Guests of the Sheik
An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village

Fitting In You arrive there worrying, “Will they accept me?” It’s hard to make initial contacts because nobody understands why you’re there and your language skills aren’t the best. Slowly, over the months and years, you make friends, you become involved in people’s lives, you see their happiness, th......more

From the back cover of the book: "A delightful, extremely well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study. Guests of the Sheik is an account of the author's two-year stay in the tiny rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq." Can you imagine? It is 1957 and Elizabeth (known as Beeja in the v......more

In the early 1950s, when Elizabeth Fernea was a young bride, she joined her researcher husband as he journeyed to a remote tribal village in Iraq, to live and study for nearly two years. As a Western woman, Elizabeth chose to integrate herself into tribal society by donning the traditional abayah (t......more