Living in Romantic Baghdad: An American Memoir of Teaching and Travel in Iraq, 1924-1947

7. Weddings

68 7 Weddings Weddings in all countries are of ageless interest, and those in Baghdad were novel as well as interesting to us. This, in large measure, was attributed to the great variety of forms which stemmed from the many races and religions in the population and the desire of each group to hold on tenaciously to age-long customs. Then, too, in the same religious community there were often considerable differences: some remained old-fashioned; others tried to be modern. In not a few of these weddings, I also had a keen personal interest. Either the bride or the bridegroom or both were once under our guidance and instruction. In the marriage of the girls of my club I was wholly engrossed. I knew before I attended that their weddings would be the best of their kind. As one of the objects of the club was to prepare the girls to become intelligent companions to their husbands, and to have them make their homes more attractive than the coffeehouses, I was concerned that the husband be the type who could and would respond to such efforts. I took a sly delight later in introducing these men as the husbands of my club girls, a reversal of order that not all Baghdadi men would have brooked. If, perchance, I should have felt inclined at any time to send regrets to a wedding invitation , in recalling the success of the first one, I would certainly have hesitated . The bride at that first wedding was one of my girls, a close relative to Sir Sassoon Heskiel in whose home the ceremony took place.1 The rather mean exterior of Sir Sassoon’s house gave no clue to the impressiveness of the interior. It was this contrast that so enhanced the . For more on Sir Sassoon, see chapter . Weddings • 69 stateliness of the house within. When my husband and I passed through the unpretentious doorway, which was lower than the level of the narrow and unpretentious street, we entered, as it were, into magic wonder. I gasped when the full light of the big court flashed on my eyes as I entered from the hemmed-in street. For a moment I stood still, trying to adjust to so extreme a change. Then, when my eyes were accustomed to the brightness, I surveyed the whole scene. The court was filled with cushioned benches on which sat the men in white suits, wearing the red tarbush (fez), universally worn in those days, whose black silk tassels swung to the movements of the head as men greeted or conversed with one another. To the right on a raised dais sat the uniformed military band, which, incited by the sumptuous surroundings, frequently played with animation, setting the feelings, if not the feet, into motion. Raising my eyes to the broad balconies surrounding the court, I noticed that these were brilliantly decorated with Oriental rugs. On them the ladies, garbed in colorful arrays, were sitting in groups. Lifting my eyes still higher to the flat roof, I saw a frieze of solid black, unrelieved by any other color; it formed a somber contrast to the bright colors on the balconies . These figures that were leaning over the railing of the balustrade of the roof were the black-‘abaed uninvited guests. Knowing that their place was on the roof, they entered quietly and unobservedly to share in the joys of the occasion, remaining quiet through the ceremony and departing as they had come. (I now understood the biblical references to uninvited guests that so long had puzzled me.) I left my husband in the court with the men; and to the music of the band, I tripped up the broad stairway to the broad, rug-covered balconies, the assigned place for the invited women. I was then with other women conducted into the large salon facing both the court and the river. The bridal attire seemed to be in accordance with the latest mode. Once when I was on a furlough in the homeland, a dressmaker offered to send fashion magazines to Baghdad. This would have been like carrying coal to Newcastle. The fashion plates she wanted to send were already in Baghdad, and the bride looked as though she had stepped out of one of them. 70 • Living in Romantic Baghdad On a grand scale like this in an American wedding there...