My history bookshelf. Onward.
Next book on this shelf is called The Arab World: Forty Years of Change
Catchy title, huh? The two writers have to have the most complicated names in the history of mankind. I can just HEAR the arguments in the publisher’s office. Like – she MUST have her … is it a maiden name? Is Warnock her maiden name? And knowing what I know of Robert A. Fernea, he probably gave her shit about putting her maiden name on there. (Read on, you’ll see what I mean)
So Elizabeth Warlock Fernea …. Warlock? and then he goes for it too – he has to put a middle initial in there, which mucks up the waters – and they have the same last name … but she is also a Warlock … I can’t keep it straight.
I like this book, sort of – there’s a lot of good stuff in it, if you can meander your way around the emotional malarkey. It’s huge – it’s kind of annoying – there’s a sort of mix of history and then personal – The two of them are married, and he’s an anthropologist and she’s a documentary filmmaker and … not sure what else … and they have lived in the Middle East, off and on, for forty years. Or – they spend protracted amounts of time there, and then come back to the States, and teach, or what have you. They describe their various times in the Middle East – using their own personal experiences to show how much things have changed (or not changed, as the case may be). The biggest change has to be Beirut – they lived there in 1956, and then they returned in 1981. A greater change could not even be imagined.
There’s a weird dynamic in the book. They share the writing – he does the “serious” stuff, and she does the travelogue stuff … and she reveals stuff about their relationship that – it’s kind of like it belongs in another book. Like, half the time I feel like bitch-slapping Robert A. Fernea for being so condescending to his wife – SHE wrote those sections too. Like, their arguments – and how he will correct her, in public – he sounds like kind of a know-it-all. But … do I want to be assaulted with an inside look at their RELATIONSHIP or do I want to learn about the goldurn Arab world? The parts where we get an insider’s view at their relationship are strangely disturbing and seem like they should be part of another book. Just my opinion!! The two of them are very emotional, and they have a lot of dear friends through the Middle East – my favorite parts of the book are, actually, when we get descriptions of certain areas – Elizabeth Warlock Fernea (hahaha I can’t help it) is a LOVELY writer, when she is not describing pissy little fights with her condescending husband … and she makes me SEE and SMELL and HEAR what she does. She has a gift.
Make no mistake: it’s a weird book. It’s HUGE too. LIke – the book never ends.
Robert Fernea condescends to his wife across the Middle East. He condescends to her in Marrakesh, he condescends to her on the West Bank … Nothing she does is ever good enough for him! They sit in a group conversation and she starts to talk, and he cuts her off rudely, telling her what she is missing … He tells her impatiently to hurry up whenever they go on an outing … And SHE is writing all of this. Is she proud of the fact that her husband treats her like this? Or is this unconscious? Or is she trying to get back at him? Because I did NOT like him, reading this book. I thought: Oh you pompous ass – and treat your wife better, moron!
Not exactly the look they were going for, I don’t think.
Uhm … oh yeah … this book is about The Arab World, not the inner workings of the Fernea marriage psychodrama.
I have a whole theory about the two of them (again – a silly distraction from what I think is the real point of their book): They were married in the 50s. I think she was enlightened by the women’s movement in the 70s. And so she suddenly wanted to be equal to her husband … but he was already so condescending and so old-school in his thoughts about her that he couldn’t change … and she, instead, insisted on stuff like her maiden name … which weakens her case.
Again: did I read this book to analyze the Fernea dynamic? (Sounds like a scientific term) No, I did not. But I find I cannot help myself. They invited me into their little world, and that is what I see!
I’ll post a bit from the whole chapter on Beirut. I think Robert A. Fernea taught at the university there …condescending to his students throughout the 50s. Anyway – they lived there in 1956, and then returned periodically throughout the 60s.
This is Elizabeth Warlock Fernea’s voice. I picked it not because it’s the most fascinating part of the book – (I would say that the whole section on building the dam on the Nile, and the whole Nubian situation is the most interesting part of the book) – but because I wanted to find an excerpt that showed off what I liked about the book the most: Elizabeth Warlock Fernea’s descriptions of nature, and life, and her surroundings. Amazingly, Robert A. Fernea does NOT treat his wife like she is an intellectual moron in this excerpt!
From The Arab World: Forty Years of Change
BEIRUT, 1956
Bob Adams arrived, our visas were duly stamped, and before we set off in the University of Chicago Jeep across the desert to Baghdad, we were invited to dine at the summer home of M. Henri Seyrig, the director of the institute. “A simple dinner of native dishes,” he said. His messenger offered to drive us to the mountain retreat about Aley.
