There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

Ash is precious, essential for many cures. Sometimes Grandma dips a clove of garlic in the powdery residue and draws symbols on the forehead of an ailing patient. No one can touch that person until the mark completely wears off. At other times, Grandma takes a coin and bends it into a crescent. Then she drops the metal into a bowl of pellucid water, which she places under the bed of a sick person.

Numbers are important and Grandma’s favorite is seven. In order to process an emotion, be it good or bad, you must allow seven days to pass. So if you fall in love, with a lightness to your moves like the speck of pollen on the wing of a butterfly, you have to wait seven days, and, if after that period you still feel the same way, then and only then can you trust your heart. Never make a major decision unless you have spent seven days contemplating it. If you are cross with someone, or are on the verge of breaking ties with them, once again, you must delay any reaction for seven moons. This is the only way to ensure you will not be led astray by rage or revenge. A deal ought to brew for seven days before it is sealed; a house has to be blessed in seven corners before anyone moves in. You cannot bake a loaf of bread unless the yeast has rested for seven cycles. A newborn baby must be guarded from evil spirits for seven sunrises. There are seven days in a week, seven sages walking the earth, seven regions in the human body, seven sleepers in a cave escaping persecution, seven cardinal sins for which seven doors to hell have been reserved.

Of the seven days, Wednesdays are the most propitious. That is when Grandma prepares her balms, ointments and tinctures, because, as everyone knows, Melek Tawûs descended on this venerated day, making it the most auspicious time to do good. If you have a hidden wish, something too intimate to share, you may just as well whisper it to a flowing stream, preferably on a Wednesday. The current will take care of it. Equally, if you wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, turn on the tap and tell it to the water. It will soothe your pounding heart, wash away your fears. Grandma says one should be kind to every living being, no matter how small or...

Actually, I agree with Euphrates. Better to be a gentle soul than one consumed by anger, resentment and vengeance. Anyone can wage war, but maintaining peace is a difficult thing. Because of this, I respect Euphrates more, but let’s keep it from our grumpy old Tigris, eh? No need to enrage him any further.”

here in Mesopotamia, my love, never forget the only true ruler is water.”

She says one should never claim to know a story but merely to carry it. For that is where chiroks must be kept—cradled in the warmth of your breast, close to your beating heart.

“I’m half as wise and twice the fool as everyone else.”

“Wisdom is a mountain capped with snow. I’ve yet to meet the person who’s given it a hug.”

‘Tell me, did the river sink any lower when the bird drank from it? Knowledge is a vast expanse of water, and you’ve managed to take in no more than the swallow’s beakful.’

just like two drops of rain join on a windowpane, weaving their paths slowly and steadily, an invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet.

The divisions that make up class are, in truth, the borders on a map. When you are born into wealth and privilege, you inherit a plan that outlines the paths ahead, indicating the shortcuts and byways available to reach your destination, informing you of the lush valleys where you may rest and the tricky terrain to avoid. If you enter the world without such a map, you are bereft of proper guidance. You lose your way more easily, trying to pass through what you thought were orchards and gardens, only to discover they are marshland and peat bogs.

“The marks on them—is it some ancient scripture?” The man shrugs. “Ancient bird tracks or chicken scratches, for all we know. Only a few can read them.” “But there are patterns…”

Upon getting married, she took her husband’s surname. Now it will probably have to change again. Women are expected to be like rivers—readjusting, shapeshifting.

How to Bury a River Build concrete troughs along both sides of the riverbed. Add a roof to the troughs. Encase the river completely on three sides, turning it into one long, winding coffin. Cover the roof with earth, making sure no trace is visible. Build your city over it. Forget that it was ever there.

Ever since then, he has been a ghost river in Zaleekhah’s life,

As she closes her eyes, waiting to descend into a drugged sleep, she can hear a gentle lapping in the distance. They are all there. The lost rivers of time, out of sight and out of mind but notable in their absence, like phantom limbs that still have the power to cause pain. They are here and everywhere, eroding the solid structures on which we have built our careers, marriages, reputations and relationships, evermore flowing onwards—with or without us.

Zaleekhah knows she may not be one of them, but she will always be attracted to people who are pulled toward something bigger and better than themselves, a passion that lasts a lifetime, even though it will consume them in the end.

