text:
What is Mem u Zin about? - Part II
What is Mem u Zin about? - Part II
By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
Special to
philosophical, imaginative and
visionary. His language is mostly intellectual and
metaphorical with abundant calculated Quranic,
religious, and historical references. His dramatic
monologues, odes, are romantic and lyrical. They
penetrate deep into the inner world of the
characters. Khani establishes a unique metaphorical
world in which earth and sky, spirit and matter,
body and soul, heart and nature are presented not as
opposites but elements of empathic
complementariness. However, the being that
endeavours to give a meaning to all these is man. He
is endowed with language to express his conscience
and consciousness, with heart to love and with soul
to suffer and surmise inwardly. Khani's heroes
create dialogue with nature, heart, Fortune and each
other, in order to understand their experiences and
give a meaning to their own being. Khani's metaphors
are extremely imaginative, architectural and
complicated. Thoughts are given graphic expressions.
Objects are idealized and spiritualized by thought.
The sentences are saturated with layers of meanings.
Khani expresses so much in a single expression that
it entails not only linguistic competence, but also
understanding and appreciating the depth of his
knowledge to encompass it. You need long essays to
unravel and explain his imagery, which is generally
both intellectually compelling and aesthetically
interesting. The language and imagery fit the
character, mood, occasion and situation. His
extended and sustainable metaphors bring together
the worlds of science, crafts, logic, nature, and
religion in highly aesthetic and erudite recreation
of the world. More importantly, they are not just
creative devices; they are integrated elements of
his sophisticated philosophical worldview. On top of
all this, passion, rhyme, rhythm and music make his
world live, close and personal.
Aristotelian dramatic
I have dealt in some detail with aspects of the
development of the dramatic structure of Mem û Zîn
in various parts of this study. I revisit this to
emphasize the centrality of dramatic plot not only
in providing unifying lines and stations for Khani's
themes, thoughts, but also for bringing all these to
life in words, melody, colour and imagery to enact a
varied civilized existential drama of men's and
women's life and love. As I have shown in my
analysis of Aristotle's definition of tragedy, he
insists on the importance of action over character:
"one can have tragedy without character, but no
tragedy without action" (Poetics 1450a). Mem û Zîn
is packed with dramatic actions, incidents and
events. Although the characters have very special
structural and even allegorical roles, it is their
actions that express and enable the development of
personal characterization. The structure of the
action- how the plot develops from scene to scene
and act to act - is determined by the way the
characters react or respond to the problems they
face and incidents and events they encounter or
enact. The unifying and underlying theme for of the
plot is love. Khani himself has established in the
epilogue of his play that all the discourse, actions
and activities of the drama are determined to
express the sacredness of love and show the process
of its perfection in the human sphere. Love is an
all-encompassing theme. It brings together the
material and spiritual worlds like mirror and image:
But the purpose of that conversation
The aim of that action activity and inquiry
Is the demonstration of the beauty of 'Ishq
The establishment of the perfection of 'Ishq
'Ishq is a mirror that reflects God
Like the sun, it possesses light. (2485-2487)
It is the characters' thoughts, conversations and
actions that determine this process. Even Khani's
great lyrical dramatic monologues are not
interruptions to the movement of the plot or
artificial embellishments or irksome interludes, but
arias expressing inner emotions and responses of the
lovers to the actions that happen outside, and
indicating spiritual developments of the characters
towards 'the perfection of ishq' as Khani puts it.
After the Mir's foolish oath (tragic flaw) to
deprive Zîn of marriage, both Zîn and Mem are in a
virtual exile inside themselves. They have to reject
the loveless world they are thrust into, and create
their own inner world. Time, in its normal sense and
function, for them comes to stand still. The world
becomes an alienating space. They are not allowed to
live and seek happiness in the social time and
environment controlled by political power. The
soliloquies are the space where the inner world and
spiritual time of the lovers replace the outer time.
They are moving on in this time, they are in a
journey, they endure suffering, doubts, threats,
fears, anxieties, the melting away of life, but
eventually they climb the stations of love and
arrive. They discover, they see, they know, they
have revelations and at last they realize their
self-transcendence. They transcend themselves
spiritually. They succeed through their own
suffering, toil and esoteric practices to release
their souls from their bodies and have a spiritual
rendezvous with each other and with the light of God
(eternal happiness). Thus the soliloquies become
existential melodies voicing Khani's views of being
and existence. They complete the events and actions
of the outside world and give them a deeper meaning.
The first action of the four young men and women
sets the stage for the nature, context and process
all the subsequent actions, occurrences and events
in the drama: The drama starts with an act of
disguise or changing appearances. This launches the
principal polarities in Mem û Zîn as those between
appearance and reality or the seen and the unseen,
the external and internal, the material and the
spiritual, the temporal and the eternal. Hence the
issue of 'truth', epistemologically and
existentially, emerges as the most important
philosophical issue of the drama.
