There were chaotic scenes as the feverish march got underway before dawn following an open-air mass for the so-called Black Nazarene statue in a seaside park in Manila. 

Many Filipinos believe the icon has miraculous healing powers and that touching it, or the ropes attached to its float, can heal previously incurable ailments and bring good fortune to them and their loved ones.

As a light rain fell over the massive crowd, some barefoot devotees risked injury to reach the float by clambering over others and clinging to the clothes of guards protecting the icon, causing some to fall off the float.

Other guards on the float pushed unruly devotees to the ground to keep them away from the icon enclosed in a glass case and allow the parade to continue on its journey of several kilometres. 

More than 15,000 security and medical personnel have been deployed along the route of the procession, which authorities estimated would attract over two million people as it crawled towards its destination, Quiapo Church. 

It is the first time the traditional parade featuring the life-sized statue has been held since 2020, after Covid-19 forced officials to drastically downsize the event.

“I believe that the Nazarene will give what we are all praying for — we just have to wait, but he will give everything,” Renelinda de Leon, 64, told AFP at the start of the procession. 

“He gave me good health. I don’t have an illness, I’m always healthy.”

The original wooden statue was brought to the Philippines in the early 1600s when the nation was a Spanish colony.

Many Filipinos believe it got its dark colour after surviving a fire aboard a ship en route from Mexico.

Authorities did not report any specific threat to the procession, but took the precaution of blocking mobile phone signals to prevent the remote detonation of explosive devices, and imposed a no-fly and no-sail zone near the route.  

First-aid stations lined the streets on Tuesday to treat people suffering from heat stroke, abrasions or other medical problems during the procession, which in previous years has taken up to 22 hours to finish due to the huge crowds. 

This year, the icon has been placed in a glass case for the first time and participants were banned from getting on the float — though some ignored the directive in their desperation to wipe a towel on the glass in the hope of receiving a miracle.

Tonton Ruz, one of the guards protecting the statue as it makes its slow journey, said Thursday he was happy the parade had resumed, but hoped it would be “more peaceful” than in the past. 

“Before, you can’t see him (the statue) with so many people on top of the float blocking the view,” Ruz, 36, told AFP as he prepared for the march.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken, releasing an annual index of designations, maintained all 12 countries that had been on the previous year’s blacklist, including China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

In the sole change, Blinken added Azerbaijan to a watchlist, meaning it will join the blacklist, which carries potential sanctions, without improvements.

Energy-rich Azerbaijan, a frequent US partner, sent troops on September 19 into Nagorno-Karabakh and quickly achieved the surrender of Armenian separatist fores who had controlled the region for three decades.

In a recent recommendation to the State Department, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom pointed to concerns for the preservation of Christian religious sites in Nagorno-Karabakh, where virtually the entire population of 100,000 ethnic Armenians has fled to Armenia.

The commission also voiced alarm over regulations on all religious practice in the Shiite Muslim-majority but largely secular country under strongman President Ilham Aliyev, including a requirement that all religious groups be registered and their literature approved by an official body.

The commission, which is appointed by lawmakers but does not set US policy, was ignored by Blinken on another recommendation — blacklisting India.

The commission alleged incitement and a climate of impunity by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government on rising attacks against religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians.

India has scoffed at the accusations and few had expected any action by the US government, which for years has sought warmer relations with New Delhi, seeing the fellow democracy as a bulwark against China.

Blinken in a statement noted that “significant violations of religious freedom also occur in countries that are not designated.”

“Governments must end abuses such as attacks on members of religious minority communities and their places of worship,” he said.

The “countries of particular concern” on the blacklist are China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Besides Azerbaijan, countries on the watchlist are Algeria, the Central African Republic, Comoros and Vietnam.

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Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told the media that authorities had been on high alert as Buenos Aires hosts the Pan-American Maccabiah Games, bringing together some 4,000 athletes.

She said the country had received intelligence from the United States and Israel on the potential threat, and that the three suspects had booked a hotel near the Israeli embassy.

“We have neutralized the arrival of a possible terrorist cell in the country,” the security ministry wrote on social media.

