a bride price at least three times that for a village girl.
Three categories of Bedouin women, however, never married into local families: women from the families of the mukhtar or sheikh (clan leader), from the sayyid (clan religious leader) who was a descendant of the Prophet, and from the weavers. Although they perform the same functions as families of other clan members, the family of the mukhtar (often called sheikh by followers and neighbors) usually has a long history of clan leadership and is held in great respect. Girls from such families are usually married into other leadership families of equal or greater respect to maintain the political advantage of their fathers. Boys from these families must learn to do the same things expected of other boys their age and, in addition, are usually also given some special training in leadership, but they may more freely marry tribeswomen of other classes.
Both daughters and sons of the sayyid are expected to marry into families who are, like them, descended from the Prophet. Those children of a sayyid traveling with the Hadij had to find mates outside the clan: only one sayyid family accompanied a clan. Indeed, the sayyid and his family were not considered clan members, and could travel freely with it or not as they wished. Boys from such a family were given religious training in addition to the daily tasks of herding animals.
The male weavers, using shuttle looms, traded their more finely woven material to be used for clothes and blankets for cruder wool and woven carpets made by village women. In contrast to the other two status groups and in spite of their economic importance to the clan, male weavers and their families were given little or no respect by either the Bedouin clan to which they belonged or by local villagers. The only Bedouin wife considered undesirable was a woman from a weaving family; even the poorest villager would have considered such a marriage unsuitable. Members of weavers’ families married within their own families or into other weavers’ families. The origin of this bias seemed to lie within the historical Bedouin concept of the ideal man, who should be a first-rate hunter or raider, wily, strong, and proud, not a sedentary individual who spent his days sitting on the ground before his loom. Among the Bedouin weavers who visited the area, I always noticed a sort of frantic cheerfulness and frenetic high spirits as if to cover an imperfection of which they were all too well aware.
No such stigma applied to Bedouin women weavers. The women of each household wove their own goat-hair tent panels from which they constructed their tent and the special panels that were used to divide the tents into women’s and men’s quarters, which consisted of alternating horizontal strips of woven goat hair, sheep wool, and camel hair. The wool from animals with multicolored coats was segregated by color, and panels of different colors alternated within the basic design. Sheep wool, for example, could be woven into strips of brown, black, and white, and these strips would then be alternated with khaki-colored strips of camel hair and strips woven from various-colored goat hair.
Women also raised the tents (usually under the direction of their men folk) and dismantled them with no direction whatsoever. They cooked, made clothing, drew water for animals that could not be taken to the water source, made fuel from dung and straw or reed, cleaned, washed, and did all other household chores. Men herded the camels, sheep, goats, made coffee, and sometimes tea. In the past their other major duty was to guard the encampment against outside raiders and to conduct raids themselves. Although such raids seldom took place in the late 1960s or early 1970s, except occasionally to punish someone for breaching the honor of a family member, the appropriate skills were carefully maintained. Similar skills were still employed, for example, in avoiding the harassment of border patrols of national governments that, for security reasons, urged the Bedouin to settle down and cease their nomadic way of life.
The Bedouin kept herds of sheep and goats, which they considered to be the foundation of their wealth and their major economic resource. They also kept camels and occasionally horses. The stately and dignified walk of the camel belies their temper. When the Bedouin were in residence, I sometimes used a camel to travel from one village to the next when carrying out my research. Camels know precisely how great a load they are meant to carry, and it is easy to offend them by overloading them. If the overload is minor they merely lie down, and once the insulting kilos are removed, they get up again and walk on as if nothing has happened. If seriously overloaded they bellowed with rage, refused to move, and spat on any person within range. Some become so deeply offended that even removing their entire load cannot mollify them. Mitigating the inflicted injustice is the only thing that will restore them to their usually tranquil nature. As they seem to equate any animate thing with its odor, a person can resolve the perceived injustice by removing his or her clothes and putting them on the ground in front of the enraged beast. The camel will kick them, urinate on them, defecate on them, and sometimes get down on their knees to rub their waste products into the clothing, and thus restore their equilibrium. The offender can then pick up the clothes, put them back on, reload or remount the camel, and continue the trip with a renewed degree of understanding, if not open friendship.
The Bedouin supplemented their income during their residency in the area by hiring out their camels as conveyers of goods. According to an informant, this custom began long ago when the local sheikhs had great power over the area and the people. The Bedouin were required to transport grain and goods for the sheikhs as a fee for using the marginal land around the marshes. After the sheikhs lost their power or had fled, the Bedouin continued the practice but now received a fee that nicely supplemented their ordinary income. In 1970 mostly tradesmen and descendants of the sheikhs who still maintained a resemblance of their original position in the community hired them. The usual freight consisted of grain, reeds, and reed mats.
For the Bedouin the camel was indispensable. It was the main form of transportation and cartage; it was the means for moving home and contents from place to place throughout the year. In addition, female camels supplied milk, an important part of a Bedouin’s diet. The milk was highly regarded in the villages as a health cure, and its value in trade or outright sale also produced a significant addition to the family’s income. Then, too, the dried dung of the camel produced appreciably less smoke than that of other animals, and was considered the best fuel for making bread in the tannur, the oven for baking bread and meat, and the most practical fuel for inside heating producing a comparatively smoke-free environment.
