There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

“But you didn’t forget!” says Narin, eager to cheer him up. “You remember Al-Jazari! And Grandma remembers!” “Yes, sweetheart,” Father says, nodding. “We are the memory tribe.”

“Why are we taking the qanun?” Father replies, “There is a master craftsman in Iraq. Very famous. I want him to take a look at it. The instrument needs repair, but I cannot entrust it to just anyone. It’s very old, and it’s a gift, so we must take good care of it.” “A gift from whom?” There is the briefest silence before Grandma says, “The Englishman brought it with him from Istanbul and he gave it to my grandmother.” “Why?” “Well—it was his way of thanking her. Not only her, the whole village. He was grateful that they had allowed him to stay.”

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.

With no one left to regret his loss or to cherish his childhood memories, he no longer has a home.

And if the river is polluted to such a degree that oxygen levels are low, fish cannot breathe properly. Their behavior becomes erratic—at first they swim faster, moving frantically in search of pockets of air. Then they slow down, falling progressively into a lethal torpor. Massive die-offs can occur in a matter of minutes. Mother fish will exhaust themselves to bring oxygen to their eggs, even as the effort drains them. Still they will carry on fanning and ventilating to keep their offspring alive, until their own reserves of energy run out. Down in the murky depths, the glow from the eggs will fade away, one by one, tiny lightbulbs flickering out, as darkness descends when a river dies.

The house was less a home than a harbor where she had sheltered as if from a storm.

The thought of death returns, like an intense dream that has found a passage from the realms of sleep to the waking world. Her limbs feel heavy, her chest constricted. Slowly, she stands up, begins hunting for something passable to wear. She will go to tonight’s dinner. It is her birthday, after all.

Modeling himself on Alexander the Great—the warrior who marched into battles with artists and philosophers by his side—Napoleon gathered painters, sculptors, linguists, writers, engravers, art historians, geographers, zoologists, geologists, engineers, botanists, cartographers, mathematicians, musicians…when he launched his expedition to Egypt. A hundred and fifty men of letters joined his military campaign. The forces of the Enlightenment versus the benighted Orient. The superiority of the West had to be established not only via warfare but also via science, art and literature. The French army consisted of thousands of soldiers, heavy artillery and horses, coupled with the latest technological equipment and navigational instruments. They brought along a printing press with Arabic type to communicate with the locals. Napoleon’s massive flagship contained a spectacular library that specialized in volumes from the Ancient and Modern Middle East, and was given, aptly, the same name as the vessel it was borne on—L’Orient.

“We must go East. All the great men of the world have there acquired their celebrity.”

One of the four streams believed to have flowed out of the Garden of Eden, it gleams with unearthly light, frightening and beautiful and mysterious, nurturing life above and below the ground. Rising in the highlands of Anatolia, fed by fertile tributaries, falling rain and melting snow, it surges as if impatient to be somewhere else, and, at times, it swells with disastrous consequences. Bold and boisterous, if angered the tiger turns into a mortal enemy.

Poverty has a topography all of its own. It rises from the ribs of the earth, stretching its naked limbs against the sky, its features dry and gaunt, sore to the touch. Poverty is a nation with no borders, and he is no foreigner in it but a native son.

Grandma says everything in this world speaks all the time. Just as there is no such thing as absolute death, nor is there absolute silence, for silence, too, converses in its own language and dialect. Milk purrs while it churns into butter; mountains rumble as they crumble; mother goats recognize the bleats of their offspring long after weaning; wolves howl to find their way back home; crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together; and the human soul sighs as it leaves its bodily form and migrates on to the next one. Narin should not be sad that one day she won’t be able to detect these sounds, because, once she follows the rhythms and cadences of life, she will always be able to move in tune with them. A deaf person can still hear the most enchanting music.

Ushered to the sheikh’s house, they are first offered goat’s milk and dried figs, and then a sumptuous dinner of rice with pomegranate syrup, chicken biryani, date cake and kubba Mosul, a rich meat pie made of bulgur dough, stuffed with ground lamb, raisins, pine nuts and almonds.