In spite of their reversed and thus outwardly
'false' appearances, the four young men fall in love
despite the immediate perceptive knowledge conveyed
by the false appearances that they are from their
own sex. The 'truth' of love transcends the façade
of truth. But this initial conscious action with
specific worldly aim, viz., to give themselves more
freedom to enjoy the beauty of the opposite sex and
perhaps meet a suitable spouse, works on another
higher level of truth that is beyond human
understanding. The changing of appearances achieves
its intended result but in the most unexpected and
strange way. But when the truth of the real identity
of the four lovers are revealed, the act of falling
in 'love' affects Mem in a away that is quite
distinctive from Tazhdin's. Mem's love is
immediately a spiritual experience that subjects his
physical being to its own ordained modality and
mechanisms. It is a Sufist experience. That is why
even the Zîn's ring for him has a deeper meaning
than a signifier of the identity of Zîn as Stê's
ring has for Tazhdin. While Tazhdin readily sends
back Stê's ring to her, Mem finds himself unable to
do that: the ring has become a spiritual extension
of Zîn which has merged with his own existence and
thus it is impossible to depart with. Tazhdin's love
is physical and it achieves its legitimate aim of
the legitimate unity of man and woman in matrimony
and the pleasure of flesh. The only fault with this
is its worldliness in the sense of being temporal,
illusionary and lacking the deeper meaning and thus
happiness and eternity of spiritual love.
Thus from the very beginning Khani cleverly puts the
plot on the two planes of deeper meaning and surface
meaning of existence. The greatest contrast in the
drama is between phenomenological truth: truth as
immediately or worldly experienced by individuals,
and rational reality; or between what actually
happens and what it ultimately means. This is most
powerfully demonstrated by, the two sisters'
insistence on their love despite the Nanny's taunts
and powerful rational reasoning about the absurdity
of homosexual love, Zîn's deeper understanding of
the meaning of evil in human affairs and Mem's
realisation in prison that the Mir's anger and
action against him was not without reason and point
after all.
Having established this philosophical context for
his drama, Khani brilliantly manipulates the
narrative structure provided by the Kurdish story of
Memê Alan to skilfully enact a highly sophisticated
coherent Aristotelian dramatic structure for his
narrative. Khani's drama contains all the elements
mentioned by Aristotle which I have presented in
detail in Chapter 3: action, character, plot,
melody, and lyrical poetry. The main plot of the
drama is the love story of Mem û Zîn which turns
into tragedy after the intervention of evil. It is a
complicated plot comprising a number of sub-plots
related to this main conflict which constitutes the
tragedy's all-encompassing 'completeness and
magnitude' in Aristotle's terms. Completeness means
it has beginning, middle and end. The structure is
so compact that the dramatic progress in terms of
complication, climax, recognition and reversal or
resolution appears within all the major sub-plots of
the drama. I will try to illustrate this important
Aristotelian structure in Mme u Zîn's main dramatic
By 'complication' I mean elements in the incident,
event or phenomenon, which turn it into a 'problem'
that needs certain expected or unexpected
intervention to be solved.
By 'climax' or recognition: I mean the problem
reaching a certain realised tense dramatic level
creating suspense and uncertainty about its further
By 'reversal' I mean the effect of certain
interventions, changes or occurrences that pushes
the problem back to a state that counteracts the
elements which have problematized the action or
Resolution: This is the final resolution of the
contradictions involved in the complication;
reaching a result, an end.
The first part (or Act), the saga of the mysterious
love of the four young people, stands as an
independent whole connected through a sequence of
interactive events.
Complication: the falling in love of the 4 young
girls and boys, the exchange of the rings, the
mystery of their identity. Unhappiness and disease
of lovers as a result of their mysterious love.
Climax (Recognition/reversal): The Nanny's discovery
of the identity of the lovers and bringing back
Stê's ring as evidence and the girls' consent to
marry the male lovers.
Resolution: Tazhdin's and Stê's wedding.
While this reversal raises the expectation of
possible happy ending for both couples, an
unexpected intervention of evil creates the decisive
element of tragedy in the story and paves the way
for the continuation of the idea of love in another
mode of existence as suffering, sacrifice, spiritual
transcendence and martyrdom. In other words, the
first Act while standing as a complete plot provides
thematic and dramatic elements of the continuity of
the second love story as a tragedy.
The most important plot in the second part of the
drama, which is the conflict between love and evil,
or existential truth and surface reality, is the
chess game scene. This is a complete plot in itself
comprising a number of logically-linked episodes. It
brings together all the symbolic and thematic
elements of the drama in one scene: genuine love,
beauty, game of truth, politics, culture, polarity
of loyalties, intrigue, courage, violence and force.
