Indulgences

1. Cixare

   Cigarette

   Usage

   baçik, çixare (in Tor) and cigare (in Behdinan) are tobacco products rolled in paper. Because Ottoman-era Latin spelling was "cigare", most people still say cîgare, cigare or cixare. This is the form a traveller actually hears

   Grammar Note

   The verb is kişandin ("to draw/pull"). Cixare, nêrgele (waterpipe), qelûn, opium and hashish all take kişandin — "to smoke a cigarette" is cixare kişandin

2. Titûn

   Tobacco (the leaf)

   Usage

   The botanical name is Nicotiana tabacum. In Kurdistan it is grown around Pasûr (Kulp), Amed (Diyarbakır), Semsur (Adıyaman) and Mûş, and Mûş tobacco is said to be famous worldwide. The rolled cigarette itself is cixare or baçik

3. Qelûn

   Smoking pipe

   Usage

   Qelûn goes with kişandin ("to draw"), like cixare, nêrgele, opium and hashish, and it appears in quoted folk verse ("Tutin kêşa qelûn nar hat", "palê pir qelûn kêşa"). Mostly an older man's implement, rarely seen in the cities

4. Bîra

   Beer

   Usage

   bîra is a feminine noun meaning "beer": a 3-5% ABV drink made by malting barley, flavouring with hops and fermenting. Availability differs by country: Iraq's alcohol ban (passed 2016, gazetted 2023) is not enforced in the Kurdistan Region; alcohol is illegal for Muslim citizens in Iran; it is legal in Turkey

   Grammar Note

   Careful: the unrelated noun bîr ("memory", "well") also becomes bîra in its oblique/ezafe form (ji bîra wê dike = "forgets it"). Tell them apart by context

5. Şerab

   Wine

   Usage

   An alcoholic drink made from tirî (grapes), produced in Kurdistan and Anatolia since very ancient times, coming as sor (red), reş (black) or spî (white). Kurdish mythology also calls it şorav, xwînî or wîn. Availability differs by country and region

6. Çayxane

   Çayxane (teahouse)

   Usage

   An everyday common noun, as in "Xwarinxane û çayxane li wir hene" (there is an eatery and a teahouse there) and "Nava gund de çayxane tinne" (there is no teahouse in the village). It sits at the centre of a village or town, where men gather over black tea

7. Qehwexane

   Qehwexane (coffeehouse)

   Usage

   It also appears when counting shops, as in "104 jî qehwexane ne" (104 of them are coffeehouses). Despite the name, what is actually served is usually black tea

8. Çaydank

   Çaydank (stacked two-pot tea kettle)

   Usage

   The qûre is the vessel the tea steeps and is poured from; once a water-boiling part sits under it, the pair together is called a çaydank. In northern Kurdistan people usually say çaydank for the whole thing

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