Mem and Zîn or the burning wings of love 

For the first time "Mem and Zîn" of Ahmedê Khanî, have been translated in French, explained and presented by Sandrine Alexie and Akif Hasan. Sandrine Alexie relates their enterprise.  

As a foreign reader of Mem and Zin, what did strike you the most about this work ?

At first, I have to precise that I am not really a "foreign" reader because of my orientalist background. Then the islamic civilisation and literature, to which "Mem and Zin" belong, are not unknown for me, at the contrary. I had since ever liked the classical literature of Islam, especially poets like Farid-od Din Attar, Jalal al Din Rumi, Saadi, etc. So my aproach is not the same than the one of an uninitiated western reader, who would know nothing about this world. But I should recognize that as I gradually discovered Ahmedê Khanî 's work while I translated it and I did not read it like an orientalist, for I wanted to consider it like a French reader who ignores absolutely this kind of literature. I was not even conscious of that, but I read "Mem and Zin" as I could read any novel written in another language, with the same objectivity, considering nothing else than pleasure of reading.

What did strike me by translating « Mem et Zin » ? Above all, Ahmedê Khanî as a great author. « Mem and Zin » is indeed a genial work, with a universal impact. Its characters could indeed move a universal public, because they show eternal feelings : love, jealousy, suffering, treachery… And if these heroes are so attractive, it is because each of them presents a mixing of greatness, human fragility and sensitiveness that we find rarely in epic tales. Homer succeeds in moving us like that, for his heroes, if they fight like gods, could cry and are afraid of death like humans. As the same, in "Mem and Zin", heroes are not made of a single block, they are not stereotyped. They have failures and qualities that make them near of us, they could doubt, desperate, they could be angry. They could be too sensitive, spontaneous in sadness or tenderness and for that reason they seem so fresh, especially in our Western countries, where we should learn as the most important to hide our emotions, to restrain the impulses of our heart.

The most striking too about Ahmedê Khanî, is its ability to vary the tune according to the characters and the situations he presents. It is too a very vivid aspect of this novel. It has a great richness of voices, tragical, poetic, mystical, but it could be funny too, affectionate and kind for humanity. None of its characters could be seen as « secondary » beca&use they are depicted with the same attention than the four young people. Let envisage the character of Heyzebun, so startling, so picturesque, and the people of Botan, who are together one of the most important character of the book : we have just to considere the kindness with which he depicted teen-agers, lovers, when he smiled about old people, when he is moved their mourning for Mem. He describes the people of Botan with their variousness, and « ordinary people and nobles » are some terms that he uses frequently.

At last but not least, Ahmedê Khanî's is beautiful, very beautiful. The elegance of his style and symbols does not kill poetry as it happens unfortunately in ottoman and persian poetry at the same period, perhaps because a novel written with Kurdish verses was - as the author said himself - « a newborn child ». But this language is  poetic, colourfull and lively.

How French readers could receive this story ?

We should not forget that in France, there is an interest but a defiance too about everything concerning the Middle-East and Islam. French people make confusion between Muslim countries and integrism, puritanism, political violence. It is a paradoxe that the vision that French people have about "Eastern lands" is their view of Maghreb ! From another side, they are very interested by mystical literature. Some authors like Jalal al Din Rumi or even Ibn Arabî are saled in pocket edition in our shops. The decline of Christianism and the triumph of a materialist society provoke certainly a thirst of another spirtuality, and it explains the Eastern mystics 's success,-  buddhist or muslim-, because they offer this spirituality, but without intolerance or moral rigorism. As for Kurds, they are very unknowned here, even if things had a little changed these last years. But the vision of French people about the Kurds is at the end quite unprecised, sometime miserabilist (poor migrants) or marked by fear (their political struggle). A very few knows that they are at first a people and not a minority, with their language, a bright culture, a very ancient past. For that reason, reading "Mem and Zin" will surprised them by many aspects. At first, the literary quality of the work, for it means it is the result of a civilisation with a highly developed intellectual production. The description of life in court, the Prince's manificence, attest too a great Kurdish past that had been denied and annihilated by the states where live now the Kurds. Then, the freedom of words and behavior, the praising of love, the pleasure of life, wine, feast, show the Kurds with a different aspect presented by present political Islam and even  by many political Kurdish movements  !

Then, Ahmedê Khanî's opinions about love, feast, wine, tolerance, will surprise in a good way the French readers, because they share the same values. There is just the praising of chastity between Mem and Zîn that could make them flinch! But otherwise, the wedding of Seti and Tajdin is taled with a such enthusiasm and lack of prudishness that it is hard to guess really what could think Khanî. On my opinion, I think that according to the praising of differences, variousness that run all bout the tale, Khanî believed that both kind of love should exist. Of course, the question is what he prefered himself… But I am sure that for him the worse is to not be in love, and all the great sufis, like Ibn Arabî for example. The badness is to not be in love, and the worse is to be an ennemy of love, to separate lovers of to prevent them to reach each other.

What were the difficulties of translation and how did you resolve them ?

The main difficulty is the language used by Ahmedê Khanî. It get old, with archaisms and terms that are presently unused. It is like when we try to read Rabelais or Montaigne in the original text ! Kurdish has changed. There are a lot of Arabian and Persian words, and it is not strange for the period. If we compare Ahmedê Khanî's Kurdish with the Ottoman turkish, his language is not so spoiled. But it is necessary to have a good knowledge of all these languages. Fortunately, my partner, Akif Hasan, can speak Turkish and Arabic and knows very well the language of Botan, from where he is originated. It was an important trump. The second difficulty was the understanding. Many parts were grammatically and linguisticaly clear but seemed however ununderstable if we do not connect them with mystic literature. There are a lot of symbolic pictures, religious allusions, technical terms of sufism that need a quite good knowledge of sufism. There are too literary allusions that need to know quite well persian literature. Reading again Farid-od-Din ‘Attar, especially « The language of birds », did help me a lot, for example by translating the fourth first passages, which have pure religious thems. And on reading too the Coran, to which he referred constantly. Moreover, a good knowledge of the feodal Kurdisg society is quite useful, for the description of daily life in a Kurdish palace on the seventeeth century is very interesting, buts Khanî wrote for contemporaries for whom this life was well-knowned and then did not take the pain to detail or explain some customes, some behaviors. But this aspect of documentary makes too this work very interesting. 

Why did you choose "Mem and Zin" among all the works of Kurdish literature ? 

I have not had the idea. I had about « Mem and Zin » an unprecised opinion. I knew the story, of course, as a lovers' story with a bad end, and I had just read some passages translated in French that did not enthusiast me. With Akif Hasan, we have had the idea to translate Kurdish works in French, for Kurdish literature here is quite absolutely unrepresented. Akif proposed at last « Mem et Zin ». And like this work is both known and unknown, I mean that everybody talked about it but a few read it, I accepted, by curiousity. I remember that the third first passages we have translated were « The Kurdish question », the dialogue between Zin and the candle, the one between Mem and the wind. That was a shock for me. Since that moment, it was absolutely necessary to translate all this work.

Have you the intention to translate some other Kurdish works in French ?

The quality and the ease of Ahmedê Khanî's style could only be explained by the existence of other great predecessors. I mean that a product so finely elaborated like « Mem and Zin » allows to suppose precedent works, a cultural inheritance from which he is the bright result. Of course, we want to continue. Translating Malayê Jaziri is a step of our program, and by this, we don't go far from Botan. Malayê Djaziri is one of the masters quoted by Ahmedê Khanî at the beginning of his book. He talked with respect too of Feqiyê Teyran and Hariri. I think that all thses works, for a literary and scientific interest should be translated. It is fundamental for Kurdology.

How did you interest yourself to the Kurdish question and to the Kurdish literature ? Why having choose a so few known people, who are so unfortunate nowadays ?

I have at first studied islamology and was interesting by the muslim world in general before to take the path of kurdology. I studied history of arts and more especially muslim arts at the Ecole du Louvre. At this time, I knew nothing about Kurds, I wanted to be specialized about the Arabian Near-East. My specialisation was a accident, because of a precedent marriage with a Kurd, while I was still student.  And my favorite period in Islamic history had ever been the Middle Ages, and the brightest region of this period is, with Egypt, what Muslim geographers called Jezireh, a part of Northern-Syria, High-Mesopotamia and Eastern-Anatolia, that corresponds in its limits to what we call nowadays by Kurdistan. So I took courses of Kurdish language and civilisation in the l’Institut des Langues Orientales de Paris. The nineties were in any case fascinating for the Kurdish circles, fascinating and hopeless sometime. But it was very fecund to study something else than a dead civilisation. I had been arrested two or three times in Turkey for the one reason I spoke Kurdish and I was kurdologist. It was like a crime by pretending to study a people who officially had never existed. Specialists of Mesopotamia or Egypt are far from that kind of problems ! Historians, archeologists, historians of arts spend their time to fight against Time, so oblivion, destruction, defeat of memory. But Time is a natural element and when we excavate remains of a world that disappear for milleniums, there is no feeling of injustice. Civilisations born, grow and die, we have just to withdraw from them the more informations we could. But brutal annihilation of a culture that could have still lived and producted, negation of the past, violence against memory, is something that has to horrified us : it is all the essence of totalitarism. Destroying the memory of the Kurdish culture, is amputate the memory of the world, it is refusing to humanity the access to works from which it could take pleasure. Then we are all concerned.  

It is right that Kurds are not well knowned or really unknowned. But it seemed to me more attractive to go on this way of pioneer where everything should be discovered, than make a quiet career in turcology o in the Persian world, these disciplines which are so seriously set and recognized by scholars. To be kurdologist is to be both « discoverer » and rescuer.

Roxane - May 2001

The translators :

Sandrine ALEXIE : Studies of history of arts, islamic arts and museology  at the Ecole du Louvre and at the Sorbonne ; studies of Kurdish language and civilisation at the INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) ; makes researches of kurdology in history, history of arts in the Kurdistan of Irak, Turkey and Syria.

Akif HASAN : Kurd originated from Botan ; studies of English language and literature at the university of Alep (Syria) ; author of poetries in Kurdish and Turkish ; political representative.

The book is saled in bookshops, in Institut Kurde de Paris (106 rue Lafayette 75010 Paris - Métro Poissonnière) and on the WEB (www.fnac.fr www.chapitre.com www.alapage.fr). You can commend it by post in l'Harmattan (16 rue des Écoles 75005 Paris, www.editions-harmattan.fr).

Summary