"The Kel Ferwan are nomads living in camps composed of a man and his wife, their divorced or unmarried daughters, their sons and daughters-in-law and, of course, all the young children of the couples living in the camp. Each married couple lives in a tent with their young children. The important fact is that this tent belongs to the woman, she having received it from her mother when she married. More precisely, when one of her daughters marries, a woman gives her part of the components of her own tent and keeps the rest; the missing components are then made up again by slaves or blacksmiths.
It is, therefore, understandable that the Tuaregs regard a tent as a female domain, in relation to which a man is in some sense a stranger. The woman is said to be the 'tent-custodian', and sometimes she is called a 'tent' (ehan). A man might speak of his wife as 'his tent'. To marry, for a man, is 'to make a tent' (agu ehan) or 'to enter a woman's tent'. It is what the wedding ritual is supposed to rimind.