Veiled Sentiments

This chapter begins with a brief introduction establishing the primacy of relationships, rather than lifestyle (or nomadism), in defining what it means to be a Bedouin. She says that people “who touted the joys of the desert lived in houses” and “wore shiny wristwatches and plastic shoes, listened to radios and cassette players, and traveled in Toyota pickup trucks” (40). What she sees, initially, as “alarming signs” that Bedouins are “losing their identity as a cultural group” do not concern the Awlad ‘Ali (40). Rather, they identify as Bedouin because of “genealogy and a tribal order” combined with “a code of morality, that of honor and modesty,” summed up in the notion of dam, or “blood” (41). “Blood” and “nobility of blood” (aṣl) are the focus of the first subtopic.

The Awlad ‘Ali, Abu-Lughod explains, migrated to Egypt around the 17th century and have relied on “rainfall and the state of pasture” ever since (41). At the hands of Egyptian and British authorities in the years since, the Awlad ‘Ali worked to sustain their cultural identity and lands in the Western Desert. In the 1950s, “assimilation” efforts peaked as the government worked to “improve” services while “settling” nomadic peoples into agricultural lifestyles (43).