The three were arrested on December 30, and one of them was found with Venezuelan and Colombian passports in his name.

Bullrich said the three had been awaiting the arrival of what her ministry earlier described as “an international shipment of a 35-kilo parcel originating in the Republic of Yemen.” 

Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America, which has been targeted by two major attacks in the past.

In 1992, a bomb attack against the Israeli embassy left 29 dead. Two years later an attack on a Jewish center left 85 dead and 300 injured, in the worst attack in the country’s history.

The 1994 attack has never been claimed or solved, but Argentina and Israel suspect Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah group carried it out at Iran’s request.

Tehran denies any involvement.

Hundreds of Argentines returned to the country after the bloody October 7 attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel.

The attack claimed the lives of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also took around 250 hostages back to Hamas-ruled Gaza, 129 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel.

In response to the deadliest attack in its history, Israel launched a relentless offensive that has reduced vast swathes of Gaza to rubble and claimed over 22,300 lives, according to the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

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Having said earlier in the day that he was thinking of people “who are suffering from war — we are thinking of Palestine, of Israel, of Ukraine”, the pope struck a sombre tone during his Christmas Eve mass.

“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world,” the pope said.

The biblical city in the occupied West Bank, where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born in a stable more than 2,000 years ago, effectively cancelled the annual Christmas celebrations that normally draw thousands of tourists.

The town did away with its giant Christmas tree, marching bands and flamboyant nativity scene this year, settling for just a few festive lights.

‘Tonight our hearts are in Bethlehem,’ Pope Francis said in his Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican – Copyright AFP HAZEM BADER

In the centre of town, a huge Palestinian flag had been unfolded with a banner declaring that “The bells of Bethlehem ring for a ceasefire in Gaza”.

“A lot of people are dying for this land,” said Nicole Najjar, an 18-year-old student.

“It’s really hard to celebrate while our people are dying.”

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said: “We are here to pray and to ask not only for a ceasefire, a ceasefire is not enough, we have to stop these hostilities and to turn the page because violence generates only violence”.

Sister Nabila Salah from the Catholic Holy Church in Gaza — where two Christian women were killed by an Israeli sniper earlier this month, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem — told AFP “all Christmas celebrations have been cancelled”.

“How do we celebrate when we are… hearing the sound of tanks and bombardment instead of the ringing of bells?” she said.

In Syria, churches limited celebrations to prayers in solidarity with the Palestinians.

The Hamas attack on October 7 left around 1,140 people dead in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.

The Palestinian militants also abducted around 250 people, 129 of whom Israel says remain in Gaza.

Israel retaliated with a sustained bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, where 20,424 people have been killed, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

– New Christmas Day –

Ukraine, invaded by Russia nearly two years ago, is celebrating Christmas on December 25 for the first time, jettisoning the traditional Orthodox date of January 7, which is feted in Russia, as a snub to Moscow.

In the southern Black Sea port of Odesa, churchgoers prayed and lit candles as priests in gold vestments held a Christmas Eve service in the Cathedral of the Nativity, decorated with fir trees and a nativity scene.

“We believe that we really should celebrate Christmas with the whole world, far away, far away from Moscow. For me that’s the new message now,” said one smiling parishioner, Olena, whose son is a medic on the front line.

The date change — moving away from the Julian calendar favoured by the Orthodox Church — is part of moves since the invasion to remove traces of the Russian and Soviet empires.

– Surfing Santas –

In countries not afflicted by war, festive revellers donned Santa hats for a shot of holiday cheer — running a city race in Skopje, North Macedonia; surfing the waves in Florida; jogging along muddy wooded paths on the outskirts of Paris; dipping in the sea near the British port of Dover; or soaking with a drink in hand in Lake Geneva.

In Sydney, Australia, where the big day had already arrived, many residents and tourists headed to the beach, wearing the woolly red hats despite the heat in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer.

And children around the globe followed Santa, his reindeer and their present-laden sleigh with the help of Norad Tracks Santa, a 3-D interactive website run annually by a joint US-Canadian military monitoring agency.

