Christine Annick Marie (Demarque) Eickelman died from a sudden and unexpected stroke at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in Lebanon on March 31, 2024. In her final hours, she was in the company of her husband, Dale Eickelman, their two daughters, Amal Marie Eickelman, and Miriam Christine El Guémri. Also present were Amal’s partner, Adam Herron, and their son Theoden; Miriam’s daughters, Montana and Zoey, and Miriam’s husband, Toufik El Guémri.

Christine was born in St-Germain-en-Laye (France) in 1944. Her father, Geoffroy Marie Demarque, and mother, Anne Marguerite Marie Laporte, emigrated to Montréal in 1946, together with Christine’s two sisters, Antoinette Falaise and Françoise Davies, and her brother, Pierre Demarque. Her love of books began early, learning to read at the age of four. The measles vaccine was not yet available when she was a child, and by far her biggest complaint during her measles experience was the inability to read for a week due to sensitivity to light.

Geoffrey, a civil engineer, felt strongly that his children’s university education should be in English, so they all attended McGill University as undergraduates. Christine’s undergraduate major was anthropology.

Highly pragmatic and widowed in 1960, her mother encouraged Christine to learn typing and shorthand as she approached the end of her B.A. studies in 1966. One of her last courses at McGill was a joint graduate/undergraduate seminar in which Dale also participated. She needed a copy of a book on the marsh dwellers of southern Iraq. McGill’s copy was unavailable, so Dale loaned her his copy. It was a good loan. They married in Montréal in June 1967.

Marriage to an anthropologist changed her horizons. Dale and Christine were supposed to study Arabic in Cairo in summer 1967. They ended up instead in Salt Lake City. The following year in Chicago allowed him to finish his Ph.D. coursework and provided experience at one epicenter of America’s turbulent civic unrest. Later in 1968, Dale prepared to conduct field research in Najaf in southern Iraq. They reached Baghdad and the Iraqi south via Egypt and Iran, travelling from Tehran to Baghdad via an Iranian bus ferrying Iranian pilgrims to Iraqi shrines.
Regime change in Iraq forced Christine and Dale to leave Iraq. After a month’s travel via Egypt and Algeria, they reached Morocco, eventually settling in Boujad, a regional pilgrimage center inland from Casablanca. Christine and Dale remained there from November 1968 until January 1970.

From the beginning, they lived in the old part of the town. Christine spoke a rapidly improving Arabic, allowing her to go with women to places that Dale couldn’t go. Her warm welcoming style made her approachable to people from all walks of life. Friends she met in Morocco, the Middle East over half a century ago, and more recently in China, became like family and remain so.

In 1971, Christine moved to New York City when Dale got his first academic job at New York University (NYU). Except for times away on sabbaticals, notably Arizona and the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, they remained in New York until 1989. From 1971 until 1978 Christine was administrative assistant for the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), then housed at NYU, allowing her to walk to work. In 1979 she went to the Sultanate of Oman, where she remained until mid-1980 together with Amal and Dale. At the time there was not yet electricity, piped water, or telephones in al-Hamra, a provincial capital in the northern interior. Visiting among women for daily coffee-drinking sessions was highly structured. Fitting in with the visiting patterns and proficiency in Omani Arabic made Christine a part of local society.
Her book, Women and Community in Oman (1984), vividly portrays Omani society from a women’s perspective. It built on her M.A. (1984) thesis at New York University. Its translation into Arabic in 2011—by a talented Moroccan translator, Dartmouth’s El Moustafa Ouajjani, aided by Omanis from al-Hamra, and a Syrian publisher—was an ethnographic experience in itself. She had sheer pleasure in returning to al-Hamra for a long return visit in early 2023. Women, often the daughters of people whom Christine knew from her initial stay, were excited to see an account of their community in print. Her book, in both English and Arabic, made Omani university reading lists.

Hanover became Christine’s new home in 1989. She soon joined community activities. She taught occasionally at Dartmouth, administered occasional projects, wrote academic articles, and lectured. Locally, her heart was with the International Women’s Club, where between 2002 and 2008, she organized lectures and trips for a few years, later served a term as president, and remained a member thereafter until now. She gave presentations to local schools in Hanover, fifth graders in Lyme, and at the Montshire Museum. In love with books, she worked part time at the Howe library and was a member of the Howe Library Corporation from 2010-2020. In more recent years, she became increasingly active with Northern Stage as a supporter of White River Junction’s local arts scene.

She enjoyed literature for itself, sometimes following the advice that the late Elaine Harp and others placed in fiction books at The Howe. In her final years, she was reading through the mysteries of Agatha Christie. Whether through books or with people, her quiet style, openness, and fascination with sharing life with others gave meaning to her life and the lives of others.

At her request, there will be no funeral. A memorial service is planned for next Fall.

The Rand-Wilson Funeral Home is assisting the family.

 

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