So much in life is composed of recurrent designs. The zigzags traced by bolts of lightning, the rings inside a felled tree, the threads on a cobweb, the tessellations of a honeycomb, the twists of a conch shell, the petals of a chrysanthemum…A city also teems with fractal geometry. The catacombs beneath Camden Market, the arches of Paddington Station; the Neo-Gothic ornamentation of the Houses of Parliament…People, no less, are formed by repeated habits and conventions. The Mesopotamian tablets, too, embody a series of patterns whose meaning Arthur is determined to discover.

I wish to be like the River Thames: I want to tend to what has been discarded, damaged and forgotten.

This world, like goat’s milk yogurt, will not solidify for quite some time.” Narin smiles. “You think the earth is a tub of yogurt?” “Oh, definitely…It ferments, it thickens, and, although it is solid now, it can never forget that it was once liquid.” “What does that mean?” “It means it’s still roiling inside. We don’t hear it but there’s water underneath, churning. There are cycles in nature, cycles in history. We call them dewr. Between the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, there’s always a period of confusion, and those are the hardest times, may God help us all.” “Are we now in one of those periods?” “I think so, that’s why we must carefully study the past. The stories of our ancestors are the roots that hold us up through tempests and high winds.”

“What happens after catastrophes? Those who survive nurse their broken hearts and start all over again, as one always does, as one always must.”

“A seer who knows things that others do not. Remember, though, there are many in this world who claim to be augurs but are charlatans, in truth. My grandmother was one of the genuine ones.”

Sadness overtakes him. There are extraordinary people who appear unexpectedly on our paths, and, just as suddenly, they disappear, leaving their indelible marks and a sense of regret. Brief and bright, like a match striking a flame in the dark, they heat the damp kindling of our hearts and then they are gone.

“Oh, I’m an only child.” “And what was that like growing up?” “A bit lonely,” says Zaleekhah. “But my cousin Helen was like a sister to me, if that counts.” “Cousins, friends, books, songs, poems, trees…anything that brings meaning into our lives counts.”

This morning she stuffed vine leaves with rice, spices and currants, and now she is making borek—crispy pastry filled with spinach and feta cheese.

“Sometimes kindness comes from the least-expected places,” says Grandma, as she sifts flour into a bowl. “Have I told you the story of Ibrahim?” “I don’t think so.” “Well, Ibrahim was God’s beloved. That is why Nemrud hated him. He said to his henchmen: build a fire, cast Ibrahim into it. Turn him into charcoal, burn him to cinders.” “Oh, he is cruel!” “He was cruel. But it’s also important to ask how everyone else behaved when calamity struck. Many just watched. Some even rushed to fetch wood, to add to the blaze. The lizard, for instance. Only a few good souls tried to save Ibrahim—like the frog. It filled its mouth with water and spat it into the flames, and kept doing this, until it was exhausted. The lizard laughed and said, ‘You are tiny, the fire is massive, what do you think you’ll achieve with your itty-bitty water?’ But the frog said, ‘If I were to do nothing, would I be any different from you?’ Now that was a wise frog. We must always listen to our conscience and help those in need. We don’t throw gasoline on a burning man. We carry him water.” Narin contemplates. “So when did this happen?” “In olden times,” replies Grandma, as she cracks two eggs into the center of the pile of flour. “You always say that!” “Because that’s where stories live—in olden times.”

Grandma says time is a sentinel tree, marked with invisible rings inside, its straggly branches extending into the infinite sky, never perfect, never linear. In the span of a sentence a storyteller can jump back and forth centuries, as if a millennium could pass in the blink of an eye. But then it takes hours to describe a single event, every minute a stretch, an eternity. “Remember, my heart. Story-time is different from clock-time.” Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also appreciates small acts of kindness. That is why minorities do not live in clock-time. They live in story-time.

borek

“When someone gives you the food they’ve prepared, they give you their heart.”

