Problematizing Marriage: Minding My Manners in My Husband’s Community

Abstract

As I edged myself towards my seat in the university auditorium, I recognized the Sudanese man sitting one seat over. ^Adel and I had met more than a year ago during a social visit I made with my husband to celebrate the ^Aid al-Adha feast marking the end of Ramadan. We smiled as we greeted each other. The man immediately launched into a laundry list of my identifying characteristics – American doctoral student, right? In anthropology? At Boston University? Indeed, he remembered virtually everything about our meeting – except that I was married to a Sudanese businessman in Cairo. Working up to placing me by neighborhood and street, he announced that he had many friends nearby and that he would take my phone number, so that he could call me when he was in the neighborhood, and visit. My understanding, prior to starting my research project on ‘north1 ern’ Sudanese expatriate and exile networks in Cairo, was that it was improper for a married woman in the Sudanese community to receive a male visitor without her husband present. I had discussed possible ‘Sudanese’ expectations about my behavior with my husband before starting fieldwork, naively assuming that there was an ‘authentic’ wifely role that I could try to play. I stared at the unfortunate man in disbelief: Doesn’t he remember that I’m a married woman? I tried to communicate my disapproval of his ‘transgression’ through body language, turning away from him and giving his persistent questions curt,