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Hawara Dîcleyê #1
Dicle'nin Yakarışı
Uzun, Dicle'yle birlikte eski zamanlara, kuntlaşmış aşkların, barış içinde yaşayan çeşitli dinlerden kavimlerin diyarına götürüyor bizi. Kürtler, Yezidiler, Süryaniler, Araplar, Yahudiler, Ermeniler Türkler...
Ester ve Biro'nun kırılmış, çaresiz aşkları. Mezopotamya'da, Dicle'nin kıyısında yaşayan Mir Bedirhan'ın, 16 yaşında tahta çıkışından, sürgüne gidişine, oradan da ölümüne kadar geçen zamanları sese tutkun, sözü mekan bilmiş Biro'nun kelimeleriyle ve hafızasıyla aktarıyor. Biro kelime avcısıdır. Ders alınsın diye hep anlatır. Dinleyenler de başkalarına anlatsın diye.
"Siz istediniz ben de anlatacağım. Kandili yakın ve unutulmuşların sesine kulak verin."
"Mehmed Uzun'un romanları günümüzde yazılan en iyi romanlardır. Edebiyata yeni olanaklar getirmiş, birçok ülkede de bu romanlar çok sevilmiştir.
Ester ve Biro'nun kırılmış, çaresiz aşkları. Mezopotamya'da, Dicle'nin kıyısında yaşayan Mir Bedirhan'ın, 16 yaşında tahta çıkışından, sürgüne gidişine, oradan da ölümüne kadar geçen zamanları sese tutkun, sözü mekan bilmiş Biro'nun kelimeleriyle ve hafızasıyla aktarıyor. Biro kelime avcısıdır. Ders alınsın diye hep anlatır. Dinleyenler de başkalarına anlatsın diye.
"Siz istediniz ben de anlatacağım. Kandili yakın ve unutulmuşların sesine kulak verin."
"Mehmed Uzun'un romanları günümüzde yazılan en iyi romanlardır. Edebiyata yeni olanaklar getirmiş, birçok ülkede de bu romanlar çok sevilmiştir.
- GenresTurkish
328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Mehmed Uzun
42 books77 followersMehmed Uzun (1953 – October 10, 2007) was a contemporary Zaza-Kurdish writer and novelist. He was born in Siverek, Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey.
Although the Kurdish language was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in his mother tongue. As a writer, he achieved a great deal towards shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. From 1977 to 2005 he lived in exile in Sweden as a political refugee. During his time in Scandinavia, he became a prolific writer, author of a dozen Kurdish language novels and essays, which have made him a founding member of modern Kurdish literature in Kurmanji dialect. In June 2005 he returned to Istanbul, Turkey. He was a member of the PEN club and the Swedish writers association.
On May 29, 2006, it was revealed that Uzun had been diagnosed with cancer.[1] Following treatment at the Karolinska University Hospital of Stockholm, in Sweden he returned to Diyarbakir, Turkey, where he died, aged 54. (Wikipedia)
Although the Kurdish language was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in his mother tongue. As a writer, he achieved a great deal towards shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. From 1977 to 2005 he lived in exile in Sweden as a political refugee. During his time in Scandinavia, he became a prolific writer, author of a dozen Kurdish language novels and essays, which have made him a founding member of modern Kurdish literature in Kurmanji dialect. In June 2005 he returned to Istanbul, Turkey. He was a member of the PEN club and the Swedish writers association.
On May 29, 2006, it was revealed that Uzun had been diagnosed with cancer.[1] Following treatment at the Karolinska University Hospital of Stockholm, in Sweden he returned to Diyarbakir, Turkey, where he died, aged 54. (Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 28, 2019
Min qet vê pirtûkê neeciband. Gelek gotinên "gunan" bû ku qet ne xweş e. Honaka wê jî kêm bû. Berhemên Hemê Dirêj ên din min gelek eciband lê kêfa min jê re nehat.
July 17, 2020
Bir yazarla tanıştığınız kitap önemlidir. Gerçekte ne Mehmed ne de Uzun olan Mehmed Uzun'la Dicle'nin Yakarışı'nda tanıştım. Bu tanışıklıktan da büyük keyif aldım. Dicle'nin Sesi'nde sizden olmayanların sesine kulak verebilirsiniz...
January 15, 2026
It is the first book by Mehmed Uzun that I’ve read. To my knowledge it has only been translated from the original Kurdish (2001) to Turkish (2002), which is the version I read. This is a shame as the book would deserve an international audience. With the novel, Uzun epitomizes the fate of members of diverse ethnical groups in Kurdistan at the end of the 19th century – during the intensifying decay of the Ottoman Empire. In the following I will share a summary and some of my impressions.