– Prayers in Turkey –

In southern Turkey, much of which was devastated by an earthquake in February, some faithful celebrated mass in front of the ruins of their church at Antakya.

“It’s important for us to celebrate the birth of Jesus. but it’s a very sad Christmas,” said Vehbi Tadrasgil, a 55-year-old who lost his wife and two of his three children in the quake that killed at least 50,000 people in Turkey and more than 5,000 in neighbouring Syria.

“I hope that their souls are here, I am certain that our prayers rise to them,” he said.

Twenty kilometres (12 miles) down the coast in Samandag, a generator powered the lights on a tree in front of the Saint-Ilyas church, which survived.

“After the earthquake, our community — 400 families — was annihilated. With this Christmas, we want to wish everyone rebirth, love, joy and peace. We must move forward, rebuild a new life,” said Father Yumurta.

“They say that with the birth of the child Jesus, a new life begins, a new beginning. For us too, here, it will be a new beginning,” he said.

burs/yad/jj/leg/mtp

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There was no revelry on Sunday, with few worshippers or tourists on the streets of the Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank, which according to Christian tradition was the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Celebrations in the Holy Land have mostly been cancelled in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who are living through the deadliest war ever to engulf the besieged Palestinian territory.

“A lot of people are dying for this land,” says Nicole Najjar, an 18-year-old student in the city’s deserted Manger Square.

“It’s really hard to celebrate while our people are dying.”

A work of art evoking the tragedy of the war has been installed on the ground opposite the Church of the Nativity, taking the place of the life-size nativity scene and colossal Christmas tree that would normally be there.

On the building next door, a large banner reads: “Stop the genocide, stop the displacement, lift the blockade.”

War broke out when Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, and seized 250 hostages, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas in response and its military campaign, which has included massive aerial bombardment, has killed 20,424 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

In the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory, an estimated 1,000 Christians have taken refuge in churches.

Last week, a mother and daughter were killed by an Israeli sniper inside the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza City, according to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa.

– ‘Life, not death’ –

Pizzaballa addressed the people of Gaza during midnight mass.

“We won’t abandon you,” he said at the Church of Saint Catherine.

“Their suffering ceaselessly cries out to the whole world,” he said.

“Thousands of people have been deprived of their basic needs; they are hungry, and they are even more exposed to incomprehensible violence.”

In normal years, a festive parade wakes the city up with bagpipes and tambourines.

But this year, people took to the streets silently.

“We want life, not death,” proclaimed one of the banners carried by children through the streets.

In the morning, a huge Palestinian flag was unfurled in Manger Square, held at either end by Christians and Muslims.

“This year is different from all the others, it’s a year of sadness, grief, destruction, deprivation and loss,” says Mervat Murra, 50, a fashion designer from Bethlehem.

– ‘Atrocity’ –

Near Manger Square, the Giacaman family opened their shop selling nativity scenes and other religious objects for the first time in 11 weeks.

“During Covid, we had two bad years, but that’s nothing compared to this,” says Amir Giacaman, 29.

The hostilities in Gaza have spread to the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, where more than 300 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October by Israeli soldiers or settlers.

“We don’t feel like celebrating while Gaza is suffering genocide and even here in the West Bank, we mourn young people killed by the Israelis and others detained every day,” Mitri Raheb, pastor of a Lutheran church in Bethlehem, tells AFP.

“All we want for Christmas is a lasting ceasefire to put an end to this atrocity,” he says.

“Bethlehem gave Jesus to the world. It’s high time the world gave peace to Bethlehem and Gaza.”

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The vast creche belongs to the Discalced Carmelites, a religious order that has been present in Ecuador since 1653.

Some 300 pieces, featuring pieces dating back to the 18th century, are on display in a wing of the otherwise cloistered monastery that has been transformed into a museum in the historic center of Quito.

The figurines recount biblical stories surrounding the birth of Jesus, such as Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt to protect their baby or the massacre of the innocents, the tale of King Herod ordering the killing of all male children under two.

But the monastery’s collection, which also includes newer pieces from the 20th century, shows people in scenes of daily life under Spanish colonial rule as well.

