Introduction

1From Central Asia to the Middle East (Feilberg 1944; Jarno 1984; Sommer 1996; Akpinarli & Ortaç 2002), and especially in Kurdish areas (figure 11.1), mats made of tied plant stems are traditionally used in current or recent mobile dwellings (yurt, alaçiq, black tent). These mats of diverse craftsmanship are used among others as protective walls against the wind, dust, animals or the glance of outsiders, and they also separate the areas beneath the awning. They are manoeuvrable and mobile, and are rolled to travel. The mats of Kurdish breeders from the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), of the Mantik tribal identity group, are made of reeds (Phragmites australis) and threads made of fabric cords, and are used as external and internal walls for the traditional black tent. Their production is part of a set of common seasonal tasks, which constitute a traditional form of reciprocal exchange of labour involving the extended family or group. The inside wall, which will be described here, is entirely decorated with diamond-shaped ornamental patterns (figure 11.2) and separates the diwanxané, an area dedicated to hospitality, from domestic places. Relics of a distant past for the archaeologist (Georgievna 2013), or evidence of the present or recent past for the ethnographer, heritage or art objects for museographers (Grognet 2005)1, these mats remain for the breeders of Northern Iraq everyday items with functional properties. Several techniques (acquisition, fabrication, assembly, use) are incorporated in the operational chain of the mat, while its production blurs the borders of the sexual division of labour. It thus constitutes a set of technical skills in weaving as well as in basketry (Cullin-Mingaud et al. 2010), and it is also part of the rituals surrounding boundary maintenance (Barth 1999). In this way, we will see that the object of the nomads encompasses both a physical and symbolic extent of capacity, and compartmentalizes genders, families, groups (through solidarity, the exchanges and the donations that it activates), but also opens, through social interaction and hospitality codes, but also in terms of innovation. In addition to the novelty of the materials used, the fact of totally decorating the item is indeed relatively new in the contemporary history of the group, i.e. about two generations. Thus, in terms of its functionality and what it incorporates, this item contributes to the self‑constitution and self‑limitation of the group (Ricœur 1995), but mostly to the group’s protection in a violent regional, social and geopolitical context (Scalbert-Yücel & Gorgas 2011).

Figure 11.1

Figure 11.2

2Throughout this study, I will use the term “cane-screen” to refer to these material productions, following in this way S. Mateeva & J. Thompson (1991)2’s proposal, and the Sorani word çîẍ (چیغ)3 used by the interviewed breeders. After briefly portraying the general context of the studied group, I will describe the essential aspects of the previously mentioned operational chain. I will then propose an interpretation of the possible significance of the çîẍ for the women and men who manufacture them and for those who use them. In the conclusion, I will address their patrimonial and commercial use in the KRG, their media coverage, and tackle the subsequent ambivalence (attraction/repulsion) in current urban populations. This text is based on my fieldwork observations in the governorates of Dohuk, Erbil and in the North of Souleymanieh, during the French Archaeological Mission of the Governorate of Souleymanieh (MAFGS) under the direction of J. Giraud (from 2013 to 2019), the Archaeology Survey of Koya (ASK) under the direction of C. Papi (2017), and as part of my AMI grant from the Institut Français du Proche‑Orient (IFPO) in Iraq between 2016 and 2018.

The Mantik group

Social and political organisation and way of life

3The group of breeders studied here is of Mantik tribal identity4. For our study, this identity is consistent with the current or recent use of interior cane-screens entirely decorated with diamond‑shaped patterns. For Kurds, the tribe (aşiret), and its structure subunits (Tiré, Tayf, Kabilê), each of which contains an indefinite number of households (agnatic family group combining parents, children, married boys and their family, called mahale, binamâl or binabâb), continue to form an available and potential political identity, joining its members, as well as their parents and grand-parents in a real or fictional history, linked to a territory. It refers to a community that cultivates, on one hand, the ideology of the principle of agnatic descent (Ben Hounet 2009), solidarity among members, and the importance of the onomastic standard (common place or ancestor; distinctive physical, social or stereotypical physical element); and on the other hand, political affiliation and loyalty to the same leader (Van Bruinessen 1978). However, this tribal affiliation is combined with other solidarity networks and other identities, such as Islamic, sectarian or nationalist movements, political parties and Pêşmerga5, all part of the KRG’s clientelist and democratic playing field.

