Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

260 Pages·1993·1.6 MB·English

by  Lila Abu-Lughod

WRITING WOMEN'S WORLDS

Portions of the introduction were previously published in "Writing Against Culture," in
Recapturing Anthropology, edited by Richard Fox (Santa Fe: School of American
Research Press, 1991); and in "Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?" Women and
Performance 5 (1990): 7-27. A version of chapter I is appearing simultaneously as
"Migdim: A Bedouin Matriarch," in Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East,
edited by Edmund Burke III (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1993). I reuse them with permission. All photographs, including the jacket illustration,
by Lila Abu-Lughod/Anthro-Photo.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1993 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abu-Lughod, Lila.
Writing women's worlds: Bedouin stories / Lila Abu-Lughod.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-520-08304-0 (alk. paper)
1. Women, Muslim Egypt Social conditions. 2. Bedouins Egypt.
3. Ethnology Egypt Biographical methods. I. Title.
HQI793.A68 1992
305.48'6971'0962 dc20 91-39685
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
9 8 7 6 5

The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It
meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence
of Paper).
For Fajriyya,
whose daughters may one day read this
Contents
List of Illustrations i
Preface iii
Acknowledgments xi
Keeping the Names Straight xv
INTRODUCTION 1
ONE PATRILINEALITY 37
TWO POLYGYNY 73
THREE REPRODUCTION 107
FOUR PATRILATERAL PARALLEL-COUSIN MARRIAGE 141
FIVE HONOR AND SHAME 175
Transcription of Arabic Poems and Songs 210
Bibliography 226
i
Illustrations
1. Winding yarn on an upturned table frontispiece
2. Two sisters xvi
3. Chopping khubbayza for dinner 36
4. Posing with son, grandson, and Toyota 72
5. Displaying purchases from the fair 106
6. Eccentric relative of the groom dressed as a man 140
to tease the bride
7. Drawing of a wedding procession, the bride's 142
furniture being carried in a truck
8. One young woman has adopted modern Islamic dress 174
(this page intentionally left blank)
iii
PREFACE
On a windy day in December 1989, just over eleven years since I
had first taken the desert highway from Cairo to Alexandria, I sat with
my aunt by the side of the road. My father had disappeared with the
driver of our rented car, an agricultural engineer, and my husband to pick
out the sheep we had just arranged to purchase. Meanwhile, my aunt and
I bided our time.
Now, as in 1978, my father was accompanying me to visit a
Bedouin family who lived not far off this desert road, people we had
initially met together but with whom, in the intervening decade, I had
lived on and off for more than two years. This was his first return visit to
the community. Agreeing with me that it was only proper that he pay a
call to express his appreciation for what they had done to help me, my
father had routed himself through Egypt while on a trip to the Middle
East. My father's sister had flown over from Jordan to see us and was
curious to know the people with whom I had spent so much time. And
my husband, although he had read most of what I had written about the
families we were going to visit, including a draft of this book, had never
met them. I wanted finally to introduce him to them.
When we set off again I was excited and proud. I was proud that
we would pull up to the house in a Mercedes; it would confirm that I
came from a good family and had, moreover, made a good marriage. (On
my own, I had always straggled in from the bus and hot taxis that left me
off on the road.) I was even prouder that we had a sheep of respectable
size knocking about in the trunk of the car and that I sat wedged in the
back seat with cartons full of unshelled peanuts, green tea, candy, and a
jumble of combs, mirrors, kerchiefs, colognes, hairclips, pens, and
cigarette lighters. My Bedouin friends would recognize that these were
no ordinary gifts. This combination was the appropriate offering on the
important occasion of a bride's first postmarital visit home, and I was
pleased with myself for having arranged everything so well.
I was, I knew, a bit old for all this, and I wondered at my own
reaction. Why should returning not just with members of my own family
but as a daughter and new bride – a consummately patriarchal
configuration – make me feel good? Had I not, years ago, established
myself as a scholar and developed with the Bedouin family a relationship
that was quite independent of these people who were accompanying me?
Had I not distanced myself from that first encounter in which, shy,