Grandma says that when she was little, there was a Muslim girl she loved to play with. The families were close and saw each other regularly. One day, on her way back from the shops, the girl’s mother stopped by their house. It was a sweltering-hot afternoon, and they served her freshly cut watermelon in their shady garden. The woman turned it down with a polite smile, saying she did not like the taste of the fruit. Nor would she accept the water offered, even though anyone could see she was sweating. So they brought her a jug of delicious lemonade. This time the woman reluctantly took a glass, but as soon as she thought no one was watching she poured it away behind a tree. They were shocked to find it there after she left. And that is when they realized something they had failed to notice all this time: that, even though the two families were neighbors, and they shared many a laugh and gossip together, the girl’s parents refrained from eating their food because they regarded Yazidis as heathens. “They thought our bread, even our water, was haram,” Grandma says. “How can that be? We were children. We were friends.”

Our ancestors were resilient and passed this resilience down through generations. But no matter how tall your grandfather, you have to do your own growing.”

“Remember, for all its pains and sorrows, the world is beautiful. How can it not be, when it is painted in the iridescent colors of the plumes of Melek Tawûs? If we know how to look, we can see beauty even with eyes closed.”

Home is where your loved ones are, but the reverse is also true. Those you love are your sanctuary, your shelter, your country and even, when it comes to that, your exile. Wherever they go, you will follow.

Sometimes even trees have to uproot themselves—entire forests have been known to migrate.”

“What does that mean?” “It means, as settled as we are in this land, the winds can blow so harshly at times that they can force us out.”

“Riddles are how Lady Truth cloaks herself.” “Why would truth need to cloak herself?” “Because if she were to walk about naked, people would stone her in the streets.”

It all depends on how you nurture what you’ve been given. It’s a talent held in trust. No one owns it. We care for it before passing it on to the next generation.”

Sometimes he cannot tell whether he has been hypnotized into seeking the River Tigris or is simply running away from the River Thames.

He feels like he already knows this place through stories, its many poor and destitute through his own experience, and its streets and alleys through his imagination.

As he meanders along the promenade, a feeling of lightness overcomes him, as though he were treading barefoot on moss.

The wealthy do not have to rush after ticking clocks; they simply glide through each day, dandling the hours in their hands, wearing them like elegant gloves. For the poor, however, time is mere rags, tattered scraps that are never enough, no matter how much you pull and tug at them, neither covering goose-pimpled flesh nor providing any warmth.

She often wakes, to the minute, at this interstice between midnight and dawn. Brahmamuhurtha, the time of the Creator, when light energy is at its strongest, according to various faiths. The most opportune moment to burrow into your own soul and face your deepest fears, they say. For her, it is not about that. Not prayer, not meditation. It is the hour of melancholy—pure, unfiltered, restless.

“People think a tattoo is an act of rebellion or something, but, actually, it’s a form of storytelling. That’s what most customers come in for—not just some random image or word in ink. They come because they have a story to tell.”

I’d have thought especially an immigrant would understand what it feels like to meet loss and still not be defeated.”

susurrating

The kebabs, loaded with spices, upset his stomach. He finds the rice and mutton too fatty, though he enjoys the hoshaf they serve at the end—a bowl of sugary water with stewed fruits. Like Queen Victoria, the Turks have a sweet tooth and consume a dazzling variety of desserts, some with bewildering names—Bottom of the Cauldron, Lips of the Belle, Wife’s Belly, Floozy’s Treat, Vizier’s Finger…But the one Arthur prefers is the ashure—Noah’s Ark pudding, a recipe with forty ingredients, said to have been invented on the coracle to celebrate surviving the Flood. It is still alive, in this part of the world, still shaping everyday life, the memory of water.

chargrilled bonito with flatbread and pickled turnips.

Lady with the Lamp and her fellow nurses making their rounds, and the patients with gangrene and frostbite wailing in the dark,

“He’s thanking you.” The dragoman shrugs. “The ravings of a dodderer. He says, you are a kind person, but you must be careful because you are endowed with a restless heart.” Arthur’s eyes widen as he recalls the line uttered by Gilgamesh’s mother: Why did you endow my son with a restless heart? You have moved him to travel…Just as he wonders if the man might have heard of the epic, another stream of words follows. “What is he saying now?” “That there is a river running through you—whatever that means.”

All he knows is, if there is a river running through him, it seems always and in every way to flow toward melancholy.