Complication: Mem is invited to a chess game aiming
at his 'bringing him out' that is making him confess
his love to Zîn. The game is an intrigue by Bekir
and the Mir aiming at punishing Mem by death. Mem's
supporters Tazhdin and his brothers arrive. Mem wins
the chess games.
Reversal: Zîn appears at her window. Bekir makes the
player swap places. Mem loses his self-control. He
loses the games.
Climax (recognition) and resolution: Bekir taunts
Mem and Mem confesses his love to Zîn. The Mir's
soldiers attack Mem. Tazhdin and his brothers defend
him. Mem is chained and put in prison.
This part also carries the tragic complication made
buy this episode, putting Mem in jail, to another
phase of the tragedy. How will this affect Mem. Zîn,
Tazhdin and his brothers and the public?
Putting Mem in jail creates a more intense
atmosphere for development of the main plot of the
story in the form of the conflict between Truth and
Appearance and Love and Evil to climax. The
brilliance of Khani is that he portrays this climax
in the most effective scenes of tragic recognition
and reversal of the 'tragic flaw' of the drama in
the following way:
Complication: Tazhdin and his brothers lose their
patience over Mem withering in prison. They stage a
powerful revolt asking for the liberation of Mem and
Love. Bekir plans another intrigue to have Mem
killed. He makes the Mir go to see her sister and
ask her to visit Mem in prison so that he would die
from the shock.
Recognition and reversal: The Mir visits her sister
intending to implement Bekir's plan verbatim by
asking her with bad intentions first to visit Mem
and take him as her legitimate husband. But the Mir
is shocked to see her sister in such pathological
state of misery and pain. On the other hand,
contrary to
Bekir's plan, it is Zîn who
cannot stand the shock of meeting her brother. She
weeps, cries, bleeds and becomes unconscious, In
fact, it is her soul having been made ready by a
long journey of suffering and Sufist stations and
revelations, that leaves her body to unite with
Mem's soul, who at the same time undergoes a similar
state of unconsciousness in his prison. Seeing her
sister bleeding and unconscious, the Mir becomes
deeply emotional and remorseful. He recognises his
guilt and cruelty towards his sister. He weeps over
her like a child. But in the morning, his own family
and people seeing Zîn bleeding and unconscious,
think that the Mir has killed her and accuse him of
being a murderer. On the other hand, Zîn, when
regaining her consciousness, considers her brother's
permission to be united with Mem, as permission to
realise her death and achieve spiritual union with
Mem. She explains that it is only because of her
moral duty that she waited for her brother's
permission to die. She also explains her spiritual
journey to unite with Mem's soul and makes her long
Will speech to her brother.
Resolution: This time the Mir genuinely expresses
his remorse and swears that Zîn and Mem would be
united whether in life or death. This paves the way
for Zîn to visit Mem in prison.
This scene is the most powerful emotionally charged
scene in the drama. It paves the way for the prison
scene where the eventuality of the drama takes place
and the conflict between the surface reality and
ultimate reality is resolved.
This is what happens in the prison scene:
Complication: Following her brother's permission,
Zîn changes herself to a bride and with Stê and
maids visits Mem in prison. When they arrive they
find Mem lying unconscious and the prisoners tell of
the 'strange' supernatural incident of scene a light
striking at Mem's head and a light coming out of her
head. Stê and maids talk to Mem and give her the
happy tidings of Zîn's visit but he does not move.
Climax and reversal: Zîn arrives, holds Mem's hand
and speaks to her. Zîn by that time has perfected
her love journey and united with God's light that
she is able to speak in the language and 'love role'
of God. Her call to Mem means 'breathing life' into
his body. Thus he restores his consciousness and the
two lovers exchange a conversation re-affirming
their spiritual union.
Second complication: This complication is in the
form of the intervention of 'worldly power' again in
the spiritual state of Mem. The Mir's men ask Mem to
go to the Mir and ask his forgiveness so that he and
Zîn can get married. Mem scorns this suggestion. He
says the Mir's power is temporal and contingent, it
s not a real power but illusion. The Mirs who will
die or can be disposed, are not Rulers of the world.
The real ruler is God whose love assures eternal
bliss. Mem and Zîn have achieved this state. They
are united as bride and bridegroom in paradise.
Resolution: Mem scornfully rejects any idea of going
to the Mir. He prefers his own chosen course. Mem
passes away while he is physically and spiritually
with Zîn. He gives up his physical existence to
enjoy eternal spiritual union with Zîn. This is
affirmed by the dream seen by an old sage described
by Khani in the epilogue of his story.
Mem û Zîn's modernity
In What Happens in Hamlet, John Dover Wilson says:
"Hamlet is Shakespeare's most realistic, most modern
tragedy; the play of all others in which we seem to
come closest to the spirit and life of his time, and
the closest to the spirit and life of ours."
