There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

In this region where the summers are long and scorching, the rivers mercurial and unforgiving, and the memory of the last flood not yet washed away, water is both the harbinger of life and the messenger of death.

Most of the lamassus in the palace have five legs, so that when viewed from the front they appear to be standing firm, but seen sideways they are stomping forward, ready to trample on even the most fearsome adversary. In this state, they can both confront unwanted visitors and ward off any evil lurking in the shadows.

One can never have too much protection.

Not every written word is meant for the eyes of every reader.

Water remembers. It is humans who forget.

Yet the river is a giver,

The old woman sighs. She has heard midwives complain about a mysterious condition called “puerperal insanity.” It is said to afflict new mothers, robbing them of their senses and plunging them into a despair so bottomless that they may never emerge. She knows the treatment calls for purgatives, cupping, bloodletting and lots of opiates.

Arthur Smyth is gifted with an extraordinary memory—visual, verbal and sensory. Just as a drop of rain or a pellet of hail, water in whatever form, will always remember, he, too, will never forget. What he sees or what he hears or what he feels, even once, he retains forever. A remarkable talent, many will argue. A blessing from God, others may hasten to add. But also a terrible curse, as he will soon find out.

“May life be kind to you, child, and when it is not, may you emerge stronger,” intones the sheikh.

“That is what happens when you love someone—you carry their face behind your eyelids, and their whispers in your ears, so that even in deep sleep, years later, you can still see and hear them in your dreams.”

Someday her hearing, too, will disappear—just like the land she has always known as home.

an apple pie gone sour. For years, Arthur assumed it must be the same for everyone, that other people also experienced similar associations, until he realized this was not the case.

“An Inquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians and an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan and the Yazidis, or Devil-Worshippers.”

Nineveh…

Zuleikha.

She Who Saw the Deep

“Ah, my Belovèd, fill the Cup that clears Today of past Regrets and future Fears: Tomorrow? Why—Tomorrow I may be Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years.”

Omar Khayyám.

To their right on a slope lies a cemetery—many of its stones broken and crumbling. Although originally arranged in separate sections according to faith, its internal boundaries have been eroded over the course of time, mixing up the tombs of Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Yazidis, Arameans, Zoroastrians…

As he reads he can taste the words, the tip of his tongue tingling with flavors—buttery, oaky, zingy, spicy, herbaceous… Reading is a feast he can never have enough of, and he tucks into each page with relish. But when the sky is cloaked in layers of smog and there is insufficient light, as there often is, he has to imagine the rest of the book inside his head.