4Most villages of Mantik families are grouped in a steppic eroded massif named Dedawan, located at the margins of two adjoining and opposed economic and political centres: Koya, city of culture and art, capital of the district where the massif is located, held by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK); Erbil, the capital of the KRG held by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its international sheep market. The villages have different attributes depending on the degree of sedentarism, access to land ownership and the wealth of the families6. In this way, all the different steps of the whole settlement process are visible in the Koya region: from the adobe house with a sheepfold under a nylon tent for the families who rent their spot, to the more modern concrete block infrastructures, for those who managed to become house owners. These families usually live in small groups (one binamâl or several), and have sometimes joined villages where non-Mantik tribal groups live. The seasonal movements of Mantik mobile breeders follow two patterns (figure 11.3): horizontal movements, according to an elliptic shape (in case it is impossible to use the mountain pastures), and vertical movements (summering in the Choman district). Between those two poles of attraction (i.e., wintering and summering), they use spring and autumn pastures where the tent is set up as an intermediate stage, either close to their home villages, or on other territories in the plains, on the foothills of the district’s outskirts or at the foot of the summering pastures. The families thus live out of their winter village for six to eight months. In periods of great heat, the families staying in the foothills during the summer replace the tent by a shelter made of branches named kpir divided by çîẍ. For those who spend the autumn and the winter in the summer mountain pastures, the black tent is installed. The latter is divided into two or three parts, also by cane-screens. The peripheral çîẍ that are used as outside walls now mainly do not bear ornamental patterns (though they used to have them when carpets were made). Inside, the domestic space (cellar, but also kitchen, and dairy production room) is separated from the dîwanẍané (hospitality and sleeping area) by a central ornamental çîẍ. This de facto separation creates a male space and a female space because of the gendered division of roles among the family. However, these two spaces communicate thanks to an opening, and none is forbidden for the opposite sex. The dîwanẍané and the domestic area also have access to the outside area.

Figure 11.3

5Another characteristic of the Mantik breeders is that their two vertical poles of pastoral attraction (summering and wintering), as well as their seasonal routes, are located in areas of political and armed conflict. The Iranian and Turkish armies regularly bomb the summering zone because of the presence of Kurdish armed identity groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who are fighting against the two previously mentioned states. In the wintering zone, the Mantik villages are located around the ceasefire line since the end of the civil war between the two rival major Kurdish parties: the KDP and the PUK7. On the way to the summering mountain pastures, tensions are fraught among the three main protagonists at the Asterokan pass (or Zinu Warte). From an economic point of view, the seasonality of the production of mobile Mantik breeders (lamb and dairy), marked competition from ovine meat from Syria or Iran (Thevenin 2020), the lack of winter fodder and grazing, and episodes of recurrent drought are limiting factors, even though the inside demand for meat continues to increase. Feeder farms and dairy products made from milk powders mainly from Turkey are favoured by wholesalers who supply big towns, as well as supermarkets and consumers.

From the condition of men to the condition of women: an eminently patriarchal social organisation

6In Iraqi Kurdistan, as everywhere the world, women are victims of a wide range of types of violence: forced marriages and repudiations, right for the family head to inflict corporal punishment, excision, rape and marital rape (Lynch 2019). The women in Mantik mobile breeders’ families live in a “cousin’s republic” (Tillion 1982), a widespread system around the Mediterranean basin in order to avoid the scattering of lineage capital (as the scattering of the wife’s inheritance is permitted by Koranic law) by strengthening community ties around the group’s onomastic banner. Thus, these groups are patrilineal, usually virilocal (the spouses live close to the husband’s family), and often get married to the closest, combining genealogical and statutory proximity (Bonte 1994)8. The families are part of an economic affective unit: the family enterprise (Giraud 2019). In the latter, the division of labour follows principles of separation (there is work for men and work for women) and hierarchy (men’s work “is worth more” than women’s work). We also observe that men carry out functions with a high added social value (Kergoat 2001). Men possess and use the most sophisticated and prestigious tools (Tabet 1998), whether for means of transport (motorised vehicle), to access networks to economic resources and opportunities, and nowadays also for access to social digital networks (Facebook account). When part of the brotherhood learns how to manage the breeding family business, the other part accesses rewarding external training that provides additional financial and relational resources (enrolment in the Pêşmerga, in the public service, in a party, further education). Sisters, on the other hand, learn what will be needed to perform their work in the family business in an intimate family context. Learning the çîẍ, the manufacture of dairy products and animal care, thus takes place through this “nomadic feeding”.

The composition of a çîẍ weaving loom

7The instrument used to make çîẍ is a sort of vertical weaving loom with a warp weight or weights (Breniquet 2008), but with significant differences9. The çîẍ weaving loom is not an instrument composed of several specific objects, but rather a rudimentary installation recreated for the occasion10 (figure 11.4). It consists of a straight cylindrical wooden beam, called darçîẍ in the Ranya region (literally ‘the wood of the çîẍ’), or Kargadan in the Harir region (from the Persian word Kargetan and the Kurdish word for rhinoceros Kerkedan 11), positioned horizontally on two vertical supports, on which the warp threads hang, tightened by stones rolled and secured at their extremities (which are equivalent to the clay weights of looms described by C. Breniquet). It is on the darçîẍ/Kargadan that the women assemble the reed stems. The beam (cut or bought by men) must be debarked, with a diameter of 10 to 15 cm and a length of 200-300 cm depending on the function of the cane-screen. The vertical supports can be the inside pillars of a house cellar in rammed earth, or poles rammed into the ground (sing)12, or two empty barrels of petrol on which the beam is secured with straps, large stones, or cinder blocks. For the ethnographer, this material represents ample information in itself. The barrels of petrol and the cinder blocks are not only evocative of the winter sedentarism of breeders, but also of the autonomous region of Kurdistan13.

Figure 11.4

Warp threads 

8The warp yarns, which used to be made exclusively of wool or goat hair, are now mostly cords made from second-hand or new fabrics bought from the bazaar (called pero). These industrially-made fabrics are more elastic than animal yarns and can better withstand the tension of weaving and also bring an additional aesthetic touch. Women make the cords stronger by twisting them with a spindle and lining them either with a cord of the same fabric or with a different fabric, giving the warp threads a mottled look. This technique is also used for goat hair yarns. On a çîẍ, there are two types of warp threads: straight and oblique. In our study regions, they are respectively called rastika (from rastik, straight stitch in sewing; rasta ban in the Harir region, the ‘upright vault’), and ẍwarika (from ẍwarik, overlock stich and ẍwarêẍwar, oblique, sloping). They can consist of a single or double cord, or of two single or double cords attached one after the other (figure 11.5). When a warp yarn consists of two cords of different textures, the alternating passage of these cords over the stems will create a set of intertwining geometric figures (triangles and diamonds called gul —flower) of different colours on a çîẍ (figure 11.6A-D).

Figure 11.5

Figure 11.6

Weft threads: reed stems

9The weft threads of a çîẍ are the stems of reeds or osiers. Sometimes the two plants, which are of different colours, are combined in rows on the same cane-screen, creating a mottled çîẍ (figure 6B). The reeds (qamish) are harvested in the fall, when nomads return from the summer pastures, on the banks of rivers when they are lower and the plants are in their dormant period. It is then not necessary to dry the reeds. They can be used directly. In the Peshdar Plain, or in the Koya region, the harvest is carried out on the banks of the Little Zab. Cutting is mainly done by men, who are all the more needed here because they have to drive by car to the harvesting sites, and to territories that are outside the group's domain of influence. Women, when needed, accompany them and collect the cut stems. The reeds are chosen “neither too thick nor too thin”, and are generally as thick as the index, ring or middle finger of a rural worker’s hand, which also determines reed height. For making a çîẍ, the reed stems can be decorated beforehand. We distinguish several techniques of decoration made before the manufacture of the cane-screen. The one that interests us here is mainly used for making ornamental çîẍ and can be succinctly described as large diamond-shaped patterns that cover the entire object. Each pattern is interlocked one next to the other and made of several hollowed-out diamonds of various colours (shimmering shades with a majority of red tones) displayed in concentric layers, to give an impression of depth (figure 11.6E-F).