"Despite of all these lessons and experiences that I have acquired in my twopenny life, there are two things I didn’t understand: Why is this bloodstained servitude of Mesopotamia so endless and deeply rooted? Why are the Mesopotamian peoples whipped out in brutal strikes every time? Why is the servitude so endless here? The other thing that I didn’t understand is this: Why are these ancient and holy lands molded from so much grudge and hatred? Why are the people at the shores of Tigris and Euphrates, although they are connected to the chain of the same servitude; Why are they each other’s enemy so much, why are they so pitiless with each other?" (p. 16–17, my translation)
Central figure of the book is the dengbej Biro. A dengbej is a storyteller and singer that used to travel from village to village in the old Kurdistan. In long evening sessions, sevbuherks, such a men would narrate stories, that mix up the personally experienced with the experiences told by others and with the stuff of legends. The dengbej have been a group at the margins of society, without possessions, relying on the bread given to them by their hosts. At the same time, they were not constrained by primordial ties and could therefore speak freely. Biro is, additionally, a Yezidi, a heterodox sect persecuted and massacred throughout history. Blind on both eyes by the time, old and tired, during several sevbuherks, he tells his story to an unknown audience and the reader can take part in it.
It is not a coincidence that Uzun chooses this hero for his story that takes us back to the old multi-ethnic Kurdistan (around year 1870). From Biro, who was part and parcel of this world yet at the same time an outsider, a freak, we can expect the most honest account of the structure of this world and the dynamics of the events that would lead to the catastrophe that put an end to it.
Adopted by the shepherd Ape Xelef, known in the whole land for his promiscuity, Biro grows up in the Kurdish Mirlik (a small kingdom) of Cizira-Botan, a vassal state within the Ottoman empire, alongside Ape Xelef’s children Gülizer and Heme. He picks up the love for music – singing and playing the shepherd’s flute – from his father. Biro, who is blind on one eye, is close friends with Arme – the son of one of his father’s costumers, Mam Sefo, an Armenian landlord an advisor to the mir. When they all visit the Newroz festival at the mir’s palace, Biro starts to sing and is eventually “discovered” by the Mir himself, who wishes him to study at the local medresa (islamic schools, that were teaching religion next to other subjects). There, he learns to read texts in Kurdish, Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish. He also is a regular visitor of the library of Mam Sefo, where he spends long hours with books in scripts that he cannot read but that feature rich illustrations, such as Xenophons march of the 10.000. He loves to look at maps.
It is this curiosity in particular that inspires him to embark on a journey down the river Tigris, to which many a meditations and poems are dedicated throughout the book – indeed,
it is the voice of the Tigris that dengbej Biro is delivering to us. Eventually his patron and sponsor, Mam Sefo, surprisingly supports the idea. Being close to the circles of power, he is aware of the dark clouds gathering in the skies above Cizira-Botan. He wants the kids to discover the world and have a good time before it all falls apart. And so they go, Biro, Arme, Heme and two other friends on the raft of the Nestorian Christian Ape Yakub (who will become important for the story again later). For reasons that I won’t spoiler here, it is only Biro and Arme who continue the journey. They walk crowded streets and hang out in the shady guest houses of Mosul and Bagdad and they contemplate over Mesopotamian ruins. Arme spends some time at a monastery and Biro is connecting to his roots by following the Yezidis to their remote holly place in the mountains. They reunite. By the time they come back, things have taken really bad turn. Biro embarks on a last adventure which ends with a cliffhanger. The story will continue in the second volume.
Uzun manages to combine various genres in this modern novel (he was the first writer to write modern novels in Kurdish). Based on the structure of a dengbej speaking and singing to his audience in evenly gatherings, we read an adventurous coming of age novel, reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn. We are also reading a Bildungsroman, that can sometimes be a little didactic but makes it a festival to read for every history nerd. Every religious group and people in Mesopotamia will be mentioned and surely our heroes will take an interest in all the biblical ruins along the way. Almost like the German archeologists that they encounter at the site of ancient Babylon.
And yes, it bears the traces of Western travel writing from the time which must have been – next to local ones – a source for Uzun who wrote this book in his Swedish exile. However, it is at the same time an emancipation as we here, in a fictional yet fact-saturated narrative, read a such a travel report from the perspective of Mesopotamia’s native sons (the voices of the daughters are less represented).
The most important strength of the book however are its characters. They carry us through the heavy topics in lighthearted and personal fashion. Take Biros brother Heme, who is since is childhood characterized by Biro as the one who is constantly farting and who later strips of his Yezidi heritage to become an Islamist fanatic. Or Biro himself, who is well-read but also erratic and, like his father, a disciple not only to his spiritual but also to his bodily needs. We grow very fond of him, the joyful punk, the antitheses to the sectarianism and fanaticism that rises around him.
It is also thanks to intellectuals like Mehmed Uzun that a re-evaluation of the own past was set in motion in Kurdistan. In contrast to the mainstream of the Turkish discourse, an acknowledgement of the forefather’s atrocities is gaining foothold in the (Turkish-)Kurdish discourse, way beyond intellectual circles. A concrete result has been the restauration of Syriac and Armenian churches in Diyarbakir/Amed’s old town.
Uzun achieves that the reader, as he must have done when writing, laments the collapse of a diverse world and wonders how things could have looked like if history went otherwise.
