Guests of the Sheik

A delightful account of one woman's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. 

"A most enjoyable book abouut [Muslim women]—simple, dignified, human, colorful, sad and humble as the life they lead." —Muhsin Mahdi, Jewett Professor of Arabic Literature, Harvard Unversity.

A wonderful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study that offers a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.ELIZABETH WARNOCK FERNEA and her husband Robert Fernea traveled to the Arab world for the first time in 1956. After writing Guests of the Sheik, her first book, Professor Fernea wrote The Arab World with Robert Fernea, as well as books about Egypt and Morocco. She also made five films about the lives of Arab women. She dies in 2008.