10In this technique, woollen threads of different colours are literally wound around the rod to form a series of coloured units which will form the concentric layers and the interlocked diamonds when the stems are being assembled. These units are not specifically named by women. They are created directly on the stem, one after the other, and the reed stems are worked one after the other. Today, the yarns used for the design of these units come from manufactured balls of wool from Iran bought at the bazaar and offer a wider variety of colours. These are the result of synthetic dyes. Yarn dyeing is no longer carried out by nomadic women.

The stones of the vertical loom

11Before assembling the reed rods, the two ends of each warp yarn must each be connected to a stone (berdâ çîẍ, the çîẍ stone), and part of the length of the yarn is wound around the stone14. This forms two ‘stone-balls’ which are unrolled as the cane-screen progresses. Then the two stones, connected by the yarn, are hung parallel to each other on either side of the darçîẍ/kargatan, connected by the threadoverhanging the beam. Their weight not only keeps the warp yarn on the rod taut, wedges it on the darçîẍ/kargatan, but also ensures that the interweaving is tight. Since a çîẍ can connect up to 21 warp threads, a darçîẍ/kargatan can, in this way, align more than 40 stones around itself (figure 11.7). The brief pendulum movement of the stone-balls that collide when the reeds are assembled thus creates a typical soft rattling melody. The stones are gathered in riverbeds by women on their way back from the summer pastures in autumn, when the streams are dry, or in scree near the wintering area. They are collected polished or not, with an oval shape, and are about the length of a wrist and hand. They are not transformed in any way. In theory, stones for rastika must be larger than those for ẍwarika. These stones are kept by a family, çîẍ after çîẍ, and sometimes circulate between families in the same village depending on their needs, as well as the darçîẍ. In this way, families of mobile breeders can store about thirty stones in their homes.

Figure 11.7

The çîẍ as a receptacle object

The diamond-shaped patterns on a çîẍ: a plurality of meanings

12The ornamental cane-screens of Mantik breeders reproduce diamond-shaped patterns ad nauseam and in practically three dimensions: in vertical and horizontal layers, but also in depth by the visual effect of the concentric layers inside each diamond (figure 11.8). The use of this pattern is common among the Kyrgyz and in Central Asia (Makhova 1996; Malchik 2005). The diamond is a feminine symbol par excellence (schematic form of the vulva), and by extension, of fertility. In the region of Niğde in Turkey, “Turkmen nomads call this motif dudak (lips), […] and in Gölmülgen in Central Anatolia the weavers call it Kutu, the box” (Diler & Gallice 2017: 92). Both terms are familiarly applied to female genitals. The terms gul (rose, by extension flower) or nresh gul (flower design) used by the interviewed Kurdish women to designate these diamonds refer to a pattern with the same name, gül (in Turkish), which is the basic decoration of so-called Turkmen carpets. These carpets are characterised by octagonal or diamond-shaped patterns, repeated throughout the carpet in parallel rows. The repetition of diamond patterns was also a characteristic of the carpets of the Kurdish Djaf tribe (Hopkins 1989), and W. Eagleton noted in 1988 that “the mantik [the Mantik tribe] are better known for their kilims and bags with uniform repeated geometric designs in weft wrapping” (Eagleton 1988: 77). According to M. Hopkins, this repetition represents “The line between boring and beautiful” (1989), as the monotony of the decoration is avoided by the use of bright colours and their combination, different levels of diamond sizes, and by the choice of straight and oblique threads. With the Mantiks, in general, no two diamonds are alike. Rarely, there is a monochrome frame, but most often the peripheral parts of the çîẍ are filled in with triangular patterns (half diamonds), which are like a possibility of opening towards the formation of another diamond. If we capture the feminine symbolism expressed above (since interaction between Turkmen and Kurdish nomads has often been proved throughout history), we can assume that the repetition of diamonds on the çîẍ would provide (either consciously or unconsciously) a sort of feminine symbolic genealogical tale, which would nuance the preferential memorization of agnatic lineage within the tribe (Fogel 2008). The semi-diamonds would thus be a uterine lineage, on hold and in the making.

