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PREFACE
Late in 1987, I was asked by a Publisher if I thought there was a suitable literary work, representing the cultural heritage of the Kurdish people, worthy of translation to English. Unhesitatingly, I said Mem and Zin, adding that it is the Book of the Kurds, based on the epic folk tale Mem Alan that Khani has immortalised in a rich, classical and highly popular poetical story. To my surprise, I was asked there and then, to translate it. Though I welcomed the idea, I was non-committal, knowing the difficult task ahead. A few days later, the publisher and I met by chance, and I was reminded of the proposal. With some apprehension, I accepted, and we set a period of six months as a target to complete the work. It took me, in fact, eight months. It has been a very trying work indeed.
The main difficulty was the lack of a credible Kurdish-English dictionary. The book also contains hundreds of Turkish (court language), Persian (cultural fashion) and Arabic words (Khani was an Islamic scholar). Sometimes, there are entire sentences in these languages.
I began by arranging the Arabic words in a little Arabic-English dictionary for easy reference, then I managed to obtain an old Turkish-English dictionary which was quite useful as the edition I chose for translation was Bozarsalan's, in the Latin alphabet, published in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1968, with its Turkish translation on the opposite pages. Comparing the Kurdish and Turkish words, and referring to the dictionary helped to define some meanings, more reliably.
Fortunately, Bozarsalan has also attached a little PersianKurdish, Kurdish-Kurdish, Kurdish-Turkish glossarz to his edition. This too was useful. Some omitted lines, probably censored in pages 52, 54, 56 and 58 of Bozarsalan's edition, were filled in from Khurhid Lachin's copy, hand-written in 1905.
Still, the difficulty remained, for the very themes of Mem and Zin are complicated. True, the main theme, the plot is love, real and divine. But the poetical story is more than a tragic Romeo and Juliet and Ahmed Khani is perhaps more complicated than William Shakespeare, at least as a thinker. The pages of the book are full of thoughts, often dominated by philosophy, particularly sufism, in which shades of meanings, double-meanings, metaphors, and symbolic expressions, play a major role, and require extra care in interpreting.
There are many variations on the theme. Linguistically, words and sentences may be translated in different ways, rendering acceptable meanings. However, there is only one meaning or an idea Khani always intended to convey, a meaning, an idea he wanted the reader to grasp, because he wrote for that purpose in the first place. And that is the meaning or the idea one has to catch and present.
Khani so repeatedly calls on the cupbearer to pour wine ... that one may think that here is another romantic Omar Khayyam desiring an extra drink to forget it all as life is meaningless all! Yet one could safely wager that the intensely pious Khani never touched wine in his life, that he was merely after the divine inspiration. Ahmed Khani was born in 165 A.O. (as he has recorded in the book), in a village called Khan - hence his name - in the Hakari province of Kurdistan (in the south-east Turkey now), and died at Bayazid, most probably in 1707, as most scholars agree.
He completed the book at the prime age of 44 (again as he has recorded). In addition to Mem and Zin, he wrote two more books: The New Spring of Children, a text book, in the form of a dictionary for teaching Kurdish children, and the Belief of the Faith.
Apart from these documented facts, nothing else is known, for certain, of Khani's life. However, it is logical to conclude that he lived for sometime in Jizir1, the capital of the principality of Botan, where the events of the story take place. This is deduced from the matter of fact description of the geography of the city.
Botan is often considered as the cradle of the Kurdish nation. Following the two-way partition of Kurdistan, between the Ottoman and the Persian empires, as a result of the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, the process of the natural development of the Kurdish principalities into a unified central state was halted. Furthermore, as the central authority of the two empires expanded, Kurdish principalities fell one after another. The last principality was non-other than Botan. It was the most advanced, socially, economically and politically. It was also the most powerful, and the nearest political entity the Kurdish people have ever had, to a central state; its authority extended to vast areas of Kurdistan, assuming geographically and politically a national character. Here then was the Kurdish Renaissance in which Khani played a leading intellectual role, proceeding to establish a Kurdish school of literature and presenting at the same time a comprehensive social and political programme aimed at ensuring the freedom and unity of Kurdistan and the building of a just society, in order, as he put it, to complete the religion and the State, and acquire learning and wisdom. Hence, the Kurds consider Khani not only as their greatest poet but also as their unrivalled pioneer of the Kurdish national ideology, who formulated clearly its goals and defined the means to attain them.