"Despite of all these lessons and experiences that I have acquired in my twopenny life, there are two things I didn’t understand: Why is this bloodstained servitude of Mesopotamia so endless and deeply rooted? Why are the Mesopotamian peoples whipped out in brutal strikes every time? Why is the servitude so endless here? The other thing that I didn’t understand is this: Why are these ancient and holy lands molded from so much grudge and hatred? Why are the people at the shores of Tigris and Euphrates, although they are connected to the chain of the same servitude; Why are they each other’s enemy so much, why are they so pitiless with each other?" (p. 16–17, my translation)
Central figure of the book is the dengbej Biro. A dengbej is a storyteller and singer that used to travel from village to village in the old Kurdistan. In long evening sessions, sevbuherks, such a men would narrate stories, that mix up the personally experienced with the experiences told by others and with the stuff of legends. The dengbej have been a group at the margins of society, without possessions, relying on the bread given to them by their hosts. At the same time, they were not constrained by primordial ties and could therefore speak freely. Biro is, additionally, a Yezidi, a heterodox sect persecuted and massacred throughout history. Blind on both eyes by the time, old and tired, during several sevbuherks, he tells his story to an unknown audience and the reader can take part in it.
It is not a coincidence that Uzun chooses this hero for his story that takes us back to the old multi-ethnic Kurdistan (around year 1870). From Biro, who was part and parcel of this world yet at the same time an outsider, a freak, we can expect the most honest account of the structure of this world and the dynamics of the events that would lead to the catastrophe that put an end to it.
Adopted by the shepherd Ape Xelef, known in the whole land for his promiscuity, Biro grows up in the Kurdish Mirlik (a small kingdom) of Cizira-Botan, a vassal state within the Ottoman empire, alongside Ape Xelef’s children Gülizer and Heme. He picks up the love for music – singing and playing the shepherd’s flute – from his father. Biro, who is blind on one eye, is close friends with Arme – the son of one of his father’s costumers, Mam Sefo, an Armenian landlord an advisor to the mir. When they all visit the Newroz festival at the mir’s palace, Biro starts to sing and is eventually “discovered” by the Mir himself, who wishes him to study at the local medresa (islamic schools, that were teaching religion next to other subjects). There, he learns to read texts in Kurdish, Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish. He also is a regular visitor of the library of Mam Sefo, where he spends long hours with books in scripts that he cannot read but that feature rich illustrations, such as Xenophons march of the 10.000. He loves to look at maps.
It is this curiosity in particular that inspires him to embark on a journey down the river Tigris, to which many a meditations and poems are dedicated throughout the book – indeed,
it is the voice of the Tigris that dengbej Biro is delivering to us. Eventually his patron and sponsor, Mam Sefo, surprisingly supports the idea. Being close to the circles of power, he is aware of the dark clouds gathering in the skies above Cizira-Botan. He wants the kids to discover the world and have a good time before it all falls apart. And so they go, Biro, Arme, Heme and two other friends on the raft of the Nestorian Christian Ape Yakub (who will become important for the story again later). For reasons that I won’t spoiler here, it is only Biro and Arme who continue the journey. They walk crowded streets and hang out in the shady guest houses of Mosul and Bagdad and they contemplate over Mesopotamian ruins. Arme spends some time at a monastery and Biro is connecting to his roots by following the Yezidis to their remote holly place in the mountains. They reunite. By the time they come back, things have taken really bad turn. Biro embarks on a last adventure which ends with a cliffhanger. The story will continue in the second volume.
Uzun manages to combine various genres in this modern novel (he was the first writer to write modern novels in Kurdish). Based on the structure of a dengbej speaking and singing to his audience in evenly gatherings, we read an adventurous coming of age novel, reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn. We are also reading a Bildungsroman, that can sometimes be a little didactic but makes it a festival to read for every history nerd. Every religious group and people in Mesopotamia will be mentioned and surely our heroes will take an interest in all the biblical ruins along the way. Almost like the German archeologists that they encounter at the site of ancient Babylon.
And yes, it bears the traces of Western travel writing from the time which must have been – next to local ones – a source for Uzun who wrote this book in his Swedish exile. However, it is at the same time an emancipation as we here, in a fictional yet fact-saturated narrative, read a such a travel report from the perspective of Mesopotamia’s native sons (the voices of the daughters are less represented).
The most important strength of the book however are its characters. They carry us through the heavy topics in lighthearted and personal fashion. Take Biros brother Heme, who is since is childhood characterized by Biro as the one who is constantly farting and who later strips of his Yezidi heritage to become an Islamist fanatic. Or Biro himself, who is well-read but also erratic and, like his father, a disciple not only to his spiritual but also to his bodily needs. We grow very fond of him, the joyful punk, the antitheses to the sectarianism and fanaticism that rises around him.
It is also thanks to intellectuals like Mehmed Uzun that a re-evaluation of the own past was set in motion in Kurdistan. In contrast to the mainstream of the Turkish discourse, an acknowledgement of the forefather’s atrocities is gaining foothold in the (Turkish-)Kurdish discourse, way beyond intellectual circles. A concrete result has been the restauration of Syriac and Armenian churches in Diyarbakir/Amed’s old town.
Uzun achieves that the reader, as he must have done when writing, laments the collapse of a diverse world and wonders how things could have looked like if history went otherwise.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews