The ethnography opens with a vivid description of “the road that leads West” from Alexandria, Egypt, through “rows of identical sand-colored buildings” and “clotheslines covered with multi-colored garments” (1). Winding across bridges, to the edge of Lake Mariut, to the desert, the narrator describes how “the signs of the encroaching metropolis thin out” (2). The author, Lila Abu-Lughod, arrives at the Western Desert, “the home of the Bedouin tribes known collectively as Awlad ‘Ali” (2), recognizable by their simple homes. The narrator describes her familiarity with the landscape on this road, which built over time after she lived with the Awlad ‘Ali between October 1978 and May 1980. The “silence” of the space, she explains, contrasts pleasantly with the cities of “Cairo or Alexandria” (3).

Abu-Lughod describes returning to a familiar home. The major elements of this home are the Haj, or patriarch, his “senior wife” (who has 18 children), “his second wife, whom he had unofficially divorced a year before [the narrator’s] arrival” (4), a third wife, myriad children, and frequent family visitors who often spend the night. About 15 more houses make up the naji’, or community, around them, united by a shared “economic base and food” that makes them a household (6).