Fieldwork of a Dutiful Daughter LILA ABU-LUGHOD 1 n the summer of 1985 I returned to the Bedouin community in the Egyptian Western Desert in which I had spent nearly two years doing fieldwork, Five years had passed since I had left to go home (to the U.S.) to write my dissertation. | was excited about visiting the people with whom I had not only lived for the period of fieldwork, but in a strange way even more intensely in the following years as I thought and wrote about them. I wanted to know what had happened to them but I also wanted to make them real again. My memories had become increasingly limited to those incidents I had incorporated into my writings and those aspects of their lives I had analyzed. In the process of abstracting from my field notes and putting together a picture of their lives through reflection on my experiences with them, I feared I had made of them something mythical." Seeing them again was exhilarating but also jarring. I had forgotten much that I had come to take for granted when I lived among them, especially concerning the nature of my relationship with them. Although a great deal happened during my short visit, to highlight the issues about field research that I want to explore in this chapter I will recount two aspects of the experience that I found emotionally difficult. I was welcomed back with tremendous warmth tempered with formal- ity that included the special treatment accorded all guests. This treat- 139140 Abu-Lughod ment was reminiscent of what I had often observed when family members, like sisters and daughters who had married out of the commu- nity, returned home for visits. I thought that some of the formality might have been in recognition of my achievements: I had received my degree and obtained a job as a professor. I had brought a nicely bound copy of my dissertation as a gift, figuring that even if people could not read it, they would know I had written a book that was a tribute to them. But people expressed little interest in the dissertation, felt deeply sorry for me when I described the life I was leading, and were concerned with only one thing: Was I married and had I had any children? I had fully antici- pated being asked about these matters, but was surprised by the way that hardly a moment after greeting me, women would begin questioning me. Even the men asked each other under their breath. This reaction con- firmed what I already suspected and had, during my fieldwork, encour- aged and at times resented, namely, that they saw me primarily as a female. It was hard not to feel inadequate as women excitedly told me of the young women in the camp who, in my absence, had married and had ‘one or two children, and generously shared with me various magical cures for barrenness. The visit was personally trying in another way. I sensed a greater emphasis on piety and Muslim identity, which may have been an artifact of the timing of my visit; it was right before the Great Feast (‘id), always a period of heightened religious activity and sentiment. It might also have applied only to the families to whom I was the closest, families from which several members had in recent years gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Or perhaps I had just forgotten what it was like to live in the Middle East. In any case, unlike in the past, I felt that the fact that I never prayed was conspicuous. Even more problematic were my host’s disquisitions on the subject of religion. On several occasions he lectured me on the glories of the Quran, the importance of living where one was surrounded by Muslims, and the dangers of living with the infidels (if you live with them you become like them). He assured me of God’s grace toward those who return to the faith. Asking me questions about my life in the US. inevitably led to suggestions that I should move to Egypt. These were not unfamiliar themes. He had often spoken to me of such matters in the past, but this time his tone was more urgent, and my discomfort and sense of hypocrisy more acute. The problem was that I had presented myself and was perceived as the daughter of an Arab and a Muslim. Yet, I was also the daughter of an American, had been born and raised in the U.S., was in numerous ways culturally more American than Arab, and I was not religious. Both factors, that I was a woman and that I was of Arab descent, had consequences for the sort of research I could do and the types of relation-A Dutiful Daughter 141 ships I could establish in the field. Furthermore, these two aspects of my identity combined to place me in the position of what I will call a dutiful daughter. And being a dutiful daughter doing fieldwork led to a privileged view of one crucial issue in Arab society, the meaning of modesty for women. Thus, with the contributors to this volume I share the experi- ence of being a woman studying in a sex-segregated society. Unlike most of them, I was in the peculiar situation of being neither completely a cultural insider, nor a total outsider. As an Arab-American, I was in an ambiguous position that, as I will show, had both advantages and awk- ward disadvantages. Initial Contact The terms of my relationship with the families with whom I had lived had been set during my fieldwork in 1978-1980, so I will describe that experience before exploring the consequences of these terms. I had arrived in Cairo at the beginning of October 1978 and had ensconced myself in an unpretentious pension frequented by gerierations of Arabists, Egyptologists, and scholars of modest means. In the many years since I had last stayed there as a young girl traveling with my family, nothing much had changed. This meant, of course, that the lumpy beds, the plumbing, and the gentle hotel personnel bore the inevitable marks of old age. Outside, however, the city seemed to be in the throes of change. The progressive dilapidation of old buildings had in some cases led to their collapse, and in other parts of the city, construction of massive new luxury hotels was under way. | familiarized myself with the city, more crowded and noisy than ever, and awaited my father’s arrival. Here the reader might pause. I suspect few, if any, fathers of anthropologists accompany them to the field to make their initial contacts. But my father had insisted that he had some business in Egypt and might just as well plan his trip to coincide with mine. I had accepted his offer only reluctantly, glad to have the company, but also a bit embarrassed by the idea. I did, after all, like to consider myself an adult. Only after living with the Bedouins for a long time did I begin to comprehend some of what had underlain my father’s quiet but firm insis- tence. As an Arab, although by no means a Bedouin, he knew his own culture and society well enough to know that a young unmarried woman traveling alone on uncertain business was an anomaly. She would be suspect and would have a hard time persuading people of her respectabil-