The stories of Soviet Kurdish writer Sima Semend, written in the 1960’s, all have happy endings – and all feature women as the main characters.
Sima Semend, a Sovyet Kurd, and one of the rare Kurdish female writers, focused on the aspirations of young girls and the difficulties they faced in the stories which she began writing in 1966. Women furnish the main characters in the stories of Sima Semend, who reduces the social relationships of the society in which she lives to the private lives of women. She never characterized herself as a feminist, but by depicting in her stories the situation and private relationships of Kurdish women in plain language, she both established a precedent in Kurdish women’s writing and sketched a panorama of her society.
After graduating from the Philology Faculty of Yerevan University, Sima Semend worked for some time as an editor in the Kurdish Section of Radio Yerevan. She appears to have been influenced by famous Russian novelists and short-story writers such as Gorki and Chekhov in having chosen as her heroines people who struggled against sexual discrimination and repressive social traditions; she stressed class distinctions in particular. Depicting in her stories the topography of her own country, she used the beauty of nature as a metaphor and criticized simplistic thinking. Beginning her stories with scene-setting descriptions such as “It was a beautiful spring day”, or “It was a gorgeous winter day”, she described the rivers, birds, endless green fields and meadows and, equating the splendors of nature with the beauty of her heroines, expressed all the positive sides of life at once. Sima Semend mixed her own experiences very skilfully into her stories; she tried to show that the value judgements of society are not valid beyond a certain point, and took pains to weave her stories around fully conscious characters.
Influencing modern Kurdish short-story writing with a number of seminal stories, Sima Semend did not hesitate to combine national problems and feminine elements; referring to the prevailing value judgements of society, she defended the idea that the struggle for a modern society had to start with the concept of the family and ext
end to the level of society as a whole.
In her story “Xezal” (named after the heroine of the story), Sima Semend depicts a young girl who wants to be a doctor, and her struggle with her family and her environment, as representing the struggle for a modern society. In the story “Reva Rihanê” (“The Flight of Rihan”), she describes a young girl who runs away with her boyfriend, against the wishes of her family, and shows how harsh traditions can melt away before love. The story “Mizgîn” (“Good News”) describes the return to his village of a young man who has been living elsewhere for years, and his reunion with the people he loves. Sima Semend, who began to write her stories in the 1960’s, demonstrated in these early days of Kurdish short-story writing a modernistic approach that depicted social and class phenomena as reflected in the situation of women.
Stories with happy endings
Semend’s stories begin with descriptions of nature and then continue by describing the thoughts, emotions, and struggles of her characters. Even though they often feature pessimism, sadness, and difficulties in reaching one’s goals, the heroine in the end arrives at her goal. The young woman in “Xezal”, who has to struggle with her family for a long time, finally wins this struggle, and then in her life at school has to struggle against those around her. But in the end she prevails, becoming a doctor and returning to her village. In “Reva Rihanê”, the young girl who opposes the feudal society by fleeing her home has a number of adventures but in the end is able to live together with the boy she loves.
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She was born in 1933 in the town of Axbaranê near Yerevan. After completing the Philology Faculty of Yerevan University in 1958, she worked for a considerable time as an editor in the Kurdish Section of Radio Yerevan. Her first book of short stories, entitled “Xezal”, was published in 1966. It was followed by another book of stories. She also edited two anthologies.
Source: Translated from Turkish: Yeni Gundem, Turkish daily newspaper, By Metin A. GÜNAY – May 29, 2000
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