(Wilson, 1986, p. 52). Wilson says this despite his
recognition and discussion of the rational and
structural doubts raised by the central role of
'ghosts' in the drama.(See Ibid. pp. 52-86) and some
other serious issues regarding the play's
originality, plot and realism, which he has
discussed in detail in his book. In Mem û Zîn, we do
not have such doubts. As an erudite critic Khani has
settled almost all potential issues regarding the
text's originality, modality and making. It is not
only Khani's nationalism that was ahead of his time
by 300 hundred years, his work as a whole, as
content and context, as thought and themes, as
dramatic structure and architectonic construction,
as vision and values and as method and style, I
think, is and will remain ahead of human time. How
many more centuries does humanity need to understand
that all what men and women need is love? That love
is the sole meaning of life and the sole panacea for
his problems? Khani's themes and thoughts are
expressly modern. They are rational, realistic and,
deeply existentialist. The issues he presents and
propounds, the ideas he promotes and prizes, the
monologues and dialogues he has contrived and
constructed, all these are prospectively modernist
and beyond.
Let's first take Khani's ideas on women's beauty,
body, nakedness and egotism. Is there any other text
that equally exalts women's body, in flesh and
spirit, in such a divine way? That celebrates erotic
love making as the most sacred divine right and
ritual? Khani's celebration of naked body (Zîn and
Stê are totally naked after the Newroz saga) and his
graphic desciption of the beauty and pleasures of
lips, eyes, hair, ankles, breast, waist, and
wedding-night love-making are not pornographic the
way Western culture has abused and degarded woman's
body. They are in fact 'pirozography', the
embodiment of sacredness (piroz is a Kurdish word
meaning sacred, blessing or triumph). They are
manifestations of the highest level of aesthetic
indulgence, human passion, love and spirituality.
At the Newroz scene and scenery there are various
forms of the expression of infatuation and
intoxication by love. Some are obviously
hippie-style. Then there is a real incident and
discussion of homosexual love. Love, for Khani,
transcends all the vulgar, prejudiced,
phenomenological and traditionally-established
social approaches. It is essentially a divine
spiritual experience, which does not exclude total
enjoyment of the pleasures of flesh, and the passion
of heart. The social dimension of this established
spiritual fact is that love must be free. Model
leaders in society are the real lovers. Here Khani
has astonishingly a liberal attitude to love. He
espouses the freedom of young men and women to
freely flirt, find and choose their equal spouses
based merely on mutual consent, irrespective of
class, status and race. The four lovers fall in love
madly without knowing even whether the loved one is
the right sex. Still more: for Khani love of beauty
and desire for love are equal universal rights and
natural pursuits shared by children, male and
female, the young, the old, the disabled and all
individuals whatever their status, profession and
purposes are.
Khani's deep psychological penetration into the
inner world and thoughts of his heroes and their
relationship with nature and soul is also
miraculously modern. He anticipates the most
subjective styles of romantic poetry.
Khani's text is fiercely rational. There is strong
rational reasoning in the dialogues and
conversations of the characters. The Mir is
pragmatically rational most of the times. Bekir uses
Machiavellian logic to rationalize his evil
intrigues. The Nanny uses strong informed rational
arguments to dissuade Stê and Zîn of what appeared
first to be a same-sex love. The sisters use
rational argument to explain and justify their
experience. Zîn uses powerful rational-spiritual
arguments in her Will Speech and to persuade her
brother to be compassionate and kind, and to accept
Bekir as 'evil' partner of their life and death
experience. Even at the highest moment of mourning
Mem's death, when she has to decide what to do with
her own body before death, whether to tear it up to
fulfill her pledge that her body belongs to Mem
alone, or to leave the garden of her body pure,
intact and untouchable, to give it back to his
gardener Mem in grave, she uses strong systematic
logical rationalization. The other important element
of Khani's rationalization is that even in the
monologues and individual addresses there is always
another partner present turning the monologues into
dialogues with elements of two-way dialectical
2230-2344 When Zîn exhausted all her energy and
Her cries stopped, her strength drained
She sat beside poor Mem's head
She addressed Mem with her words:
You the owner of my body and soul
I am the garden; you are my gardener
The orchard you nurtured is without owner
What is their use without your presence?