“It is very interesting to find pieces that show different cultures, diversity in the city. We have Indigenous people, Afro-descendants, chapetones (Spanish descendants),” museum coordinator Gabriela Mena tells AFP.

Several characters from the Yumbo Indigenous people appear with painted faces and feather headdresses.

Afro-descendants are shown wearing “highly decorated, French-style clothing,” said Noralma Suarez, the manager of the museum’s reserve collection.

Elsewhere, mothers breastfeed their babies, the hunchback is depicted with a swollen neck — often a symptom of iodine deficiency — and a scene of domestic violence shows a man threatening a woman carrying a baby on her back, as blood runs down her face.

The nativity scene is a way “to show, to feel certain things that happened at a certain historical moment,” such as health problems, said Suarez, referring to the character suffering from goiter.

Each year the nativity scene adopts a theme, such as migration or natural disasters. 

This year, it aims to highlight the plight of women who often cannot enjoy Christmas with their families because they have to work to make ends meet. 

The women and their children are represented by rag dolls, the first new pieces to be added to the nativity scene this century.

The older figurines highlight artistic techniques such as sgraffito, when layers of plaster or paint are applied to a surface and then scratched away to create patterns and texture.

Mena wants the nativity scene to be more than “a beautiful popular, cultural tradition” in which things like the roles of Indigenous and Black people, or violence, are seen as normal or folkloric.

She instead wants the display to reflect on issues such as racism, machismo or poverty.

“It’s like moving museum structures so that we question everything.”

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The 77-year-old former monk has even performed an exorcism.

Gallagher, who also runs The Pull Inn in the tiny village of Pollagh in central Ireland, sees himself as part of “a dying breed.”

He is also a seventh son, which in Irish folklore traditionally meant someone likely to have supernatural or healing powers.

“Where do you have seven of a family now, never mind seven sons?” he said, with once common large families now a rarity in Ireland.

“There’s nobody can afford to have seven children, and then it’s just by luck if you have seven sons,” he told AFP.

Belief in faith healers, curing charms and folk medicine is still a way of life for many in Roman Catholic-majority Ireland, if a fading one.

Every Sunday morning Gallagher’s family offer cups of milky tea and biscuits to dozens of visitors who wait nervously in the bar.

“I’m praying for a miracle now, I’m 28 weeks’ pregnant with my first child, but my baby’s heart is in trouble,” said Maryrose, 35, who said she travelled from distant Waterford.

Her 62-year-old mother said it was her “first time visiting a seventh son”.

“I take medicine for high blood pressure, sometimes it works but more times it doesn’t, so please God Joe might have a cure for me too,” she said.

– ‘The cure’ –

The bespectacled Gallagher joined a Franciscan monastery in the 1960s but left when he was 25 as he was unable to work as a missionary abroad.

“Being a monk helped me with my faith,” he said. “I have a strong belief in God and in prayer, there’s nothing better than prayer,” he said.

In 1971 he bought the pub, whose walls are adorned with photos of regulars and Gaelic football and hurling teams, and the entrance is topped by lucky horseshoes.

A blurry black and white photo shows a row of six brothers with a smiling Gallagher the youngest — and last surviving — in the line. Another brother, Oliver, died in infancy.

“When I was born the parish priest called to see my mother and said to her, ‘This lad must have the cure, sure, isn’t he the seventh son?'” he said.

To prove whether the infant Joe had “the cure”, a worm was placed in his hand, and promptly died.

“From then on I’ve been doing the cures, long before I ever knew what I was doing, but as I grew up I realised I had this gift, and had to do it,” he said.

Gallagher doesn’t charge for his services but visitors can donate to a children’s hospital if they wish.

Told never to refuse anybody, he was once asked to “do an exorcism” for a Polish man.

“That was frightening, it’s not something I’d be happy to do too often,” he said.

Inside the small living room where he receives visitors, religious items, crucifixes and vials of holy water look down from shelves.

After enquiring about the complaint, Gallagher places his hand on the affected area, rubs ointment and calls for divine help.

“Heal this little baby,” he said, stroking the sole of an infant’s foot as the father held the child.

