Guests of the Sheik

This chapter is a compilation of Elizabeth’s recollections of her first summer in El Nahra. She explains that the summer days are unbearably hot. In fact, she and Bob alter their routines to accommodate their constant heat exhaustion. Elizabeth notes that everyone in the village is “hoarding their stores of energy to last through the two months of heat yet to come” (179).

Nevertheless, the summer nights are pleasant because they are cool and perfect for visiting and entertaining. Elizabeth admits that she feels closest to the women during these summer nights: “as we relaxed together after sharing the day’s heat and talked and exchanged confidences as friends” (181). Sometimes, Elizabeth and Bob are visited by the sheik, who tells them about “his weariness and his financial troubles and his feeling that he needed a change” as well as his thoughts on Beethoven and vacationing in Cyprus and Lebanon (176). The village erupts in panic when Selma’s eldest son, Feisal, comes down with typhoid fever. Everyone has to be mobilized to obtain inoculations.

Afterward, Elizabeth learns that the women of El Nahra have a complicated relationship with their faith and the subject of magic. They believe in a variety of charms and a “Book of Stars” while knowing that this sort of magic is forbidden by the Quran.