These lines, moles, hair locks, and flowers
This beauty and sweetness in the garden of
Black almonds and hazel eyes
Pomegranates, pears, apples and tall trees
They are pleasant-looking, delicious and tasty
Without any doubt, forbidden from anyone other than
I will shake the date palm of my body
To let all the fruit fall down
With those violets and red flowers
Basil, and fresh violet
I mean it is better to squander away
All these hair, moles and locks
And shed my leaves like flowers
And scatter sand over myself
I will pull out my hair one after one
An let every part of my body ache
These orchards, spring flowers, leaves and fruit
These buds and blooms, this constellation of flowers
I will offer them at once to a look of yours
I will entrust them to your sacred sight
I will ruin them altogether
So that no common people benefit from them
2345-2349 But sometimes I reason with myself
Perhaps you will change your perception of me
You will no longer approve this stature
I am afraid you will hold me responsible
The composition of my being is: body and soul
They both belong to you, and have no other owner
If a single hair is missing from my body
You may entertain a doubt about me
When you will blame me for it
I know I will have no answer
2350- 2353 Oh, I am about to get intoxicated like
Oh, it is time to be united in your lap
I would rather wrap up this carpet
And remain immune from mixing
It is better that I maintain this beauty
And would not hurt my hair and mole
To return to you the right trusteeship
And surrender myself to you with my gems and beauty.
The supernatural elements in the drama, unlike
Hamlet's ghosts, for example, do not come from the
outside. They are not separate from their
soma-spiritual function of existence. They are
extensions of the psychological and spiritual aims
and experiences of the characters. The 'death'
experience and 'resurrection' of Mem and Zîn after
the Mir's visit to Zîn, is placed in a very logical
point in the development of the Sufist
soma-psycho-spiritual journey (solitude, suffering,
transcendence, faith) of the lovers. It is a
possible death experience in the form of a Sufist-induced
death experience. Zîn gives a very sophisticated
description of this experience. However, the
visibility of 'a light' seen by fellow-prisoners
coming in and out of Mem's head is truly
'super-natural' and is meant to be a miraculous
manifestation of soul. Khani even justifies the
Saint's dream of Bekir as being induced by Sufist
physical-mental-spiritual mediations:
The knower of the state of the rotation of time
Told me the outcome in this way:
There was a wise a'shiq Pîr (saint)
Whose words were as true as clear morning;
When he meditated things
His soul would take over his body
The secrets would be revealed to him transparently;
He would be able to hunt for them in the God's
What was absent [knowledge] in the World of Sand
Would become obligatory [knowledge] in the World of
His heart was part of the Protected Tablet
Receiving revelations every moment
He would see the Karamat
He would know all about Meqamat
This Pîr through ilham (intuition) or dream
Revealed the Truth in this way.
Rationalism and Truth go together in the dramatic
process. The aim of rational reasoning and practical
and spiritual experiences is to discover the true
state of things: reality of politics, nature of
love, man's mode of existence and the true meaning
of life. The contrast between lived reality
(Appearance) and underlying reality (Truth) is a
determining element of the dramatic structure of the
story. In line with the uncompromising Zoroastrian
adherence to truth, Khani does not allow any
creeping of falsehood even as a technical tale to
his narrative of truth. For example, when the Nanny
visits the old fortune-teller to seek his help in
finding the identity of Zîn and Stê's lovers, she
makes up a story, saying that her two young sons
have returned from Newroz celebrations confused and
ill as if they had been bedevilled by jinns. The
sage immediately discovers this 'untruth' and
strongly rebukes the old woman for resorting to that
trick. Thus he does not allow untruth or irrational
discourse even as a form of fabricated human
The 'chess-game', as I have analysed in detail, is '
a play within a play" for revealing the Truth of
things. The Mir, in spite of the ironical intrigue
involved in the game, does not hide its aim as a
game for the revelation of secrets:
Gaining money is not our objective
Our aim is to reveal the state of things
The purpose of games, play and puzzles
Is nothing but to reveal secrets.
The Mir's statement here applies to all Khani's
dramatic devices: the rings exchanged by the
mysterious lovers become riddles and this with the
old woman's disguise as a hakim, work as means for
finding the identity of the lovers. The chess game
has a more challenging purpose: revealing the inner
truth, or secrets of heart. For Khani 'truth' is
sacred and in his prologue to this scene, which I
have explained in detail, he establishes in
complicated divine imagery represented by the
miraculous journey of sunlight through layers of
clouds, darkness and elements to reach the earth and
declare its glory, in the same way 'truth',
especially the truth of love, is a divine universal
existential event that cannot be silenced or hidden.
Even the suffering of seclusion, prison, exile and
mourning are means by which the lovers reveal the
inner truth of their being.
In terms of politics, Khani's description of the
politics of principalities and nature of princes is
more realistic and objective than that of
Machiavelli. Khani's
aim, unlike Machiavelli's, is
the exposition of evil and positive advice and
constructive criticism rather than expedient
exploitation of deception for personal advantage.
Khani's political modernity is not restricted to his
ideas of nationalism. Maybe he is the sole author in
his time, to my knowledge, who so powerfully
advocates the idea and legitimacy of using
revolutionary violence not against a foreign power
but against a local political power that is unjust
and absurd. Arif is a real modern revolutionary. He
does not believe in talks,www.ekurd.net
negotiations and compromises with corrupt Kings and
rulers. He sees that in certain circumstances force
is the only language that can talk and walk.
