to the area in 1968, I decided to bring along native speakers of Arabic. In a Bedouin tent, for instance, wanting to ask how often they milked the camel, I once tried to show off by using a more specific word than jamal (camel). The word baier leapt to my mind. No sooner was the word out of my mouth than I realized I had said “stud camel.” Before I could correct my error, I was tersely advised that Bedouin do not milk stud camels. Despite my protestations that I had merely made a mistake in the choice of words, I knew what would follow. I had just defined Americans in a new and interesting way, and I could almost hear them tell their neighbors around the hearth that night, “You will never believe what Americans drink.”
I hoped that native speakers could catch nuances of language that would expand my knowledge of a particular operation, but it did not turn out that way at all. Villagers who had been voluble in their explanation of, for example, the use of dung patties for baking pottery when I had spoken to them myself, the day before, might suddenly deny that they used them at all when I brought along a city-educated translator. And, if the translator was local they might try to impress him by increasing the number of dung patties they used to show that they were well off and were indifferent to the expense, or they might decrease the number to show how skilled they were in getting sufficient heat from fewer patties. In understanding the language these translators were infinitely superior, but they lacked the necessary relationship with the participants and they depended on language, rather than on observation, in seeking to understand a process. They were inevitably misled either intentionally by the subject or through their misunderstanding of the meaning of a word or phrase as it was used in a local dialect or in a craft context foreign to them. This can be a real problem for outsiders unaware of alternative terminology or methods of classification used in local crafts or occupations (see p.129–30, 213–4). Also, like most of us, they were acutely embarrassed when they found they did not know the details of what happened in their own backyard. They either invented a theory and made their observations fit, or they bought the first explanation from an “expert,” embracing it as their own understanding and holding to it with great tenacity, in spite of their ignorance. If the translator is closely associated with his subjects one must consider his ideas of cultural propriety and what he might hide or amend in the presentations he is helping to record.*
Some Problems of Relationships
Local curiosity about every aspect of my existence was flattering but also caused me minor problems. In the countryside the problems were small and were sorted out with no difficulty. Everyone wanted to know what America was like, what kind of work I did, and what my family was like. Good manners permitted these questions to be verbalized directly, and they could easily be answered. But simple answers could not always dispose of a question. Again and again they would approach, with incredulity, the question of my not being married. I could never find an answer that satisfied them. To marry and raise children was, after all, the duty of every able-bodied man, and it was inconceivable to them that a man my age remained unmarried. This question was one of the many disconnects between cultural expectations that arose in conversation, and at first I was concerned about how to handle them. Some suggested that I should avoid answering questions based on concepts of cultural relativity lest I offend local people. I found it far better to be open and candid as most people reacted to differences in my culture as I reacted to differences in theirs. They thought them sometimes strange and always interesting, and they wanted to know the reasons for differences in action or thought. It was my experience that forthrightness on any issue proved far better than deception.
The overwhelming impression I have of my excursions is the feeling of never being alone. Even a trip to answer the call of nature was accompanied by at least two people. If I was not feeling well, all my new friends swarmed to keep me company and cheer me up with stories, songs, and laughter. If I had a headache, I never dared to reveal it: the ensuing cacophony of support made the headache even worse. Sometimes an individual had heard some strange rumor or come up with an idea of his own invention concerning non-believers: if one stuck a pin into them or threw salt on them, or said a holy phrase, foreigners would turn red, explode, perhaps pray to Allah. From time to time, therefore, I was the victim of an unexpected and strange incident in full view of the assembled guests, and I had to accept that being stuck with a pin, sprinkled with salt, and the like, was merely the result of curiosity.
Towns were quite different from villages. Our first visit to a nearby town was a near disaster. Children saw our taradas (bitumen-covered boats that we propelled through the marshes with long poles) coming through the marshes and lined the bank where we landed. They raced ahead of us as we walked toward the town, and the townsfolk came out in great numbers; they certainly meant no harm but crowded so closely around us that we could not move. By this time, the police had been apprised of our arrival and had come running to our assistance. Worried about our safety, they ripped off their belts and beat anyone within striking distance until we were safely ensconced in a local coffeehouse. This method of crowd control, an overreaction from a Western viewpoint, was more likely to occur in towns and cities than in the villages of the countryside, and it made interviewing in town difficult if not impossible. On a visit to Shatra in 1970, I saw several ladies selling carpets in the suq (marketplace). One carpet, which I found especially interesting and unusual, featured rather large, Picassoesque birds and animals set among the more traditional geometric forms. I was touring the market with the chief guard of the antiquities department in the region and the mayor of the town, both extremely pleasant fellows and very solicitous of my welfare, and we were followed by about 150 people. The officials took my interest in the woman weaver and her product as a desire to purchase the carpet. Before I could inform them otherwise, they asked the seller how much she wanted for the carpet, and when she named a figure, the crowd began to berate her for asking too much, overcharging a visitor, and so on. The poor woman dissolved in tears under this barrage, plucked her carpet from the ground, and ran in terror from the marketplace.
Winning People’s Respect
When women were involved in a particular task, it was sometimes difficult to persuade men to let me watch their womenfolk and often impossible to persuade them to let me take photographs. The religion here is strictly aniconic, which prohibits photos, and an ideal of women’s honor hold them to a higher standard than men and prevents them from engaging in any behavior even remotely questionable.
As a compromise, a man would sometimes go through the process of making or using an artifact just outside his house while his wife coached him from within. On the one hand, it was instructive and a bit amusing to note how little a husband or son might know about something he watched his wife or mother do every day. On the other, he thought he knew the process because he was a member of the community in which it was done and he would often persist in erroneous procedures until the onlookers rolled on the ground with laughter.
The public nature of village life also acted as a control on a subject’s veracity. It was not easy for a person to fabricate or improvise a manufacturing procedure or to make a substitution such as wood for dung patties in the baking process, since sessions were seldom private and the spectators quite voluble. A real innovation required substantial explanation from the maker or user before the omnipresent crowd accepted it. Added controls were the many examples of comparative material gathered from several settlements (which were often socially at odds with each other and thus isolated from one another), as well as the visual evidence in the actual inventories of village homes. What little falsification or embellishment was attempted, such as adding store-bought brass thumbtacks to a utilitarian mugwar was never very successful.
There were several reasons why people in the village were so cooperative. First, they were aware from the beginning that we wished to make the al-Hiba expedition a long-term project. Over the years this gave us an opportunity to really get to know each other. In my experience long-term involvement with the people one is studying can win their respect and understanding. We tried very hard to respect the traditions and customs of the area and to live our own lives there accordingly.
Second was the al-Hiba expedition’s
