I Can't Dance in Two Weddings
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“I Can’t Dance in Two Weddings”: Marriage as an Articulation of Emerging and Transforming Fractures in the Iraqi Ezidi Refugee Community in Germany Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Stuewe, Allison Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 30/09/2021 06:21:48 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628129 “I CAN’T DANCE IN TWO WEDDINGS”: MARRIAGE AS AN ARTICULATION OF EMERGING AND TRANSFORMING FRACTURES IN THE IRAQI EZIDI REFUGEE COMMUNITY IN GERMANY by Allison Stuewe ____________________________ Copyright © Allison Stuewe 2018 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the SCHOOL OF ANTHROPOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2018 Stuewe 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the overwhelming kindness, hospitality, and openness I experienced on my trips to Germany to visit Iraqi Ezidi families and community events. So many friends went out of their way to provide me with housing, hot meals, car rides, helpful contacts, and information. I especially want to thank Wansa, Saeed, Laith, Qayssar, Linda, Salah, Seezar, and Ezideen for their ongoing support, the continuous supply of nan bread, and their willingness to drop everything to help me build relationships, find places to stay, and set up interviews. It is a testament to Ezidi hospitality that I was able to meet so many people each summer. I also want to thank my advisor, Linda Green, for her patience reviewing many late drafts, her wisdom, and her generosity with her time. I have been inspired by her intellectual and social commitments and much of the theoretical work accomplished here was influenced by her scholarship. It has been such a gift to work with an advisor with so much integrity and compassion. My two other committee members, Anne Betteridge and Leila Hudson, also provided significant guidance and useful feedback that will help me develop the ideas here further. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends. I am especially indebted to my mother, Paula Fried, and to my friend, Rachel Rosenbaum, for painstakingly reading my drafts. Stuewe 4 Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 7 Marriage and Being Ezidi in One Anecdote .............................................................................................. 7 Ezidism as an Ancient Religion/Culture .................................................................................................... 9 Main Arguments ..................................................................................................................................... 12 Researching Ezidis and Ezidism ............................................................................................................... 13 Ezidis, Other Refugee Groups, and Western Governments.................................................................... 14 Past and Present Western Discourses on Refugees ............................................................................... 16 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 27 Positionality Statement ........................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter Descriptions............................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter 2: Weddings and Symbolism ......................................................................................................... 32 The Anthropological Significance of Weddings and Marriage ................................................................ 32 The Engagement ..................................................................................................................................... 33 The Wedding Day .................................................................................................................................... 35 Wedding Dances ..................................................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 3: Future Thoughts ........................................................................................................................ 50 Ezidi Futures ............................................................................................................................................ 50 Being Essentially Ezidi in Germany .......................................................................................................... 53 Caste Trouble .......................................................................................................................................... 58 Precarity in Germany .............................................................................................................................. 60 Persistence and the Illusion of Persistence ............................................................................................ 65 Chapter 4: Material Dimensions of Community Tensions .......................................................................... 73 Having and Not Having in Iraq and then Germany ................................................................................. 73 In the Wedding: Dowry ........................................................................................................................... 77 In the Wedding: Increasing Costs ........................................................................................................... 81 Chapter 5: The Village Chronotope in the Genre of Ezidi Wedding Songs ................................................. 87 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 87 Ezidi Wedding Party Songs as a Genre .................................................................................................... 89 The Village Chronotope .......................................................................................................................... 90 Concluding Thoughts ................................................................................................................................ 102 Main Arguments ................................................................................................................................... 102 Stuewe 5 Future Directions .................................................................................................................................. 103 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................... 105 Stuewe 6 Abstract As a lens for analyzing the frictions in the Iraqi Ezidi refugee community in Germany, I consider marriage as a lived daily reality, an idealized concept, and ritualized life cycle event. I evaluate the ways tensions between Ezidis and between Ezidis and non-Ezidis are enacted through these myriad aspects of marriage. In addition to exploring the particular ways these tensions have emerged, been strengthened, or transformed within the Ezidi refugee community and between non-Ezidi others, this paper argues that Ezidi refugees are uniquely situated to highlight the loss and precarity created by migration even when the community in question has been bestowed a certain amount of privilege vis-à-vis other migrant groups inside of Germany and in other countries. The numerous topics that are increasingly dividing the community include marriage rules, traditional authority structures, caste tensions, connections to Kurdish culture and politics, thoughts on the influence of Islam on Ezidism, and what it means to be a “good” Ezidi. The fractures that emerge around these topics divide the community along region of heritage, generational, gender, and class lines. In analyzing these fractures, I emphasize the overwhelming sense of instability in the Iraqi Ezidi refugee community and argue that this instability is enhanced by the political acts of the German government and the governments or leaders from back home, including but not limited to the Kurdish political parties and the Iraqi central government. Stuewe 7 Chapter 1: Introduction Marriage and Being Ezidi1 in One Anecdote It is June in Germany and I am visiting a family of faqir, a special Ezidi lineage that produces religious men who have special religious responsibilities, if they choose to accept them. Over lunch with the mother and father of this family, Nora and Saad, I ask about the future for Ezidis in Germany. Nora responds: انا اعتقد انها مشكلة كبيرة، ﻻنه العادات، حتى I believe it’s a big problem because اﻻطفال هنا اذا تربوا مع عاداتنا و تقاليدنا حتى اذا the habits, even the children, if they تزوجوا مستقبﻼً