For he has no language, even with a translator by his side, to explain how, ever since he was a boy, he has been pulled by a ghost river, a flow so strong it doesn’t let him rest or take root. The current that carries him along is stronger than matters of the heart—or so he believes. Still unsure how to respond, Arthur pivots on his heel, sensing a movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone has entered the room. “That’s my adopted daughter,” says the sheikh. “Women do not join evening conversations—but she is different. She is a faqra.”

The faqrya live in a temporal zone of their own, a cyclical history that spools back to the beginning of time. They understand the echoes through centuries, ride the waves of suffering, collect the remains of stories. They are the custodians of knowledge, the memory-keepers. In a culture where very little, if ever, is put into writing, they are the librarians.

“But don’t get me wrong, I’m not Middle Eastern,” Uncle interrupts. “I’m from the Levant! A proud descendant of Hellenistic culture. The Mediterranean and the Near East were one. No one talks about this anymore, but it’s a fact. Smyrna, Alexandria, Beirut—they were profoundly cosmopolitan. We weren’t in separate boxes, the Greeks here, the Syrians over there. We constantly mingled.

said mingling as one is what makes us the great country we are. In Britain difference lends us strength, and tolerance gives us unity.”

The ancient poem unites us across borders, but also, in some strange way, we can never seem to agree on how to interpret it. That’s why it’s been treasured by dictators and dissidents alike, the mighty and the weak. It can be read in multiple ways.”

“For me, the epic is primarily about both the fragility and resilience of being human, and, also, it is about the possibility for change. Learning to care for others, not just yourself.

Uncle purses his lips. “I beg to differ, my dear. I believe the poem is about the fear of death. We all must shuffle off this mortal coil, so to speak; we’ll all push up the daisies. Can’t be avoided. What is its moral lesson? Simple. The epic tells us that, since we cannot attain immortality, or even prolong youth, we must eat and drink and make merry and always prioritize family and friends. Our own people. That’s its universal message. Family comes first.”

“Where you have set your mind begin the journey Let your heart have no fear, keep your eyes on me.”

In the depths of the Tigris are stone giants—human, bull and bird—resting on the silty riverbed, their eyes wide open as the waters wash over them.

feels confused, humbled. Every morning, as he walks the distance from the Yazidi village to the mound that was once Nineveh, his mind is absorbed by the ruins beneath his feet. The remains. When we are gone—kings, slaves or scribes—what is left of us?

Empires have a way of deceiving themselves into believing that, being superior to others, they will last forever. A shared expectation that tomorrow the sun will rise again, the earth will remain fertile, and the waters will never run dry. A comforting delusion that, though we will all die, the buildings we erect and the poems we compose and the civilizations we create will survive.

people of all ages lined the streets to watch the funeral of a Mesopotamian king. Leading the procession were the king’s favorite wife, the king’s youngest wife, the king’s favorite son, the king’s barber, the king’s storyteller…Also accompanying them was a retinue of soldiers, servants, musicians bearing harps and lyres, and members of the court, clad in dazzling garments adorned with carnelian and lapis lazuli. They marched in silence, each carrying their own small cup. When they arrived at the place designated for the royal grave, one by one, they drank the poison in their cups. They were all to be buried in the very same tomb, just so the king would still have his barber and his servants to serve him and his musicians to play him songs and his storyteller to tell him stories in the afterlife. That afternoon they all killed themselves as arranged, simply so that a man accustomed to power would not have to face his own mortality alone.

Triumphs are erected upon the jerry-built scaffolding of brutalities untold, heroic legends spun from the thread of aggressions and atrocities. The irrigation system was Nineveh’s glowing achievement—but how many lives were squandered in its construction? There is always another side, a forgotten side. Water was the city’s greatest asset and defining feature, yet it was also what undermined it in the end. The large amounts of salt deposited by torrent and tide wrecked the soil. Rivers raised, rivers razed. Sometimes your biggest strength becomes your worst weakness.

the Yazidis do not have a sacred scripture. He is endlessly baffled as to how a culture can sustain itself with the spoken word alone. Stories and poems and ballads seem to be the mortar that keeps them together, keeps them alive.