However, Khani's realism is so engrossing that he
even exposes the naivety and short-lividness of
revolutionary fever. Tazhdin's rebellion is easily
neutralized by a deceptive promise by the Mîr at the
instigation of Bekir Mergewer who at the same time
plots for murdering Mem.
Death is an important theme of the story. The
preoccupation with death runs through much of the
monologues of the drama. Mem and Zîn die in the
story and Bekir Mergewer is killed. But death is
something that is chosen willingly by Mem and Zîn.
It is their final achievement of transcendence. It
represents the final resolution of the contrast
between appearance and ultimate reality,
temporariness and eternity and the declining
physical body and eternal soul. Zîn goes to see Mem
in prison as 'Death's bride' and considers her
brother's permission to see and marry Mem as the
happy tidings of the fulfilment of the delayed
permission to die and get spiritually united with
Mem. Death for the lovers is not something to be
afraid of but it is the ultimate event that gives
human beings the real sense and scope of their life
in relation to which all the world's glories and
joys, including the pomp of political power, appear
as illusion. Mem refuses to go to the Mir because he
refuses to be 'a captive of the captives' of death:
I will not meet any princes
I will not be a captive of captives
Those metaphorical princes and ministers
This deception and illusion
They are all without exception empty and transitory
They have no future; they are mortal
A prince who is mortal is not a prince
As long as he can be removed, he is a captive
Zîn chooses death willingly and dies the way she
wishes and plans. She dies while she rationally
determines the mode of her final relationship (truteeship)
with Mem. She "voluntarily gave up her soul, like
extinguishing a candle." Death is nothing but soul's
liberation from the bond and irritation of the body.
Oh, I am about to get intoxicated like you
Oh, it is time to be united in your lap
I would rather wrap up this carpet
And remain immune from mixing
It is better that I maintain this beauty
And would not hurt my hair and mole
To return to you the right trusteeship
And surrender myself to you with my gems and beauty
In this way Zîn revealed the truths
And ended her relationships with the world
She embraced the tomb
The body's irritation with the soul ended
She voluntarily gave up her soul
Like extinguishing a candle
She sent her soul to God
She entrusted her body to the grave.
What transcends death is love. At the end, Khani
describes Zîn and Mem's death as martyrdom. But it
is not martyrdom just in a religious sense. It is
not a jihad-style glorification of death. It is
martyrdom for the love of God in Man and Man in God,
its martyrdom for freedom of love, for social
justice and for human ideals. It is the triumph of
purity and beauty over tyranny, corruption and
Deep mourning, weeping, crying, shedding rivers of
tears are part of the emotional mode of the
characters. Tazhdin, representing worldly physical
man of action, cries wildly and out of control when
he hears of Mem's death. He has to be chained to
keep him under control.
Even the Mir cries like a child when he realises the
tragic situation of his sister. Khani describes his
emotional outburst in very tender figurative
Zîn, who had been resented by the Mîr,
Provoked her brother to bitter crying
Rose from his heart the smoke of kebebs of affection
Filled his eyes were with streams of tears of
Mercy sparkled in waves
He burst into tears
The brother stayed with her in her khelwet
Weeping until dawn
Zîn was immersed in her blood like a red rose
The Mîr was crying over her like a nightingale.
As soon as Mem û Zîn understand the worldly
condition of their loneliness and suffering, they
use sadness, internal monologues, and dialogues with
nature and crying. In her Will speech to her brother
Zîn proudly and triumphantly accepts her '
inheritance share " of the Mir's property and
wealth. She willingly consents all the property,
wealth and worldly glory for her brother and Mem and
Sadness, for herself. But 'sadness' has become a
great source of energy, endurance and understanding
in comparison with which the Mir's power looks weak
and without inner meaning:
I hope you will not be sad
The day I chose for myself Mem
I accepted for myself all sadness
I have triumphed in the world of sadness
Sorrows have become musallam for us
Mem for me, and authority for you
Sadness for me, and power for you
My King to become a rival to us
I am content with my share.
In the process Zîn and Mem replace the initial state
of melancholia with the power of suffering and work
of mourning. They do not allow melancholia to fix
them on what they have lost. In time, sadness and
mourning would allow Zîn to replace abjection and
despair with strength, just as it would allow Mem to
get rid of his guilt, alienation and hatred towards
the Mir. Mourning is closely associated with
martyrdom, and this with shedding the ghost of the
earthly life and enjoying a new life.
Khani describes Meme's final burial in this way:
In short, the martyr of the killing love
The victim of tyranny, the casualty of injustice
The sufferer of the crime of innocence
In the custom of royal ceremonies
Was illuminated with the light of purity
And buried inside the earthly grave
They saved this pearl in the treasure
And hid the snake by his feet
They placed a sign by his head
Meaning: He is the sovereign of the end of time
The head of the group of the unblemished
The leader of all the victorious.
