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). As they adopt and attend to some cultural and political trappings of the Egyptian government, Bedouin tribes still prize their own group first and see it as set apart, “a vivid ‘other’“ from North African groups (44).

Blood ties to “the tribes of the Western Desert” (44), which are ‘arab and not “Egyptian,” “is the authenticator of origin or pedigree” as distinct from Egyptians, “who are said to lack roots or nobility of origin (aṣl or mabdā)” (45). Moral virtues are “Bedouin traits” (46), inherited through the pure lineage that Egyptians lack. This aṣl that Bedouins possess brings generosity and hospitality, fearlessness and courage, and moral (sexually segregated) interactions between women and men: among Egyptians, men show “weakness” and women “immodesty” (48). Abu-Lughod points out that many of these “ideas the Bedouins have about Egyptians are based on hearsay” and that “very few of those living in the desert” have interacted closely with Egyptians (48). Nonetheless, as she describes a visiting party of the Haj’s friends, Abu-Lughod notes that many ordinary behaviors of Egyptians, especially those that allow men and women to spend intimate time together, horrify the Bedouins because they contrast with their established moral norms.

Even as it renders all Awlad ‘Ali noble, blood also determines “social place and the links between people” in the patrilineal Awlad ‘Ali society (49). Upon meeting a newcomer, Awlad ‘Ali ask about their origins, expecting a tribal affiliation: “To assert unity and closeness, a person will point to the shared level of tribal affiliation (a common ancestor), establishing himself or herself as a paternal kinsperson of the appropriate generation” (50). In Abu-Lughod’s description, “kinship ideology shapes individual identity” for Bedouins (50), and patrilineal links are central.

“The social world” (51), for the Awlad ‘Ali, is made up of kin (garīb) and strangers/outsiders (gharīb). Those who share blood literally “share a substance that identifies them” through “blood and flesh” (51). Awlad ‘Ali see “descent, inheritance, and tribal sociopolitical organization” as “patrilineal,” and so “agnates” (51), or relatives through the patrilineal line, are the most important. In the event of a divorce, “the mother has no right to keep her children” because the father and his relatives have “rights” to those children (53). Even after a woman marries into another tribe, she “retains her tribal affiliation throughout her life” and sides “with her own kin” during any domestic disputes in her new home and retains “affective and strategic” bonds to them until death (54).

This fierce allegiance to the paternal line stands in contrast to the Egyptian system which, in the eyes of the Bedouins, values “marital ties over agnatic ones” (56). It also creates tensions, which the Awlad ‘Ali may attempt to ease through “patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage” (56), a practice that was quite common in the village in which Abu-Lughod lives. Although such arrangements are, Abu-Lughod both hears and assumes, sexually unsatisfying, she explains that “women see innumerable advantages in this marriage arrangement”: they can feel “more secure and powerful” in these familiar communities (58).

After patrilineal bonds, “maternal kinship and coresidence (‘ishra)” shape relationships in Bedouin society (59). Paternal and maternal links overlap often in Bedouin society, Abu-Lughod highlights, and even though “agnates” take priority, “individuals and their maternal kin share bonds of great fondness and a sense of closeness” (60). As mothers always retain their link to their tribes, children, through their intimate relationships with their mothers, are also close to their maternal kin. Mother-child bonds, in Bedouin society, are “extremely close and affectionate throughout life” (62).

Coresidents, or “nonkin who live together,” also bear a “close relationship” in Bedouin society (62). If there are any paternal links between the kin, coresidents will point them out to legitimize their closeness, but even without it, “kinlike bonds of enduring sentiments of closeness” often emerge in this supportive coresidential system (63). Abu-Lughod notes: “With sedentarization […] neighbors become quasi-kin” (63), sharing in myriad meals and celebrations with one another.

Abu-Lughod describes these “quasi-kin […] clients” to her village (6), many of whom she initially took for kin. Some of them even marry women who lived inside the camp, creating a different lifestyle for the married woman, who is not an outsider there as many others are. “Those who live together,” eventually, “are conceived of as kin,” not held close because of “jural responsibilities” but because of “strong sentiment” (64). Either way, deep forms of kinship draw Bedouin individuals and families together.

The concept of sharing—not only blood, but also “concerns and honor,” “residence, property, and livelihood”—is the core of “the strong identification with patrikin” (65). For example, an insult directed at one person is interpreted as “an insult to the whole kinship group” (65), and “a shameful act by one person affects the whole group” (66). Similarly, as a person leaves the group, they are all seen “as nearly interchangeable representatives of their kin groups” (66). As a result, men looking for wives may be denied because of grudges held against others of their kin.

An important expression of the bonds of kinship is the reciprocal “coming and going,” “both everyday visiting and ritualized visiting on particular occasions” (66). Such visits are motivated by a desire for “identification (the sense that what happens to kin is happening to the self) and the desire to be with those who share one’s feelings” (67). While everyday visits secure and build relationships, celebrations and visits to the ill are common and considered necessary if one hopes to avoid insulting members of one’s kin.

Deaths, especially, are occasions for long and emotional visits, at which visitors (particularly women) “share” their “grief, not just by sympathizing, but also by actually reexperiencing, in the company of the person currently grieving, their own grief over the death of a loved one” (69). “Happy occasions” are also opportunities for shared emotions. It is custom for visitors to offer “gifts, animals for slaughter, money, and services,” which Abu-Lughod calls “acknowledgements, in a material idiom, of the existence of bonds” (69). As they share experiences, visitors also share what they have with one another, affirming their connections both emotionally and materially.

Increased interaction with and response to the world around them, Abu-Lughod writes, has begun to reshape the rules and results of community identification. More permanent Awlad ‘Ali settlements are still defined “socially rather than territorially,” bearing “the name of the group’s dominant lineage or family” and sustaining the settlements’ traditional focus on family (70). Economically, the new attachment to the “cash economy,” rather than fickle nature, means that “social stratification has become more marked and fixed” (70). Abu-Lughod observes: “The vertical links of tribal organization overshadow the horizontal links of incipient class formation […] [and] the tribe remains ideologically compelling” (71). In many ways, new wealth enhances agnate bonds, allowing families to be larger and more insular, cohabitating for longer. As the Egyptian government works to integrate Bedouins and hold them accountable to the law, they continue to resist, even to live outside of it.

Abu-Lughod sees the shift to permanent camps most profoundly affecting women, as they and their work become increasingly separate from men and their market-economy labor. As a result, their work is “increasingly separate and economically devalued” while they must become “profoundly dependent on men” (73). They are less mobile because the cash economy makes visits from outsiders more frequent. As a result, their social worlds are smaller, they “rarely venture far from their camps,” and these smaller circles, combined with the loss of migrations, which “brought new neighbors” (74), mean increasing isolation for women. Women cannot learn, and as “some men” become educated, Abu-Lughod suggests that the gap between men’s and women’s life experiences will grow (74).

Despite these substantial changes, Abu-Lughod maintains that “Bedouins do not experience any jarring sense of discontinuity” (74), and most of the biggest changes (such as the shift to automobiles) seem natural to them. The changes that make a difference are those that “have undermined the operation of traditional principles” (77), like settlement in towns that spatially scatter kin. Although “education and wage labor may eventually marginalize the pastoral way of life and loosen the hold of the family and tribe,” Abu-Lughod is certain that the core “ideology of honor and modesty” will unite Bedouins through such material and cultural shifts (77).