Guests of the Sheik

Elizabeth describes the couple’s awkward transition into life in Baghdad. Initially, Mohammed stays with them in their new home and is fascinated by life in Baghdad. But he soon becomes lost and lonely, and he asks to return to El Nahra. In Baghdad, Bob and Elizabeth meet with a variety of people who are connected to El Nahra, like Haji Hamid’s sons and Jabbar and Jabbar’s fiancée. They are shocked but unsurprised to discover that Jabbar and his fiancée are planning for her to shed the abayah in El Nahra. This news horrifies Jabbar’s sister Khadija. Bob and Elizabeth also help Sayid Muhsen, the leader of a nearby clan and a man with “modern ideas,” obtain birth control for his wife (309).

The couple also has dinner with Haji Hamid at a Baghdad nightclub. During the dinner, Haji Hamid openly judges the women who are present, causing Elizabeth and Bob to reflect on cultural clashes regarding women and respectability. Elizabeth notes that “we had both had somewhat irrational and idealistic notions of being examples, of bridging the gap between one set of attitudes and another” (314).