In the process, Khani advanced some striking contemporary themes. He writes, for instance, (though of course in an elementary fonn), on the theme of the existence of the opposing elements in nature, the contradiction between the opposites, the pauperisation, the gradual quantitative change affecting a qualitative change. He writes even on the Machiavellian practice in government. All this in a love story!
But above all, Khani was calling on his beloved country to cry for freedom, justice and learning and fight for unity. No wonder the people of Kurdistan venerate him to an extent that his grave has become a shrine. His ideals still live on in the hearts and minds of the people of Kurdistan, the picturesque and oil-rich mountainous middle eastern country, which was re-divided, now four way, as a result of the First World War, between two new states, namely Iraq and Syria, and two old ones, namely Turkey and Iran.
The people of Kurdistan (numbering 20 million) have been waging a desperate struggle for survival as a nation, and the Kurdish National Liberation movement has achieved the distinction of being the oldest and the bitterest in the world.
The national oppression to which the Kurds have been subjected to has been so savage, that often it has taken genocidal dimensions. Understandably, Khani's protesting words in the Prologue on the plight of his people, the Orphans of the World, have echoed across the dark years:
I wonder at the wisdom of the Lord:
The Kurds in the State of the World
For what reason is their deprivation
For what purpose is their condemnation.
Khani may have realised the novelty of his revolutionary ideas, thus at the end of the book he modestly and apologetically calls himself a vanguard sinner. One should more appropriately replace the sinner with the Rebel, as he was indeed a daring, albeit critic, of the Prince. He has taken his rightful place as one of the towering figures of the East.
This translation is almost literal; it may also be unique, as it is, to my knowledge, the first to be undertaken by a Kurd, someone who is close to Khani's tongue (and region too, my town Zak.ho is a mere 50 kilometres away from his Jizir). My aim has been to capture the correct meaning and present it faithfully and hopefully, in fluent English, keeping as much as possible the original Kurdish flavour. Needless to say any remote resemblance of some verses to poetry is quite incidental.
I should make it clear that the title of the book, namely Mem and Zin is usually written Mern u Zin in Kurdish but is pronounced as Memozin and sometimes it is so written. The e in Mem is pronounced as e in Mecca and the i in, Zin is pronounced as double ee in teen.
Finally Khani's name is sometimes pronounced as Khane, the e as e in bed. Since the name of Khani's mother is not known for sure it is probable that her name was Khane a common Kurdish female name, so I am inclined to guess that Khane was the name of the mother of the great writer and that he was named after his mother i.e. as Ahmed, son of Khane. It is merely a guess, but I have often heard this kind of nomenclature in Kurdish.
Salah Saadalla
1- Now 'Cizre ', the « C » is pronounced« J » as in « James ».
Mem and Zin
1. In praise of God
In the pre-written book is the name of God
Without his name, it is incomplete, by God
O, prelude to the beauty of loving
The true and metaphoric beloved
It is your name that is the tablet of the name of love
It is your name that is the inscription of the pen of love
Without your inscription, the pen's inscription is tame
Without your name, incomplete is the name
It is your name that reigns in the intended house
And fonns the index of the praiseworthy correspondence
The content of the doubtless writings
The witness of the unseen openings
Beloved in the hearts of those having hearts
The hearts that summon to yourself
Beloved you are, proud and tender
Lover you are, yet without desire
Absolutely, you are the beneficial and the benefit
Undoubtedly, the desiring and the desire!
You are the light on the face of the lover
You are the fire in the heart of the poor lover!
A candle you are, though not of light and fire
A sun you are, yet unseen by the eye
A treasure you are within the world's talisman
A buried treasure seen by the mind of man
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