Arthur is overcome by a sense of bliss, as if her presence were some kind of benediction. Even when his mind is busy deciphering the cuneiform, his senses are alert to the smallest signals—the crack of a twig under her feet fusing with the swishing tides of the Tigris in the distance. The sounds blend so seamlessly that he could almost believe she was walking into the river, that she herself was made of flowing water.

News arrives that eighteen thousand Kurdish troops in Nineveh alone have withdrawn in one night, leaving Yazidis completely defenseless.

His heart pumping harder, Khaled lifts his chin. When he glances over his shoulder, he finds Hajji Amer staring straight at him. For a second their eyes meet. In the gaze of the man he once called a friend Khaled searches for a sign of shame or guilt or even pity, anything at all, but there is nothing there; it is as empty as the cistern below. “Shoot!” They open fire all at once. Shouting “God is great” in Arabic, they gun down sixty-four Yazidi men and boys who have no weapons, no way of defending themselves. One after another the bodies fall into the void. “Some are still alive!” a man yells. “Aim for their heads!” It takes only two and a half minutes to execute sixty-four human beings. The time for a drop of rain to reach the ground.

A human being needs about four liters of water every day. There are fifty thousand people under siege on Mount Sinjar.

“You’re far from alone in that assumption. But it’s actually a useful reminder that someone can be cultured and polished, generous, worldly, but still commit acts of startling cruelty.”

“But how do we find our passions?” says Nen, as if debating with herself. “I really haven’t a clue. Most of the time it’s pure coincidence—a book we encounter in the library, a teacher who leaves an impression, a film we can’t forget…When I look back, I realize I’d have gone crazy if I didn’t have other places to retreat to—the further away from my own reality the better.”

guess what water is to you, history is to me: an enigma too vast to comprehend, something far more important than my own little life, and yet, at some level, also deeply personal.

“You can grow up in a loving family and still struggle.”

It’s just so easy to feel lost when you feel low, like you’re drifting alone in endless floodwaters. But you’re not alone. There are many of us on this wooden Ark—sailing without knowing if there is land ahead. Sailing in hope nonetheless…”

my twenties I prided myself on handling booze better than most. We’d go to pubs and all the girls would stop after a few shots, except for me—I could drink the men under the table and everyone thought that was pretty cool. In my early thirties, I was proud that I was a ‘high-functioning’ drinker. I could easily go days and weeks without drinking. No problem! I loved proving that I had self-control, but I also knew there was a reward at the end. Drinking was how I motivated and calmed myself. Then things started to shift, but I still believed it was all fine. I had never been a mean drunk. Never argumentative. Never aggressive. I just got a lovely little buzz. Surely there was no harm in that. It was mild and mellow, except I could no longer have a good time without nursing a stiff drink. I had zero patience with people, unless I was tipsy enough, in which case I didn’t care. It took me a long time to acknowledge something was off. I’m telling you all this because during those years of ups and downs, my interest in Mesopotamia never waned. It was a place so unlike my own reality that I could go there and rewire my brain. I could find refuge in that storyland between the two rivers—except it was real and it was amazing. Broken and bruised and beautiful and sad and yet surprisingly resilient and profoundly inspiring…That’s what it means to me, Ancient Mesopotamia.”

She listens without judgment, and somehow that is enough, that she attends to what he has to say, the compassion in her eyes, her readiness to share his sorrow.

Remember, Narin, in the blackest sky there is a star glimmering high above, in the deepest night, a candle burning bright. Never despair. You must always look for the nearest source of

Grandma is a water-dowser. Grandma is a spring-finder.