Another aspect of the modernity of Mem û Zîn is its
great existential concern about human rights and
human dignity, which extends to the respect of body
and meaning of life after death. Zîn's resurrection
after her spiritual death union with Mem is solely
to discharge her worldly moral and humanitarian
responsibilities as a human being whose life and
actions are engaged and involved with others: her
political brother, her torturer Bekir, her lover Mem
and even her country and society represented by the
Principality of Botan and its institutions. Her
death, though spiritually perfected and achieved,
does not relieve her from her moral responsibilities
and concerns. Thus although she perfects her
life-love journey and only needs to die to meet the
eternal union, she 'postpones' this dying
indefinitely until her brother gives her permission
to 'die' that is to get into spiritual union with
Mem. This is the greatest degree of the realization
and fulfillment of existential responsibility as a
human being. Zîn's resurrection has five essential
worldly aims:
1. To protect the Mîr's dignity and the
principality' s reputation.
In order to protect authority, honour and dignity
The soul would not leave until today
It remained firm waiting your permission for union
2. To prove hers and Mem's purity and unblemished
character and ask her brother to attend the burial:
Thus I have come back to satisfy you
And be content before the Judge
So that I say farewell to you
And you join the funeral with us
This is also affirmed in Mem's 'prison speech' when
he refuses to meet the Mir.
3. To make sure that Mem's body after death is not
insulted but respected and properly buried with hers
without separation:
You will not do anything shameful against Mem and I
When the wounded Mem passes away
Allow me to go with his funeral
I will be with him until the graveyard
And when I die you will give an instruction
That I will be buried with him
Do not keep me away from him
Put me with him without a barrier
4. To educate her brother about his own
responsibility about how to run the affairs of his
country especially in relation to the poor and the
oppressed. She wants her brother to be just, kind,
compassionate and reasonable, to serve the poor,
free captives and the oppressed and fight injustice:
As much as you please the gloomy
As much as you enrich the poor
As much as you liberate captives
And when you do the business of government
And release prisoners
All that you expend for yourself
All that you save in stores
The wrath that repels enemies
The force that removes injustice
The justice you cherish for God's sake
When you save the oppressed from the oppressors
5. To fulfill the Zoroastrian faith in the power of
love and goodness to affect hearts and minds and
change characters and conducts.
I have detailed my Will in such a careful way
So that compassion and tenderness will permeate your
Later when Zîn sees the body of Bekir, she also
pleads that his body too is buried in the same grave
of hers and Mem. She also gives her strong defense
of Bekir and his role as evil in their love and in
the affairs of life and death.
In fact Khani's metaphysics is more about life in
this world than the afterlife. That is evident
especially in his clear verdicts in the 'afterworld'
epilogue of the drama. Even there, in the afterworld
or paradise, the main revealed truth is about human
actions in the world, their rightness and whether
they were meant to serve people and do good for
Astonishingly even 'killing' to fight evil and
protect people from it is justified and even
rewarded with paradise. While Khani seeks a deeper
meaning for the events and phenomena of the world,
the ultimate meaning is whether these actions and
incidents serve humanity and justice. That is what
Bekir, in paradise, tells the Pir in his dream or
revelation about the fate of Tazhdin who killed him
in this world:
The shekh continued listening with interest
Said to him: O the evil man with good outcome
What happened to Tazhdin who killed you for no
What care did God take of him?
He said: The Lord forgave him
He went to paradise; he did not go to hell
The Creator of good and evil
Forgave him and wrote paradise for him
For the world was suffering from my evil
It was troubled by my corruption
He killed me for the order of the world
For the comfort of the common people
Apparently although he did something bad
Internally, this bad action was for the good of
There are actions, which externally seem bad
But they are right in their conception
One is right in the form of hostility
One is injustice in the form of fidelity
But the Concealer of the Symbols of Wisdom
Has not divided these treasures without a reason
Did not distribute them to the common people
He gave them specifically to acquaintances and
These secrets He did not reveal to us
There are those who are Entrusted
And those who are Excluded
Thank God I and Tazhdin
Just by our Association with Mem and Zîn
We were not excluded in spite of our big sins
But we became an aspect of Lord's mercy.
Tazhdin apparently did something bad (in fact
criminal) by killing Bekir, but internally,
according to the hidden laws of God's Wisdom, "this
bad action was for the good of people". For Tazhdin
killed Bekir because 'the world was suffering from
(his) evil and trobled by his corruption" and he
killed him "for the order of the world" and "For the
comfort of the common people."
We know Khani makes Bekir killed after a social
insurrection against the power of the Mir and for
the liberation of Mem and love. Khani writes for his
people. Knowing that many religious Kurds maybe
reluctant to kill for fear of God's punishment, as
Islamic theology theoretically advocates the
sanctity of human life, Khani by giving this verdict
direct from the God's paradise and in the words of a
very spiritual saint, aims to give a religious
justification and a revolutionary message to the
potential Kurdish revolutionaries that revolution
and armed resistance are in certain cases legitimate
and acceptable especially when they aim to protect
common people from injustice and corruption.
