A tangled web of lies: reflections on ethnographic fieldwork with Syrian Turkmen women on the side of a road in Beirut

Abstract

In this essay, the author reflects upon the performances of kizb (lying) she and Syrian Turkmen women acted out on a street in Beirut. The women worked informally selling tissues as well as potentially other services that were deemed as too immoral to be explicitly and publicly spoken as the truth, at least in front of an ethnographer. Meanwhile, the author had her own morally problematic behaviour to conceal. Over time, plot-holes in each of their narratives inevitably started to surface. Yet none of them were willing to call out the other’s performance of kizb. This essay considers some of the reasons behind this kizb reciprocity between the women and the author. In doing so, the author also explores briefly some of the complexities that arise in the relationship between the ethnographer and her interlocutors. © 2017, © 2017 Council for British Research in the Levant.