He has dedicated his life to words, but now, suddenly, words are not enough. He does not know how to articulate this feeling of extreme loneliness and rootlessness that has descended upon him among his fellow countrymen. Strangely, he feels like a foreigner in his own homeland.

It feels wrong to find the artifacts of Nineveh displayed for the amusement of the wealthy and the powerful. The people of Mesopotamia, the descendants of the scribes who composed the tablets and the artisans who chiseled the statues, will never have a chance to see these pieces.

You go to distant lands hoping to find something entirely different from what you had at home, never suspecting that you will return a changed person. Arthur cannot say exactly when it happened, at what crossroads, but he is not the same man anymore. Mesopotamia keeps calling him. In dream after dream, he is walking on liquid deserts, or sailing on shifting sands, only to wake up with a feeling of emptiness. He is worried that he has left something behind, a part of him that was fragile but genuine, mislaid in that region whose customs he does not always understand and whose myriad faiths and sects leave him perplexed, where even the water has its own distinctive taste; and yet, despite all that unfamiliarity, it has taken hold of his heart. The Tigris has seeped into his life and solidified, like dripping wax.

blanquettes of lamb, croquettes of fish

“In those days, in those far-off days…in olden times…the sky and the land were one. The world was a blank tablet, waiting for the first words to form. Everything was in harmony—bitter waters and sweet waters blended seamlessly. Tiamat was the goddess of the sea—the saltwater—and Apsu was the god of springs—the fresh water. They were very different, but they fell in love.” “Then what happened?” “From their union rose other deities. When her beloved husband was killed, Tiamat wanted revenge. She was formidable, strong-willed. She assembled an army of mythical creatures and charged against the forces of Marduk—her arch-enemy. The war went on for a long time, but Marduk came up with a plan. He asked the wind to enter Tiamat’s mouth. Her body grew as big as the world. He then easily killed her with an arrow. Earth was created from her decomposing body, and from her crying eyes sprang the two legendary rivers of Mesopotamia: Tigris and Euphrates.”

“So both rivers were made from a woman’s tears.”

She says when we look at a person all we see in that moment is a partial image of them, often subconsciously biased. They appear successful and content, and so we conclude there must be something wrong with us, since we cannot be more like them. But that image is not the full reality and nor are we that simple or static. “We are all like clay tablets, chipped around the edges, hiding our little secrets and cracks.”

We learn to accept there’ll always be something amiss, something broken, and unless we are kind to ourselves it won’t change, this feeling of incompleteness.”

They called her Nisaba, though, depending on the place and the era, she went by other names, too: Nidaba, Naga, Se-Naga…The goddess of grain and harvest, the one who holds sway over the rain, directing every drop that falls from the sky. In her pictures, she carries, in one hand, a stalk of wheat—the symbol of life, renewal and rebirth; in her other hand, she holds a gold stylus and a tablet of lapis lazuli. The roots of agriculture and the roots of literature are intertwined, and it is none other than Nisaba who braids them like a lock of her hair. Nisaba is born of the union of heavens and earth, realms that seem so different and distant that it may not be clear what they have in common, and thus her gift—the art of writing—will always represent a desire to efface dualities, dissolve hierarchies and transcend boundaries. As Mesopotamian cities burgeon and trade flourishes, the need for record-keeping increases. Each transaction must be noted with precision—goods, prices, debts…Yet human memory is fallible. Mnemonic markers—scoring impressions into the bark of trees, scratching charcoal shapes on stones, painting lines on the bones of sheep—are no longer enough. A new method is called for. Something so versatile that it can link numbers and sounds not only to the inanimate but even to abstract ideas and intangible feelings. A more advanced form of script becomes imperative. Writing as a way to remember. But how? The rivers help, as they always do. The Tigris and the Euphr...

Her name is carved on temple walls, inscribed on amulets. She is the patron of archivists and librarians; the one who whispers into the ears of balladeers and storytellers. They invoke her when in need of inspiration. She comes to their aid in moments of confusion. She is the chronicler of time, the collector of stories, the custodian of memories.