Then there is Khani's genius understanding of the
significance of eternal symbolism for his national
cause. At the beginning of his prologue Khani
promises to idealize and 'eternalize' the two model
Kurdish lovers. He does this through his
dramatization and through the eternal signs provided
by Mem û Zîn's grave: their love survives as two
tall green trees separated by a thorn-bush. Love
lives on, but there will remain always the
inevitable threat of evil.
* This is part of the Conclusions Chapter of
Kamal Mirawdeli's recent book Love and Existence:
Analytical Study of Ahmadi Khani's Tragedy of Mem u
Zin published by Khani Academy in association with
authorhous.co.uk. It is available for purchase
online at
Kamal Rasul Mirawdeli (Dr), a prominent
Kurdish writer and the former presidential candidate
in 2009 Iraq's Kurdistan Region elections. He is a
contributing writer to Ekurd.net.
Part I
© 2012 Ekurd.net. All rights reserved
Read more
by (on) By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
What is Mem u Zin
about? - Part II 8.10.2012
What is Mem u Zin
about? - Part I - 6.10.2012
Ahmadi Khani's Theory
of Kurdish Nationalism in Mem û Zin - Part II -
Ahmadi Khani's Theory
of Kurdish Nationalism in Mem û Zin - Part I -
Barzani and Kurdistan
Region: An Open Letter to President Obama
Turkey's use of
chemical weapons and the Kurdish question: A
letter to President Obama 12.11.2011
Dr Kamal Mirawdeli's
letter to British Foreign Secretary 30.10.2011
We must resort to people to oppose social
injustice in Kurdistan region: Kamal Mirawdeli
Kamal Mirawdeli warns of violence and civil
unrest in Kurdistan region 29.8.2009
Barzani's KDP files
lawsuit against presidential candidate Dr. Kamal Mirawdali 6.7.2009
The opinions
expressed in this commentary are solely those of the
Copyright © 1998-2016
Kurd Net®
. All rights reserved Ekurd.net
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this website are copyrighted and may not be used without the
permission of the copyright holder.


text:
Friday 10/07/16 8:00 PM
New York, NYGotham Comedy Club
Friday 10/07/16 10:00 PM
New York, NYGotham Comedy Club
Pete Correale
Pete Correale is one of the best comedians working today. Pete has made numerous appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Conan Obrien Show and The Tonight Show. Aside from the late night circuit, Pete has two critically acclaimed one hour stand up specials, the first, a Comedy Central special titled- Things We Do For Love. Plus a brand new one hour special on Showtime titled Let Me Tell Ya.
Pete's success is directly correlated to his ability to dissect his life, whether talking about being a husband and father or the joy of ice cream; people laugh because they see their own lives through Pete. Simply put, Pete Correale performs his craft on a level very few comedians are working at today and he always delivers a knock out performance.
Download on iTunes
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Pete Correale's Upcoming Shows
Pete Correale is Known For
Pete Correale's Videos
Tweet Feed
- RT @BILLBELLAMY: See you tonight @GothamComedy !!8pm and 10pm twitter.com/newyorklivetv/… Aug 26
- RT @joerogan: NYC! November 11th I'm doing 2 shows at Gotham Comedy Club gothamcomedyclub.com/event.cfm?id=4… Aug 25
- #nyc we've got the multi talented @billbellamy THIS Friday and Saturday! Get your tickets while… instagram.com/p/BJicsAyB0lY/ Aug 25
- RT @BILLBELLAMY: Let's go #NYC! Can't wait to see all my crazy fans! Aug. 26-27 @GothamComedy gonna be an insane 2 Nights of Comedy https:… Aug 25
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Disney's 'Little Mermaid,' 'Cinderella,' 'Light Up the Sky' among this week's top 5
Disney's The Little Mermaid wants to do "where the people are" and we suspect she'll find a lot of them at Fair Park Music Hall and at Bass Hall in this Dallas Summer Musicals production. Check out this week's top five theater picks video to see why Light Up The Sky at Theatre Three, Cinderella from Texas Ballet Theater, The Nether at Stage West and The Outgoing Tide from One Thirty Productions also made this week's list.
Continue the conversation on D-FW Theater on Facebook and on Twitter @nchurnin.


text:
There Is No Dog
by Meg Rosoff
There Is No Dog Chapter 39 Summary
- Bob's got a plan of his own: he's going to get Mr. B to get rid of his mom.
- Not so fast. Mr. B will only help if Bob gives him something in return. Since Bob has the emotional maturity of a 19-year-old, he says no deal.
- Yeah, good luck with that, Bob.