Hanging gardens

13The terms gul and nresh gul and the repetition of the diamonds also echo the composition of a garden. The pleasure garden in Kurdish society, in the Arab-Muslim world in general, and pre-Koranic Persia in particular, is highly significant. Its evocation is sometimes represented in summering camps where it is not uncommon to see alleys of flowers lining the tents of nomads (which also have the practical function of collecting water flowing from the velum when it rains). In villages, a well-kept garden is a symbol of prestige. Guests are welcomed there when the first heat sets in. They are made to sleep on mattresses on the lawn under mosquito nets. It is a place of hospitality that recalls the status of the host and the status of the guest. It is like an oasis in the middle of the desert, and just like the oasis, it is clearly delimited. Gardens are set up in the inner courtyards of houses, separated from the symbolic desert that surrounds them, from dust and pollution. The canopy created by the trees and bushes, the scent of the rose or basil massifs, thus offer a sensory experience. Geometric shapes evoke the irrigation canals of ancient Persia, following the design known as chahar bagh: a closed rectangle subdivided by canals into four equal rectangles (Hamed 1994; Gillot 2006). In Islamic culture, the garden and its flowers (an allegory of paradise awaiting the believer and of these carnal pleasures15) relieves believers from the vicissitudes of the present world. The ornamental çîẍ thus act as a real hanging garden, (a green wall, as we would say today), laid inside the tents as an act of territorialisation16, providing in the space of hospitality, both a sensory experience eroticised by the diamond shapes, but also a place of purification for the soul through the symbolized garden.

A garden for whom, for what?

14The Kurdish national emblems (tricoloured red, yellow and green flag, specifically used together, the 21-branched sun), banners of political parties or ostentatious religious symbols are absent from the figurative corpus of ornamental Mantik çîẍ. Nevertheless, some of them appear as objects hung on the cane-screen, particularly on the side of the dîwanẍané. In addition to everyday objects17, it is the decorative objects integrated into or sewn onto the ornamental çîẍ that attract our attention: pearl necklaces, synthetic flowers and coloured woollen thread pompoms18 (figure 11.8C, E). Then there are objects related to agnatic lineage and political links: portraits of a deceased relative or a martyr (figure 11.8B-C, F), or the flag of one of the two hegemonic political parties (figure 11.8E). The fact that the central çîẍ acts as a holder for other objects prosaically corresponds to a practical aspect: the inner partition is the only one that is protected from the outside elements.

15But mostly, it is the wall at the bottom of which the stranger or the husband is greeted. Several authors have studied the hostile aspect of hospitality (Pitt-Rivers 2021; Boudou 2012). Greeting the stranger, deep down in the inner self (Le blanc 2011) requires a certain ambivalence because, in principle, the stranger is a traveller that one does not know but has to greet in order to be a good believer and “to whom one must give everything, even though they are normally considered as morally inferior to the members of the group” (Boudou 2012: 268), and to do so in order to suspend, at least temporarily, their potential hostility.

16Moreover, Kurdish society is ruled by an extreme codification of social behaviours related to the Iranian Ta'ârof (code of invitation, greeting)19, a sceptical vision of human nature that notes that the social bond is pure fiction (Vivier-Muresan 2008), each one having to hide his inner 'self', possibly corrupted by selfishness and proscribed desires (all the more so in the context of the KRG). Thus, the stranger is greeted by rites of passage that can be translated in the summer by informal border areas (near the camp, at the entrance of the tent), and then by integration: sharing tea and a meal. Time in the tent usually consists of pacified time where the ornamental çîẍ, in its oneiric and erotic dimension, if we retain the feminine symbolism20, contributes to the optimization of exchanges within the framework of existing behavioural conventions. Just like the decorative objects affixed to it, the dishes served and the scents that emanate from them, it contributes to the “flowering of senses of individual pleasure, domestic well-being, and social satisfaction” (Andrews, Roberts & Selwyn 2007:256-7). In the couple and the family, it calms moods, and measures “the woman’s aesthetic skills” to reinforce marriages and family ties (Kanafani-Zahar 1983:93). As for the technicity of the object, the portraits and the flags, they provide information on the status of the family and the group (social and religious degree of the host; prestige of the lineage and involvement in the Kurdish cause).

