There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire by Faisal H. Husain; Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Their Environment from Headwaters to Mouth, edited by Laith A. Jawad; and Wounded Tigris: A Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization by Leon McCarron helped me both from historical and geographical perspectives. Yet perhaps the greatest challenge arose when I delved into the richness and complexity of Yazidi culture and traditions. A collective identity that has been transmitted throughout the centuries mostly through songs, stories, lullabies and poems could not be understood solely by focusing on written texts. I have debated a lot which spelling to use—Yazidi, Yezidi or Êzidi—and the only reason I chose the first was to maintain the continuity in the novel with the nineteenth-century script and Arthur’s discovery of Layard’s book.