42 pages • 1 hour read
Elizabeth Warnock FerneaGuests of the Sheik
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1965A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 6, Chapter 25-PostscriptChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary: “Back to Baghdad”
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).
Chapter 26 Summary: “Leave-taking”
Elizabeth describes the couple’s last visit to El Nahra before they return to the United States in May of 1958. She worries that Selma and Laila will fight over who will host them, but she is relieved to discover that Laila has agreed that “since we were guests of the tribe, it was only right that we stay with Sheik Hamid and his family” (315). Elizabeth is welcomed back into the community and reunites with her friends. She reminisces about how embarrassed and out of place she felt when she first arrived. Elizabeth experiences “the chastening realization that the women had pitied me” and wonders “what kind of charity combined with compassion had persuaded them to take me in?” (316). She feels like she never left the community, and she picks up where she left off with the women. Though she is “determined to be gay” as she leaves, Selma’s tears provoke her own (331). The women see her off with “the sound of a swelling cry of ululation…the expression of joy or excitement or grief which is inherently the women’s own” (331).
Postscript Summary
In 1964, Elizabeth updates us on the situation in El Nahra while she is living in Cairo. She writes that Iraq has undergone a series of revolutions. Though the region’s political situation is unstable, life in El Nahra has not changed much. Sheik Hamid “weathered the political storms fairly well; the life of the tribe seemed substantially unchanged” (332). Elizabeth’s friends have sent gifts to her and her children, and they now refer to her as Um Laura Ann, which means "the mother of Laura Ann" (her eldest child). Some of her friends have remarried, others have had more children, and some have died. Both Laila and Selma write to Elizabeth, and Selma wonders when she will come to see them again.
Chapter 25-Postscript Analysis
The primary theme in this set of chapters is Elizabeth’s examination of her time in El Nahra. Elizabeth laughs at the apprehension and embarrassment she felt when she first arrived in El Nahra. In particular, she recalls her inability to make friends with the women. She admits that she felt superior to them, and she balked when they felt sorry for her and took her in. She wonders what caused them to do this. Rather than continuing to observe them as a superior and an outsider, Elizabeth learns to identify with the women and understand them.
Elizabeth and Bob recognize that they bridge two different cultures that are unlikely to fully understand each other. Elizabeth realizes that men like Haji Hamid are unlikely to be convinced of the respectability of women who do not behave exactly like the women of his tribe. She also understands that the women of El Nahra and other “Eastern women” will continue to be stereotyped as oppressed women without agency (313). While Elizabeth and Bob had hoped to serve as a bridge between two cultures, they both suspect that only they have changed their understanding of El Nahra’s culture. This change is evident in the meaningful relationships that they established in El Nahra. The postscript reveals that the relationships have stood the test of time because Bob continues to visit El Nahra and Elizabeth exchanges letters with Laila and Selma.