Figure 11.8

The gift of the çîẍ

17The complexity of an ornamental cane-screen, through the colourful, repeated and meticulous dance of the threads around the stems, depends on the time that one or more women can devote to it21. Among Kyrgyz breeders, ornamental cane-screens were reserved for rich families, who often ordered them from craftswomen, for special events, such as weddings (Antipina 1996). Among nomadic Bakhtyari herders, though it affected the carpets, “only the Bibi (women and girls of Xan) had the material and temporal means to have [carpets] made or to make them [carpets] themselves, mainly because of the domestic help they had at their disposal” (Digard 1981: 133).

18With Mantik breeders, the time it takes to decorate and assemble the çîẍ is diluted in the seasonal daily pluri-activity of the women of the group, either in autumn or winter. It is part of a set of common seasonal tasks (such as the passage of herds through disinfection ponds for men, or preparation for weddings or funerals), which constitute a traditional form of reciprocal exchange of labour involving the extended family or group22. Decorating an ornamental cane-screen requires “additional” time and know-how, and hence skilled and mobilizable labour, which not all families can provide. Though many Mantik women can make diamond-shaped decorations (the technique had already been acquired as evidenced by the remains of decorated outdoor cane-screens), others confess they are unable to. This usually matches generational groups, the one located between the cessation of carpet manufacturing and the appearance of ornamental çîẍ, but also often the family’s social situation. In this case, the ornamental çîẍ was gifted (when the owning family stops breeding for example) or be a free loan during events that mobilise the solidarity of the group (need for moral, spiritual or material help). The çîẍ are part of these objects that can constitute a donation as part of a primary sociality (Caillé 1986) that only involves the family or the group. This donation can take the form of binary reciprocity (Temple 2003): as a finished object, in a one-to-one mode (family gift for another family; Mlaiki 2012); or in a one for all, all for one mode (Sabourin 2011), as occasional help to relatives in the operational chain, or as a learning technique being spread among the many women and young girls involved in this common seasonal task. It can also be a ternary reciprocity (Temple 2003) of an intergenerational type in the case of çîẍ offered to children at the time of marriage. In both cases, reciprocity is not instantaneous, but rather delayed, and under certain circumstances asymmetrical due to social differences between families. But unlike counter-gift or exchange, here it is not a question of making an equivalent payment that would free the beneficiary from his debt, but rather of expecting reciprocity in the form of sociability (Sabourin 2011). Donating a cîx corresponds to transforming the family time into community time. It becomes the common good of the group, acting for the prestige, and also the honour of the donor family. It is in the context of this solidarity injunction that the interior ornamental çîẍ as an innovation has become a social convention in the group. It cannot be made by a few breeders without endangering the cohesion of the group. The ornamental çïx should be the result of a community and creator of community (Razafindratova 1971: 53), or not to be.

19Thus, the Mantik’s cane-screens are also a reflection of these breeders’ social status: not rich enough or poor enough. To use J. Baudrillard’s term, these families “do not hope that much” (Baudrillard 1969: 31) because they remain independent from sedentary villages and mostly from rich land owners to access land. They are also exposed to the violence of the oligarchic and partisan predation system in force (Bozarslan 1996), and to the KRG’s internal and external geopolitical situation, as well as to climatic risks. However, they “hope for a little too much” (Baudrillard 1969: 31) as, in spite of everything, the Mantik group still has access to property, through the intermediary of some families, to perennial summer pasture areas owing to good networks, to high-ranking military, media, and university positions, in short, to a form of social and territorial promotion for nomadic breeders. Their ornamental çîẍ reflect this rather precarious prestige. These objects are an example of antagonistic exponent (Baudrillard 1969), a signifier situated somewhere between “triumphalism and resignation” (Baudrillard 1969: 32).

