There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

There are different wells within us. Some fill with each good rain, Others are far, far too deep For that. —Hafiz

“Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire—because they want to have them in their possession. It’s all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It’s all out of fear! Then there is the third kind—when people hate those they have hurt.”

Yazidis

Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.

She has tried so hard to be someone else, a happier and lighter version of herself. It hasn’t worked. Melancholy, an invisible noose that periodically loosens but never fully relaxes its grip, tightens round her neck, yet again.

Dr. Zaleekhah Clarke does not wish to live. She wants to excuse herself from a world where she often feels like an outsider, a confused and clumsy latecomer, an accidental guest who walked in through the wrong door at the wrong time.

Zuleikha,

We never want our parents’ weaknesses to be seen by others. Their failures are our own private affair, a secret we would rather keep to ourselves; when they become public, for everyone’s consumption, we are no longer the children we once were.

Brahmamuhurtha,

Nisaba.”

That’s for all the women who have gone through some shit of their own—she who saw the deep.”

Crimean War—British,

Constantinople, more than any other place he has seen or heard about, is a city of forgetting.

Home is where your absence is felt, the echo of your voice kept alive, no matter how long you have been away or how far you may have strayed, a place that still beats with the pulse of your heart.