“It’s only a little touch of rash,” he added soothingly.

– Hectic schedule –

Gallagher asks visitors to pray themselves and return three Sundays in succession, which makes for a hectic schedule.

“Sometimes people might have to come back more if it’s not cleared up, but there’s always an improvement,” he said, adding that he has no intention to retire.

“I get a great feeling if somebody comes back to me and says, ‘That worked, Joe’, so why should I stop?”

For Dubliner Shane Brennan, 62, afflicted with joint pain and wincing with discomfort as he hobbled from the pub, “it’s all about faith”.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe, now it’s fingers crossed and pray to God, sure, what more can a man do?” he said.

“Faith healers offer something that is more than physical,” Cecily Gilligan, author of a book on Irish traditional cures, told AFP.

“There is a psychological and spiritual dimension as well,” she said.

“Even though huge changes have taken place in Irish society and religious observance has greatly declined, there is still something deep within people and when they need help they can turn to healers and the old cures,” she said.

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The Gyanvapi mosque was built in the 17th century by the Muslim Mughal empire then ruling over much of India in a city where Hindu faithful from across the country cremate their loved ones by the Ganges river.

It is among several Islamic places of worship that Hindu activists, backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, have sought for decades to reclaim for their faith in disputes that have previously sparked deadly religious riots.

The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday directed a lower bench to evaluate petitions on the future of the mosque, which historians say was built over the demolished ruins of a temple to the Hindu deity Shiva.

The decision would permit several civil suits to proceed from Hindus demanding the right to worship at the Gyanvapi site and the restoration of a temple on its grounds.

Presiding justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal ordered a lower court to rule on the site’s future within six months, describing the dispute as a matter of “national importance”.

“It is not a suit between two individual parties. It affects two major communities of the country,” he said, according to local media reports published Wednesday.

Emboldened right-wing Hindu groups have laid claim to several Muslim sites of worship they say were built atop ancient temples during Mughal rule.

Hindu zealots in 1992 demolished the centuries-old Babri Masjid in the nearby city of Ayodhya, sparking sectarian riots that killed more than 1,000 people nationwide. 

A decades-long court battle over the future of the ruined mosque’s site ended in 2019 when the Supreme Court permitted the construction of a temple to the deity Ram, who according to scripture was born in the city. 

Prime Minister Modi, whose party has campaigned for the temple for decades, will inaugurate the structure next month ahead of national elections in which he is widely expected to win a third term.

Modi’s party has come to be the dominant force in Indian politics thanks to its muscular appeals to the country’s Hindu majority, emboldening the faith’s hardliners.

Calls for India to enshrine Hindu supremacy in law have rapidly grown louder since he took office in 2014, making its 210-million-odd Muslims increasingly anxious about their future.

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Every year, the “Seb-i Arus” (“Wedding Night”) festival honouring Rumi’s death on December 17, 1273, draws so many people that traditional venues are not large enough to contain the crowds.

Pilgrims, tourists, meditation enthusiasts and the curious flock to this vast Anatolian city, where Rumi — or Mevlana as he is known in Turkey — spent most of his life after being driven out of modern-day Afghanistan in the 12th century by Mongol invaders.

His writings have gradually spread well beyond central Asia and won acclaim in the West. Pop legend Madonna adapted one of Rumi’s poems and Beyonce named her daughter after him.

“Rumi’s works have been translated into almost every language, and in the United States alone more than 250 books are dedicated to him,” said Nuri Simsekler, a specialist in Persian literature at Konya’s Selcuk University.

“Rumi speaks to all humans, telling us about ourselves,” Simsekler said of Rumi’s enduring popularity seven centuries after his death.

– Dance ritual –

The “sema” rituals — which honour Rumi’s legacy — are performed by whirling dervishes who don a tall light brown hat, with their arms elegantly spread.

The order was established after Rumi’s death by his son and descendants.

To the sounds of reed flutes and tambourines, the dervish takes off his long black cloak to dance, but keeps his cylindrical felt hat on. The “sikke” represents the tombstone which will one day stand at the head of his grave.