Conclusion

20In their techniques, visual compositions and use, cane-screens, with or without patterns, show the surprising permanency of a typical object from the nomadic culture in a Kurdish society wounded by years of erasing anthropological locations (Hovanessian 2012). Just like the carpet, the object is stunning in the space-time volume that it covers (a thousand-year-old tradition spread out from Asia to the Middle East), as well as in its figurative corpus, which is part of a long and wide tradition of meaningful geometric patterns. However, contrary to its famous cousin, the domestic production of cane-screens among Kurdish breeders persists and evolves. Like for the tent, the material used is no longer partly produced by breeders and comes from the globalized consumer society. But in the same way as for the tent, the structure and its logic remain functionally topical. The object is adapted to the needs and social status of today’s mobile breeders. The çîẍ incorporate values of solidarity inside the group: first between female members, then between female and male members of the same binamâl, in the contribution of the latter to the operational chain (and in this sense, it is not just a ‘woman's activity’, as it is often presented); in the circulation of the berdâçîẍ and the darçîẍ, and in the gathering of the women who make them; then between the various lineages, with the donation and reciprocal exchange of labour to which cane-screens contribute. They maintain the continuity of the gender-division of space, tasks and their hierarchization, and in this way, Mantik women build and invest a lot in this object of gender-compartmentalization and in the reproduction of the existing order. The ornamental patterns repeated in unison are not meant to be original, but are rather intended to reproduce a pre-existing figurative cultural lexicon, diffused and recognised beyond the ethnic borders, incorporated on a common everyday object. However, they allow for a type of family singularity to express itself by signing it with the choice of colour and diamond-shaped arrangements inside the families’ tents. The compartmentalization is thus pacified, made “pretty” with decorations that contribute to a type of eroticization of the household’s daily life. The ornamental çîẍ also protect the family’s intimate space from the gaze of strangers, and turn the envious eye away in the evocation of the garden. They open on the beyond, making the diwanxane a threshold towards heaven, thus offering the possibility to “make men saints in spite of themselves” (Vivier-Muresan 2008: 131). So, they carry moral values in relation to hospitality, even though this is not spontaneous or natural here, but rather premeditated in a complex interaction between pragmatism and virtue23, since we are irreducibly exposed to the coming of the other (Derrida & Dufourmantelle 1997). They act as diplomatic objects (Pacher 2019) in the service of a specific conception of society connected to the Iranian culture’s Ta’ârof, where it is about “displaying what is not seen, in order to protect what is” (Vivier-Muresan 2008: 136). In what they do inside and outside the group, cane-screens belong to what philosopher A. Gell called the technologies of enchantment and its corollary the enchantment of technologies (Gell 2014), a conception of art according to which it is aesthetic propaganda in favour of the status quo in a given society. For Mantik breeders, this is a ritual of protection, solidarity and territorialisation where the tent is laid. In the violent context of the KRG, the ornamental çîẍ thus contributes to a sort of rhetoric of despair (Baudrillard 1969: 32, quoting P. Bourdieu).

