Attendance at a guest room in mid-winter is the only alternative to sitting in one's own household with wife and children. Not only is this uncomfortable and undignified, it automatically cuts a man off from male company since his male kin and neighbours will not visit him at home. Men attend a guest room for warmth, company, and information, and they usually choose one close at hand. Most of them attend one particular guest room regularly. In Sakaltutan, a few used more than one according to daily inclination. Very few used none at all. Regular attendance has social implications, and for some, choosing a guest room may be a difficult matter.
I made no count of guest rooms in Elbashï. The overall situation was similar. The wealthier households possessed guest rooms, the humbler and poorer ones on the whole did not. Few guest rooms seemed to be very old. One household at least possessed a guest room for the women to entertain in as well as for the men, but it was not used much. Hayip (B) whose rapid rise to wealth I have described, built a guest room before he built a new house. The tax collector's guest room, though small, was more elegantly furnished, and contained tables and chairs. But on the whole the provision and use of guest rooms was, in proportion, similar to that in Sakaltutan.
All over the Middle East, the guest room, or guest tent, is an important institution; attendance implies political submission to and support of its owner (Barth (1959) pp. 52 ff; Salim (1962) pp. 76 ff; Musil (1928) p. 66,, etc.). To a lesser degree in these villages too, to accept a man s warmth day after day is to put oneself in his debt, and to admit his superiority in rank. The less a man is concerned about his rank and reputation, the more freely he accepts comfort where he can find it, and the more readily he switches allegiance. No one is ever barred from a guest room, and scarcely anyone fails to receive a full-scale greeting on arrival. Men of position or pride are more chary and may even prefer to attend nowhere rather than to accept