Mem and Zin: The Love That Even Death Could Not Unite

In the town of Cizre, sometime around 1450, a young man named Mem and a young woman named Zin fell in love in a story so vivid it would echo through Kurdish oral tradition for centuries. Mem was said to be the son of a court secretary, and Zin the sister of Mir Zeynuddin, the ruling bey of Cizre. Their romance began, according to the legend, during a springtime gathering, the kind shaped by local custom, where young men and women disguised themselves and mingled in the fields outside the city.

At that gathering, Mem's close friend Tacdin fell for Zin's sister Sitî, while Mem himself became entranced by Zin. In the confusion and excitement of the festival, the young people exchanged rings. When the haze of the moment cleared, Tacdin found a ring inscribed with Sitî's name on his finger, and Mem found one bearing Zin's. Word of the exchange reached the bey's nurse, Hezebun, who disguised herself as a healer to track down the young lovers and demand the rings back. Tacdin returned his. Mem refused.

As the love between Mem and Zin became known throughout Cizre, the city's notables interceded on the young men's behalf, asking the bey to give his sisters in marriage. The bey agreed to give Sitî to Tacdin, and a wedding was celebrated for seven days and seven nights. But convention held that two weddings should not occur together, so Mem and Zin's union was postponed. Into this delay stepped Beko, the bey's gatekeeper, a man history and legend remember only as duplicitous and full of malice. Beko worked to poison the bey's mind against the match, and eventually the bey refused to give Zin to Mem at all.

While the bey was away hunting, Mem and Zin managed to meet secretly. When the bey returned, Tacdin, who had ridden out with him, set his own house ablaze as a diversion so the bey would not notice the lovers together, a gesture repaying the debt of love Mem had once shown him. It was a small, desperate act of loyalty in a story dense with betrayal.

Beko was not finished. He lured Mem into a high-stakes chess match against the bey himself. Mem won the first three games, but Beko manipulated his position so that Mem would glimpse Zin and lose himself in thought, costing him the match. Cornered, Mem was forced to confess his love for Zin openly, and the bey threw him into prison. There, consumed by longing, Mem died.