In the past, I was told, camels were bred mostly for speed and endurance so they could most productively carry their masters on pillaging raids or into intertribal warfare. In 1970, however, the ideal camel was heavier and therefore capable of carrying heavier loads albeit at a slower pace, and was also a prolific producer of milk. Camels live to be as old as 27 years, but their average life span is about 20 years. Naga (female camels) are kept only as long as they continue to give milk of good quality and quantity. Owning too many male camels can be troublesome at breeding time, so in those households where fee-transportation plays a minor role, the young males are often sold as meat for weddings and other big feasts. The camel intended for the feast is made to lie down, and its legs are firmly bound so that it can no longer rise. Even with the camel bound, it takes as many as three or four men to hold the camel’s neck back while the butcher thrusts his knife into the base of the neck and saws through the jugular vein.
Most of the time camels are kept tied by one foot and hobbled to prevent them from foraging in neighboring fields. They are fed on dried reed stalks and any kind of green grass or sedge that can be gathered or that grows near the area where the camel can be staked. Camels are usually walked to the marsh or canal for water once a day—twice a day when it is very hot. They need both the water and the exercise.
Females are bred every year or year and a half in order to provide her with a new calf about the time she ceases to nurse the old one. Pregnancy lasts for a year, and the mother will nourish the calf for up to a year and a half. Owners of camels usually allow the babies to nurse, since some mothers cease to give milk if their calf is taken from them. A cloth around the mother’s udder supported by a strap on her back keeps the calf from drinking all the milk. A camel is usually milked twice a day until it begins to give less milk after a year or more, when it is milked only once a day. Before the mother is milked, the calf is allowed to nurse, but is only allowed to drink as much as the owner thinks necessary. A good naga will give 2–3.5 liters of milk at each milking.
If a female camel loses her calf at birth and is the kind of mother who will dry up without a young camel to feed, the owner will try to buy a calf from someone who has a female camel that gives milk even without a baby at her side. To get the female to accept the new baby, the neck and head of the dead baby are cut off, mounted on a stick, and stuffed with straw. The mother is teased with this contraption while the new baby nurses the first few times. The smell of the dead baby’s head and neck encourages the mother to let the new baby nurse, and gradually she accepts the newcomer. Not all female camels, however, can be fooled in this way, and if their calf dies they may become useless as milk producers.
A few Bedouin keep a horse or two that are normally treated like members of the family. The horses are provided with winter blankets to protect against chill and lighter ones to ward off the summer sun. Always encouraged to walk into its master’s tent and lie down wherever it wishes to rest, a horse sometimes seems to enjoy more privileges than its owner’s wife or children.
Change
In 1968, the Beni Hasan, the Mi’dan, and the Bedouin lived on the countryside as they had for generations. For most of their needs they relied heavily on their individual and collective skills and on the resources of the area. Tribal, clan, village, and family organizations were strong enough to give life a meaning and purpose that were fully shared with other members of the community. From the archaeological point of view, the resources on which the villagers were dependent were often the same resources available to the Sumerians who lived on the same land thousands of years ago.
Changes, however, were beginning to take place as early as our first campaign. Inexpensive goods appearing in the markets of nearby towns were making inroads on the production of local households or craftspeople because of the strength, brilliant colors or decorative designs of the new items. Schools in the area were obligatory for the young. Although most would follow in the footsteps of their fathers, teachers were beginning to awaken the students’ curiosity about the cities and the outer world, to inspire some to try their hands at non-traditional endeavors, and even to challenge tradition. Battery-operated radios were ubiquitous, and news programs were listened to with great concentration. Interestingly, a program’s message was fairly well understood but often translated into the familiar local geographic setting and local technology with subtle changes. The election of a president in some distant country was thought to require some warfare between parties with guns, mugwars (clubs), and daggers as well as an appearance at the ballot box.
The disappearance of the sheikhs’ authority was beginning to be felt in inter-village and intragroup relations, but family and village life were still held together by a firm belief in the words of the Quran and the moral authority of village elders and craftspeople. Changes slowly occurred during the next few years, until by the middle of the 1970s some traditional crafts and practices had completely disappeared. With the onset of the war with Iran in the 1980s, the pace of change increased with electrifying speed. By 1990 the Mid’an and the Bedouin had completely disappeared from the area. Drying up the marshes had allowed the building of a road that gave direct access to al-Hiba from Shatra. New ways of growing vegetables, for instance tomatoes under plastic, led to new marketable resources. Most important was the devastating effect of the Iraq-Iran war, and the lives it had claimed from these communities. For those ethnoarchaeologists interested in problems of change and continuity this was a dramatic and intensely revealing time.
In 1968, at the beginning of this ethnoarchaeological study, the majority of the local inhabitants were isolated from mainstream Iraq. Few of them visited any place other than the local market town of Shatra, and they clearly resisted outside influences in their daily lives. By 1990 when the expedition’s work concluded, only a few men over the age of 16 had not visited Nasiriya, the provincial capital, as well as Shatra, and no small few had been to Baghdad in the north (a 6-8 hour trip by bus from Shatra) and Basra in the south (a 4-5 hour trip by bus from nearby Nasiriya).
* For the reality behind this story see Pournelle, “Marshland of Cities,” 235-36.
† See also Gavin Young and N. Wheeler, “Water Dwellers in a Desert World,” National Geographic 149, 4 (1976): 502–23; “The Folk that Live in the Marshes,” Observer Magazine May 22 (1977): 30–43; and Return to the Marshes (London: William Collins, 1977).