21Ornamental or pattern-free çîẍ are not, however, restricted to the domestic sphere of breeders and the Kurdish rural world. In the cafes of the cities of the KRG, or on the side of the roads, decorated or non-decorated cane-screens sometimes appear. It is the same with exhibition rooms in small local museums. On television, on the social networks, concerts are given in reproductions of tents made by local craftsmen where çîẍ figure prominently. Cane-screens are in demand and have become a source of income for village women. This nostalgic, patrimonial and commercial use of hospitality objects has been observed by many actors (Berliner 2010; Angé 2015; Shryock 2004; Marsden 2012). However, this ubiquitous effect of the çîẍ does have consequences, especially in programmes dedicated to nomads on Kurdish television channels24. The mediatization of their fabrication in the domestic context, the illusion of the archaism of the weaving loom, the artificialization of materials, reflect an ambiguous image, stuck between genuine nostalgic interest for a community of loss (Berliner 2010) for its folklore, and an ontological remoteness. It is the same for other aspects of nomadic life. Their traditional dairy production, though it is said to be more natural, raises questions about the health conditions of the sector among city-dwellers, more used to industrial manufacturing regulations. The commerce of lambs of nomadic-origin, which is the main income of its breeders, is not popular in the media. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, this trade is not subject to any patrimonial or mercantile promotion, unlike cheeses, and the urban population, increasingly distant from the act of killing (Franck et al. 2015), is becoming sensitive to the question of animal welfare. On the other hand, the work of journalists is somewhat biased: a Kurdish environment known to be rather progressive regarding women, and a space-time context (between the necessity to act quickly and close) that owes as much to the acceleration of information time as to the prison of hospitality (Shryock 2004). In camps and villages, women’s daily lives are within camera reach, while men’s (trade, night guarding, etc.) remain hidden from the mediatic eye. In any case, exposing the women and their know-how means implicitly perpetuating the gendered distinction of tasks, and showing their exhausting, repetitive and leisure-less lives25. This inevitably leads to a bitter-sweet feeling: admiration for their courage and abnegation, as well as concerns about their living conditions.

22The media coverage of Kurdish nomadic life adds to the attraction of urban Kurdish people for the rural environment26, an unspoken criticism of the latter, and sometimes a ban, combining a “retrotyping process”27 (Pickering et Keightley 2014: 88) and reflexive nostalgia (Boym 2002), a critical vision of a rurality that is idealized and fantasized, but which one does not wish to live again, and on which one admits the passing of time. It also turns nomads into the “Similar other” dear to P. Ricoeur, and runs the risk of folklorisation.

Epilogue

23In 2019, the Kurdish television Kurdisat News released a short report on the construction of a çîẍ28. In the documentary, a patternless çîẍ is being assembled. Another one, completed and decorated with bead necklaces, pieces of felt and small tansy bouquets gives us a foretaste of the final result. A mother and her daughter are sitting on the bare earthen and rocky ground, in front of a berdâçîẍ cairn and the family farm in cinder blocks. A young man places a bunch of shaped cane stems against the darçîẍ/ Kargadan laid on two wooden beams stuck in the ground. Another one passively watches, leaning on the loom. The presence of a camera intimidates the parents and forces young men and women to make themselves noticed. One of them briefly comes in to help the weavers. Solidarity. The men are soon spotlighted in turn, this time working on their own tasks, in a short sequence of husbandry activities, that breaks the monotony of assembling reeds. After going out to feed the animals, the boys go off to practice throwing stones with their bare hands against a raised rock, a substitute target for the ewe that is moving off and must be brought back into the flock. A stylistic effect, one of the stones, filmed in slow motion, comes to knock the target over, while a cross-fade returns to the back-and-forth movement of the berdâçîẍ around the darçîẍ/Kargadan, and to the meticulousness of the active women. The techniques are archaic, the roles are defined, and the sheep are well guarded. The work of the çîẍ is progressing well. A young woman, still sitting on the ground, talks about her life as a mobile breeder, how she learned as a child to make çîx watching her grandmother’s hands, the production tasks that fall to her and that are repeated season after season… The tone is weary, that of the young woman as well as that of the documentary. Very often, the breeders are weary too. Many complain that they live in the dust, and that the State does not help them. Nonetheless, they would not want to attract the envious eye. The young men wish for another life, and the young women... I don't know. In the intimacy of the family, in the tent, in the evening after a day's work, when the patriarch is not there, by the light of the electric light bulbs, the crackling of a fireplace and the noise of the generator, they have a lot of fun with their brothers pilfering their (or the researcher's) mobile phones, scrolling through their Facebook accounts and commenting images of the posts where they never appear, or where their faces are hidden. They also watch Turkish telenovelas on TV, impossible love stories, and upcoming arranged marriages. Finally, they talk about the excitement, a combination of joy and fear, of their future union or that of their brothers...