There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

Justice, if it is to be at all meaningful, needs to be recorded.

The temple at Eresh, dedicated to Nisaba, is known as Esagin, the “House of Lapis Lazuli,” for this is her stone and this is her color. The goddess of knowledge and storytelling is imagined in the deepest shade of blue.

In the time of Hammurabi of Babylon, a new fear enters hearts. The harshest punishments are set into laws, terror inscribed in stone. The code favors might, the code favors men—and therefore women, children, slaves, outsiders and men who do not have any power or wealth are all deemed inferior.

Women accused of neglecting their homes are cast into the river. The Tigris, ever patient with the ways of humans, receives their bodies.

But the tradition of Nisaba will remain rooted in the very place where it was born, and it will also perish there, her tablets broken, her stylus buried by the banks of the Tigris. The transition complete, the goddess of writing will be erased—the lady of memory forgotten for eternity.

like otters,” says Zaleekhah. “They link paws so they don’t drift away from each other. That’s how they survive.” And that is what they do that night. Downstairs on the single bed, they lie down, fingers entwined, listening to the swishing of water against the hull.

“You were with your parents on the night they died. I’ve been thinking about it—thinking about you. Your reaction to water, so visceral, and your sorrow so close to the surface, barely submerged.

They sit silently for a moment, absorbing the weight of what has been left unsaid.

The Maleks never forced her to speak, tiptoeing around her silence as if it were a sleeping baby not to be disturbed.

A couple of times Aunt Malek suggested the child should see a therapist, but Uncle was adamant that what she needed was a stable family environment and goals high enough to keep her mind busy. The family took good care of her. When they thought she was out of earshot, they spoke of her in whispers. She heard them sometimes.

“Pray, stop. You are embarrassing yourself,” Mabel says flatly. “Such sentimentality. No gentleman would speak in this manner. It is unseemly—no wonder people find you effeminate, and surely you know that, with your foppish clothes and mawkish poems.

The memory of the massacre will be carefully handed down from one generation to the next, like passing someone a lit match protected from the wind in the shelter of your palm.

To date he has perceived the world in clear-cut oppositions—West versus East, new versus old, science versus superstition, civilized versus unenlightened, and somehow, without putting it into as many words, he has also set the Thames against the Tigris…Such polarities have provided him with the certainty he needed to carry on.

It is an odd thing, to lose faith in the beliefs you once held firmly. How strange it is to have carried your convictions like a set of keys, only to realize they will not open any doors.

Narin knows two mighty streams flow through every human being: the good and the bad. Which course we choose to follow—through heart, spirit and mind—ultimately determines who we are. Some people will do everything they can to avoid hurting another person, even in the most desperate of situations, while others will inflict suffering as casually as if they were swatting away a fly.

but even the worst villains knew, deep down, that what they did was wrong. They did not pretend otherwise. They might try to justify their actions and even adopt the appearance of virtue to hoodwink others into thinking them good, but they did not, for a moment, imagine themselves to be virtuous.

By contrast, the fanatics who slaughter the innocent and defenseless, pillaging villages, enslaving women and children, believe themselves to be holy. With every sorrow and suffering they rain on other humans, they expect to earn favor in the eyes of God, move closer to completing the bridge from this world to their exclusive paradise. How can anyone assume they will please the Creator by hurting His Creation? Nowhere in Grandma’s tales did even the most depraved practice such self-delusion.

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 life. Narin lifts her chin, tears streaming down her cheeks. Where can she hope to find light when she is hemmed in by darkness?

How often in her young life has she heard this slander, and yet it still hurts like the very first time.

“I wish our fate had been like those in Halabja,” says Salma. “Innocents were murdered by that brutal Saddam. They inhaled poison into their lungs, poor souls.

Arthur is surprised to see that the tablet is dedicated not to Nabu, as usual, but to some unknown goddess called Nisaba.

Mesopotamia is made of stories of water. Across its alluvial plains, the oldest tales are dedicated to streams, storms and floods. The Sumerian word for water, a—just like the Kurdish word aw—also means conception, semen, beginning.

Rivers are fluid bridges—channels of communication between separate worlds. They link one bank to the other, the past to the future, the spring to the delta, earthlings to celestial beings, the visible to the invisible, and, ultimately, the living to the dead. They carry the spirits of the departed into the netherworld, and occasionally bring them back. In the sweeping currents and tidal pools shelter the secrets of foregone ages. The ripples on the surface of water are the scars of a river. There are wounds in its shadowy depths that even time cannot heal.

The songs of this land, though seemingly about love or heartbreak, are actually about place—both the beau...

They are the first to experience the pain of losing a motherland.

Mesopotamian lore understands that water is the defining force of life. Trees are “rooted water,” streams are “flowing water,” birds are “flying water,” mountains are “rising water,” and, as for humans, they are, and will always be, “warring water,” never at peace.

Water has memory. Rivers are especially good at remembering.

“Cream-crackered?

Despite the videos circulating of militants tearing down statues, vandalizing libraries and burning books, behind the display of indiscriminate destruction enormous profits are being made from smuggled artifacts.

Everyone in this world has some bent or inclination which, if fostered by favorable circumstances, will color the rest of his life.

and a modicum of support, anyone can elevate their skill. In the end, perhaps what separates one individual from another is not talent but passion. And what is passion if not a restlessness of the heart, an intense yearning to surpass your limits, like a river overflowing its banks?

Love is a puzzle in cuneiform, one he has not been able to solve.

The blue tablet is exceptional, but, as he ruminates about it, his own fallibility hits him. To whom does the object belong—the itinerant bards who recited the poem, traveling from city to city; the king who ordered it to be put in writing; the scribe who labored in setting it down; the librarian who scrupulously stored it; the archeologist who unearthed it centuries later; the museum that will keep it safe—or does it belong only to the people of this land, and, if so, will minorities like the Yazidis ever be counted among them? He has gifted Leila one of the tablets he found, but should he have given them all to her?

We’ll do this for our daughter and our granddaughter.” Zaleekhah tries to hold back the tears. “Of course—your family always comes first.”

They bought Narin from a dealer who did business with a dealer who did business with ISIS. They paid $3,200—the market price for a human being on that particular day. Most of the money came from the tattoo shop. They had assistance from locals, people who wanted to help. It was no secret that one more Yazidi slave was being held captive in a house in a busy suburb in a booming city in Turkey, just as thousands of others were still in family homes in Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia…Prisoners in ordinary neighborhoods where life went on as normal.

What she doesn’t know is how difficult it is to get the necessary permissions and paperwork for any such move. Nothing is clear yet. The only definite thing is that her old life is no more.

people will speak of the destruction of culture and environment and the memories of the land, though no one, not even the river itself, will remember that it all began with a single raindrop.