and the basket is returned with gifts for the groom’s family. The actual marriage day is set during the next few days through discussions in the sheikh’s or town’s mudhif.
Between the signing of the marriage contract and the actual wedding, the groom, his family, and friends construct an addition to the family compound for the newlyweds. A room is usually added onto the main structure of the family home, with an entrance from the courtyard, not from the structure to which it is attached. The volunteer workmen—young male relatives and friends of the groom—are fed by the women of the groom’s family, but the women usually stay apart from the building activities which are accompanied by many jokes, some of them crude. Before the wedding day, the bridegroom and his male relatives make the rounds of the village inviting people to the wedding.
On the day of the wedding the groom bathes, dresses in his best clothes, and is joined in celebrating by his male relatives and friends. The bride is washed, perfumed, hennaed, and usually dressed in a special glittery, metallic cloth with strong, bright colors called “turn-out-the-lights-and-catch-me-fabric.” She is then placed atop a platform at one end of her house where she is surrounded by girls of her own age (usually between 12 and 15) singing wedding songs that extol the bride’s virtues and beauty and often the groom’s virtues as well.
There are two types of wedding celebrations. In an ordinary wedding, the bride’s relatives meet and celebrate at her home. They then conduct the bride and her dowry to the groom’s house. The procession, preferably with the bride mounted on a horse, is accompanied by music and singing.
In the second kind of wedding, both sets of relatives participate in the celebration at the bride’s home. When the groom arrives, astride a horse and amidst a volley of gunshots triggered by his friends, a battle ensues between the two sets of relatives for possession of the bride. The groom’s family always wins, but there is often no pretense about the strength of the blows delivered on both sides. The groom seizes the bride, carries her outside, throws her across the horse’s shoulders in front of him, and gallops home. Both sets of guests follow directly, but more slowly, singing and dancing, and the most important members of the girl’s family accompany the dowry. The second kind of wedding is usual in families that emphasize their nomadic ancestry and in addition have considerable material resources, not least for the horse required for the ceremony. Renting a horse in an area where few exist (and those that do are treasured as members of the family) is very difficult and extremely expensive. It costs three times as much to rent one for an “abduction” as there is always fear that the horse will be injured or terrified in the midst of the struggle.
On arrival at the groom’s house after either kinds of wedding, the bride is immediately ushered into the new room by her mother and the mother of the groom, and sometimes by aunts and great-aunts as well. The men congregate in the mudhif or the main reception room of the family, and small groups or even the entire family of the bride or groom leap to their feet from time to time to sing and dance hosas, songs in which the leader makes up a verse that is then repeated by the other singers. Men lift and stamp their feet in rhythm with the words, swaying in unison backwards and forwards or in a circle as they perform the ancient dance. The women gather in the kitchen area where they also sing and dance and, in addition, ululate. The groom’s father carefully checks the dowry: it is as dishonorable for him to be fooled as it is for the bride’s father to try to fool him.
The bride, mother of the bride, mother of the groom, and sometimes an aunt or two retire to the bride and groom’s new bedroom, where they await the groom. When the groom enters the wedding chamber, a silence falls over the entire party. The two mothers remove the girl’s undergarments and hold her legs apart. The groom then takes a length of white cloth prepared for him by his mother, wraps it around his index finger, and breaks his bride’s hymen, decorating the cloth with her virginal blood. Rumor has it that a chicken is always kept in the wedding chamber in case the bride does not bleed freely enough, for there is a tendency to equate the quantity of blood with the quality of the virginity. The groom leaves the room to display the cloth to the men while his mother shows it to the women. Gunshots erupt amidst piercing ululations and loud hosas. The groom reenters the chamber alone to consummate the marriage and then returns to the party to be again greeted with ululation, hosas, music, and song. The bride is waited on hand and foot by her mother-in-law and new relatives. Her own mother and family will not see her again for an entire week so that she can adjust without interference to her new family and new life.
A husband can divorce his wife any time for any reason. If the husband has a legitimate reason for doing so, such as adultery, barrenness, bad behavior, or misuse of household money, he has the right to the return of the bride price from the bride’s family. Divorcees usually return to live with their natal families and have few prospects for an additional marriage. Adulterous wives are usually secretly killed after their return. Both their own family and the family of their deceased husband, on the other hand, treat widows, with great respect.
Looking Out for Others
Although the Quran permits a man up to four wives at the same time, multiple wives are fairly unusual in the al-Hiba area. Among the villagers, most men who take second wives do so as a way of maintaining family bonds. Should a man die, for instance, leaving behind a wife and children, it is not unusual for his brother to marry the widow. This marriage is not one of love but a very important device for preserving family connections and making certain that the deceased’s wife and children are provided for in an appropriate manner. The next largest group of men with multiple wives consists of families in which the first wife convinces the husband that he needs a second wife. Two wives, of course, meant that women’s duties in the household could be shared, and the first wife would have only half as much work as before. This is not to say that there was not the occasional marriage of passion. These were arranged by the husband and were likely to stimulate jealousy, competition, and other unhealthy emotions in each of the two wives. Other men in the village seldom envied the home life of a husband who took a second wife for love.
People are bound by rules of generosity to look after each other’s needs. Widows, old men, and other needy people have the right to ask younger members of the village for help in arduous tasks, and the younger person has a strict moral responsibility to comply. Helping someone else is very much in a person’s own interest. If he refuses he will not be able to find anyone to help him when he is in need of assistance. There are other regulatory devices in the community that keep self-centered acts to a minimum. One such is the function of gossip in so tight-knit a community and the stigmatization that results if egocentric behavior persists. Only those who live in impervious shells can pretend that they are not the focus of gossip for their antisocial behavior. Craftspeople, in addition to providing a setting for gossip in the places where they ply their trade, often afford a forum for the discussion of an individual’s over-all behavior in the community (see p. 184–5, 243). As both these proceedings are entirely public and generate comment from other members of the community, their messages are difficult to avoid.
Most impressive is the compassion with which mentally deficient people are cared for in the village. Looking out for such a person, whether an adult or a child, is the concern of everyone in the community. Whoever sees a mentally challenged individual in trouble drops everything to help him. Persons with such disabilities are thought to be touched by God and are observed and listened to with special interest, for who can tell what this special one might be trying to foretell or proclaim. As a result the afflicted person has round-the-clock care and a very special social status in the community. They were looked upon with both pride and a bit of apprehension, and far from being treated as outsiders or monstrosities, were treated with respect and an element of awe.
Education for Life
Aspirations of most young people in the late 1960s and 1970s were somewhat limited. The main goal of adolescents seemed to be to grow up to be like their mothers and fathers, but only if their parents had honor. Young people’s practical education
