Kafir Mistê: A Psychopathic and Masochistic Hero Between Blood and Pain

Rastinews — Misto used to say: Oh Meyra, my heart aches

I swear it, in God's name

God knows, today the scent of blood comes from her

...

A bloody epic sung by dengbêj Mehmûdê Hesê still casts light on the depths of Kurdish oral literature. "Kafir Mistê" tells a dark tale of fate — a love story turned forced abduction, woven around a mountain pass on Mount Pîr Ehmed — and confronts listeners with the portrait of a psychopath from centuries past. The epic deserves attention because it ranks among the longest and most distinctive in Kurdish oral literature, sung for hundreds of years before Western crime fiction existed, before Freud's psychoanalysis, before Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov or Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter haunted Western literature and cinema. Long before any of that, it stood as a psycho-sociological phenomenon within the rhythms of Kurdish dengbêj tradition.

The story is set on Mount Pîr Ehmed, in Erbil province, on the border between the Soran and Sîdekan districts, in the Bradost area — and dengbêjs had already been singing it for centuries. The epic is worth revisiting because it shows how advanced, how deep, and how psychologically attuned Kurdish oral literature was long before the wider world took up these themes. Dengbêj Mehmûdê Hesê, known for his ballads from the Amed, Mêrdîn, and Riha region, tells the story with such force and vivid imagery that listeners can almost hear the crack of Devreş the rifle, smell the blood at the mountain pass, hear Meyra's cries, and feel the rage of a man severed from his own humanity.

The story begins this way. Two dervishes come to stay as guests at the house of Ferhê Bozê, father of Kafir Mistê. They notice the partridges and hunting cages kept by Mistê and tell him: "Since you are a hunter, for God's sake, head to Mount Pîr Ehmed and hunt partridges — you'll know you've hunted well when the birds are caught." Kafir Mistê takes his cloak and his rifle, named "Devreş," and sets off for Mount Pîr Ehmed to hunt partridges. As the dengbêj describes it, Misto hunts, plucks, roasts, and eats his birds. For Mistê, the mountains and forests are home. At the pass on Mount Pîr Ehmed, he spreads his cloak on the ground, uses Devreş as a pillow, and falls asleep. At dawn he heads down to Gulîstan meadow, where a shepherd, playing his flute, is driving a flock of sheep. While he is still talking with the shepherd, two girls appear among the flock: Meyra, daughter of tribal chief Cewer Beg, and her servant girl. Mistê's eyes fall on Meyra. Within minutes he makes up his mind, seizes Meyra by force, and drags her to the pass on Mount Pîr Ehmed. A bloody feud follows. He kills Meyra's father, Cewer Beg, kills her elder brother, Xelîl Beg, and wounds her younger brother, Qasim. The killings are not committed in rage but in cold blood. Mistê picks them off one by one with his famous rifle, Devreş, cutting them down like grains of wheat. But killing Meyra's father and brothers is not enough for him. He wants to control everything with his own hands, to live through every pain himself, to exact every act of revenge himself. From that point on, human blood spatters and flows in his wake like the blood of beheaded partridges.

Kafir Mistê, son of Ferhê Bozê of the Çilqed family and hunter of the Zozan Rindol highlands, is portrayed throughout the epic as a man beyond all limits. Early on, the dengbêj offers a glimpse into his psyche: "Mistê is a partridge hunter; his whole life belongs to the mountains, his work is always the hunt and the rifle. He never once sat in his father's dîwan; he is always tracking game." In doing so, the dengbêj — much like a modern psychoanalyst — lays the groundwork for a sociological reading of Mistê's psychology.