Dusk was coming down over the sea as we climbed, the setting sun staining the rock ridges pink as we wound around them in the Jeep, shading the oleanders, pink and white, muting the red tiled roofs of the stone houses in the mountain villages. We braked and paused for bleating sheep, for a few cows being chased by a boy in a skullcap and an embroidered shirt, for a procession of women in red dresses, with diaphanous colored veils that spread out behind them in the evening breeze, like halos.
M. Seyrig greeted us on the terrace of his summer house, a man in late middle age, small and compact, dark, and with a gracious manner, an inquisitive eye. After aperitifs, dinner was served by a woman servant in bloomers and embroidered blouse, her hair tied up in one of those evanescent veils, this one purple. A simple meal of native foods, yes — delicious shawarma, rice, salad.
We sat with M. Seyrig, looking out over the dark valley dotted with rows of tiny flickering lights marking the houses along the terraces we had just climbed. The sea, studded with flecks of foam glimmering white on the black water, seemed scarcely distinguishable from the land. Behind us hung modern canvases by an unfamiliar Parisian painter, great strokes of orange, green, black, and crimson in unexpected combinations, on the walls of the whitewashed summer house. To our right a Maronite cathedral loomed in the dusk, reflecting dim light among shrubs and trees.
The woman in the purple head scarf served dessert: fried bananas in rum. We had thick, strong coffee.
“Yes,” murmured M. Seyrig. “This region is ageless in its beauty.”
“It is very beautiful.” I replied.
What else was there to be said? We were young and impressionable, full of ourselves and our new adventure, our new marriage, our new lives. The vista of hills stretched below us, darkly clotted with fig trees; some aromatic bush vied for sweetness with the fumes of rum from our dessert. The sea washed and foamed far below. The evening posed the possibilities of sensual delights that were almost overwhelming. M. Seyrig seemed part of this setting, so relaxed, so knowledgeable. Perhaps it was the conjunction of ancient splendor, natural beauty, and the modern wall-high swaths of bravura color in the paintings behind us that left us speechless. We were from America, a new world, and all this mixing of old and new seemed unreal, strange, something to experience but hard to feel part of. Yet wonderful. The hills. The fig trees. The cathedral and the modern paintings. The dark-haired woman and the bananas with rum.
BEIRUT 1960, 1964
During the years to come, when we had lived in Iraq and Egypt, Beirut continued to be the closest thing to a visit home. In some ways, we felt a bit ashamed of the fact that we should enjoy American pleasures in Beirut when we were supposed to be involved in the patterns of Arab culture. We admitted to each other that Uncle Sam’s hamburger restaurant and its American-style ice cream seemed awfully good — the first time around on each visit, at least.
But it was more than familiar sights and sounds. Beirut seemed to us a hopeful place, a sign of the future, where the church bells could ring on Sunday, the synagogues fill up on Saturdays, and the calls to prayer from the mosques sound throughout the week. Whenever doubt flickered like a shadow across our lantern-slide images of the great peaceful future of the Middle East, we thought about Lebaonj and Beirut, Switzerland of the Middle East, ancient Phoenician port, where all races and religions mixed, talked, enjoyed a free press and a constitutional government, and made a great deal of money from banking and trade. We saw some hope in all of this. East and West seemed to combine here without perceptible strain.
We said to ourselves that Lebanon felt like America because it shared many of our much vaunted freedoms. Was that true? There was freedom of speech, it seemed. College texts described the Lebanese constitution as a model of religious and ethnic accord. Political asylum was taken for granted. If we felt a sense of relief from just being in Beirut, so did hundreds of others with much better reasons, political exiles from throughout the region.
Beirut provided free trade and the appropriate political atmosphere for high-rolling international capitalism. The two were not unrelated, of course. Business was booming without hindrance; taxes and duties were low. Everyone seemed to carry on his or her affairs without bothering others. The focus was on living well and accumulating the means to do so. As the major trade center of the Middle East, home of international banking and of most foreign concerns who wanted a Middle East location free of government interference, Beirut was needed by all parties, friendly or otherwise.
And so life in this sea-blown oasis seemed assured through long sunny summers and long sunny winters. Foreign experts, exiles, businessmen, and educators came and went, and the future looked bright and full of promise, at least in downtown Beirut.
You know, whenever anyone brings up the golden age of Beirut, I can’t help but think about Dubai nowadays. There’s a place that has everything going for it: a strong economy due to free trade and tax free zones, liberal attitudes towards living, etc. but the main thing Dubai has going for it is that they have a ruler who knows that the oil is running out (and will be gone by the end of this decade) and has spent billions to prepare his city-state for that eventuality. You can’t pick up a magazine or newspaper nowadays without it having an article that raves about Dubai and how it’s a “new example of tolerance in the Middle East; religious zealotry will never take place here.” Which leads me to think about Beirut…and how I’m positively sure no one ever thought that religious zealotry would take place there.
Interesting excerpt, Sheila. Thanks for posting it.