Then the dance begins. Extending his right hand toward the sky and his left towards the ground, the whirling dervish forms a link between the two.

“Rumi is the first person on Earth whose death is not mourned but celebrated,” Simsekler said.

From her office window, Esin Celebi Bayru has a clear view of the turquoise dome that tops the mausoleum of her illustrious ancestor.

Large crowds from Turkey and Iran — where the poet is also a national icon — but also Britain and Singapore are expected to celebrate Rumi’s 750th “Wedding Night” with God at his tomb.

Such a major anniversary of his death was “an opportunity to make him even better known,” said Celebi Bayru, a 22nd generation descendant of the Sufi poet.

She and her brother co-chair the Mevlana International Foundation, created in 1996 in Konya to perpetuate Rumi’s legacy.

“In these times of war, Mevlana’s word is like a light for us,” she said of his many appeals for tolerance and peace. “People come here from all over the world.”

– Prayer or meditation-

Celebi Bayru said she has recently been invited to lecture in places as distant as Hawaii, Australia, India and Pakistan.

Every year, she also receives film scripts, and hopes one day to see a biopic of Rumi brought to the screen.

Everywhere in Konya, souvenirs bearing the image of Rumi and dervishes fill stalls.

Ironically, the most famous master of Sufism — who taught tolerance with the words “come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving” — is honoured in a city with one of Turkey’s most staunchly conservative Sunni traditions.

In front of his immense green and gold tomb, a grumpy Sunni pilgrim curses as Rumi’s followers sit on the ground, eyes closed, fingers pointing to the sky.

“This is not a place for meditation, it’s for prayer,” the Sunni pilgrim complained.

The incident only makes sheikh Mehmet Fatih Citlak smile.

Under a headdress lined with 20 metres of braided green ribbons, he presides over more spiritual “semas” at the Irfan Study and Research Centre in Konya, where prayers are interspersed with music and songs.

“We don’t just twirl around all day,” laughed the sheikh, who was recently invited to perform at Oxford University by its art history department.

“But as long as we stick to our discipline, we don’t mind the public,” he added, saying that “between art and love, Mevlana offered us a third way.

“Everyone interprets him in their own way,” he said.

“But if he were better understood, would the world be in the state it is in today?”

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In Konya, a sprawling city in Turkey’s central Anatolian plain where Rumi spent most of his life and died 750 years ago, one of the last workshops makes these special “sikke”  hats to order. 

Yunus Girgic refuses to sell sikkes to tourists because they are exclusively reserved for real dervish dancers. 

And he makes sure they do not reach amateurs’ hands, quizzing potential clients about their motives for wanting the distinctive hat.

“I ask a few basic questions and immediately see who I am dealing with,” Girgic told AFP.

At the start of the “sema” dance ritual, dervishes take off their long black coats but retain the sikke, which signifies the tombstone — the end of life on Earth when the dancer meets God. 

The manufacturing secrets of these deeply symbolic felt hats — each one 26 to 27 centimetres (about 10 inches) tall — have been passed down for four generations to Girgic. 

Each one is produced from a kilo (half a pound) of goat or sheep wool, which is patiently stretched, dipped several times in soapy water and then rolled flat, like pie crust.

This centuries-old felting technique allows the fibres to be tightened and strengthened, said Girgic, who works with two apprentices.

The resulting square of wool — now reduced to 350 grams — is moulded onto wooden shapes whose size is adjusted to the customer’s head size, and left to dry for up to two days. 

The material, relatively heavy and itchy on the forehead, is a “reminder of the discomforts of life on Earth”, Girgic said. 

His workshop produces “80 percent of the sikkes in the world”, the artisan added. 

Musician Ashmi Benmehidi comes to collect his first sikke and tries it on with pride.

He left an insurance job in Montpellier in the south of France to practice the art of playing the “ney” — a reed flute which accompanies the sema ritual.

“I have just been invited to play in a dedicated group,” he said, adjusting his headdress. 

“I’m very moved,” he added.

Girgic’s workshop produces 30 to 80 sikkes a year. Each one sells for 2,000 liras (almost $70) and is designed to last around 45 years.

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