Within the structures of classical Kurdish society, the dîwan functioned as a school of ethics, empathy, and human and cultural upbringing. A man who cuts himself off from its influence also drifts away from the laws of the community. Mistê, who spent his childhood forever in the wild chasing partridges, became part of a savage nature in which killing a man and catching a bird are treated as one and the same. His estrangement from social identity, his solitude in the wilderness and mountains, and his killing of wild animals stripped him of mercy and conscience and led him to build his own brutal code. His being "kafir" — infidel — has nothing to do with disbelief in God; it stems from his total lack of mercy and conscience. That is why society viewed him as "kafir," or, in modern terms, a "psychopath": a man cut off from his community, whose heart works coldly and by calculation. Had a modern psychoanalyst examined this story, they would likely have reached the same conclusions the dengbêjs had already identified about the roots of Mistê's psychopathy.

Dengbêj Mehmûdê Hesê sketches this character with unmatched skill. Mistê is both a cold killer — a psychopath — and a calculating masochist who quenches his thirst for victory with pain and blood. He constantly builds bloody games, bitter traps, and paths of no return, deliberately blocking his own way and the lives of others. When he goes to the Cobanî palace to see his blood-kirîv, Hesenê Bedirxan Begê — known as "holder of the blood cradle" — he presents himself as a helpless mirtib and asks him to marry Meyra, already promised to Şemo, son of Salih Axayê Modikî, to himself instead, in effect breaking one marriage bond to forge another. He knowingly submits to torture, beatings, and humiliation. To outmaneuver his enemy within his own game, Mistê first throws himself into the fire. He does not cry out from the pain; he stays silent. Instead, that pain readies him for the final moment of triumph. Kafir Mistê uses a calculated strategy, reaching his goal through pain. This strategic masochism serves not pleasure but the absolute manipulation of the system around him. He chooses the force of suffering as his path to total victory.

An even more brutal scene follows. When Salih Begê Modikî slips from his grasp and drowns in a river — dying before Mistê can take him alive — Mistê is blinded by rage. He does not want the man to die on his own; he wants to control the death himself, to choose the method. For Mistê, any death not carried out by his own hand is a failure. This need to control both life and death marks the bloody peak of human psychology captured centuries ago in the epic of Kafir Mistê.

With its abduction, cold-blooded killings, bloodshed, and manipulation, the epic echoes classic and modern Western crime fiction. Much as Raskolnikov's cold, brutal killing in Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" lays bare the psychology of savagery and inner conflict, Kafir Mistê enacts brutality within tribal society through cold, empathy-free planning. Likewise, in Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" (later adapted for film), Patrick Bateman is a psychopathic, masochistic man who takes pleasure in daily violence and his own psychological pain. The trait echoes Mistê, who willingly immerses himself in bloody entanglements and draws satisfaction from them — as seen in the killing of Meyra's father and brothers and in the drama staged at the Cobanî palace.

The epic of Kafir Mistê stands as a profound study of the human psyche. Through it, the dengbêj tells us: a man cut off from his father's dîwan can become both a savage and someone who lives by inflicting pain on himself.

This character, preserved across the depths of history through the voices of dengbêjs, stands today as a psycho-philosophical legacy for modern Kurdish literature. This bloody figure, who weighs the boundaries of savagery, pain, love, and heroism against each other, offers an unmatched source for contemporary Kurdish novelists and screenwriters. Long before psychoanalysis became a science, our dengbêjs had already recognized the depths of the human psyche and wove it into a social narrative.

As a cold, hardened killer, Mistê symbolizes the human break from society — a mirror of the human soul, suspended between heroism and psychopathy. He shows us that heroism can sometimes turn into savagery, and that pain can become a strategy for victory.

Modern literature lets us draw on this troubled spirit. It lets us portray characters — beyond simple notions of "good" and "bad" — as deep, contradictory, fearful human beings. Building our literary heritage into the foundation of our own modern literature takes courage. We must look at the darkness hidden within these songs. Every pain Mistê suffers, every drop of blood he spills, carries a psycho-sociological lesson about society. That lesson still awaits its place in modern literature.

The Kurdish nation can claim this historical heritage. It can use it to illuminate psychological and social depths, and to build both a national identity and a strong literary one. Centuries ago, dengbêjs seemed to call out to us with a message: accept pain only on the road to freedom, never as submission.