Love and Existence

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 it needs 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 Ste 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 Ste 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 reasoning: 2230-2344 When Zîn exhausted all her energy and capacity 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 complexion 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 you 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 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. 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: