There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

For the king knows that in order to dominate other cultures, you must capture not only their lands, crops and assets but also their collective imagination, their shared memories.

“Gilgamesh…” says the captive. “He wished to conquer death and so he traveled to the ends of the world—but he failed. He did not see that the only way to become immortal is to be remembered after you have gone, and the only way to be remembered is to leave behind a good story.

Once, it was poems and stories that brought joy into his life, reading as much a part of his being as the instinct to breathe. Nothing gave him more pleasure than mentoring the young prince, the two of them reclining on plump cushions discussing literature, reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and marveling at the beauties of the world—did he create a monster from that softly spoken boy with the gentle smile or was the monster within the boy all along? He will never know. Now his entire body is a furnace scorching words to cinders, turning all the verses he has studied to ash.

This afternoon, as Ashurbanipal—the leader of the wealthiest empire in the world, the last of the great rulers of the kingdom of Assyria, the third-born son of Esarhaddon but the chosen heir to the throne and his father’s favorite, the patron and founder of a magnificent library that will change the course of history—sets fire to his erstwhile teacher and burns his childhood memories along with him, the raindrop remains ensconced inside the king’s hair. Alone, small and terrified, it does not dare to move. It will never forget what it has witnessed today. It has been changed—forever. Even after centuries have passed, a trace of this moment will remain embedded in its elemental form.

As ripples of heat rise into the air, the raindrop will slowly evaporate. But it won’t disappear. Sooner or later, that tiny, translucent bead of water will ascend back to the blue skies. Once there, it will bide its time, waiting to return to this troubled earth again…and again. Water remembers. It is humans who forget.

That snowflake was a raindrop once upon a time, in a land far away. It passed through a sumptuous palace with a magnificent library, and witnessed exquisite gardens, extravagant fountains and unspeakable cruelties. It carries within the memories of its previous lives. The aura of an Assyrian king is impressed upon it, like an invisible fingerprint. Gently, it alights on the baby’s face, dropping between his open lips.

Arthur Smyth is gifted with an extraordinary memory—visual, verbal and sensory. Just as a drop of rain or a pellet of hail, water in whatever form, will always remember, he, too, will never forget. What he sees or what he hears or what he feels, even once, he retains forever. A remarkable talent, many will argue. A blessing from God, others may hasten to add. But also a terrible curse, as he will soon find out.

Dilê min—“my heart.” That is how Grandma expresses her affection, by turning her own body into an anatomy of love. When she misses Narin, she says, “Come and sit next to me, the corner of my liver”; when she wants to raise her spirits, she says, “Cheer up, the pulse of my neck”; when she cooks her favorite food, she says, “Eat up, the light of my eye; if your tummy is full, then mine rejoices”; and when she wishes to advise her that there is a hidden blessing in every trial, she says, “Don’t forget, my soul, if God closes one door, He opens another. That is why you must never despair, the air in my lungs.” Heart, liver, stomach, lungs, neck, eyes, soul…It is as if love, by its fluid nature, its riverine force, is all about the melding of markers, to the extent that you can no longer tell where your being ends and another’s begins.

Ideally, they all acknowledge, the baptism ceremony, Mor Kirin, should be performed in Lalish, the holiest temple of the Yazidi faith, tucked away in a peaceful valley surrounded by undulating hills north of Mosul in Iraq. Narin should wear a wreath of flowers around her head—daffodils, periwinkles, gardenias. She should drink from the sacred fountain of Zamzam and then be baptized at Kaniya Spî, the “White Spring”—the only place on earth that remained safe and clean when God sent down the Great Flood. Miraculously forming a whirlpool, the spring never mixed with the muddy, dirty floodwaters, staying forever pure.

People across the region, from every sect, creed and tribe, have been affected by the construction of the dam. But for the tiny Yazidi community, added to the sadness of losing their ancestral land is the fear of being subject to discrimination in the places where they are to be resettled. Leaving home is never easy, but it is much, much harder when you have nowhere to go.

Once upon a time there was a large, flourishing Yazidi community in and around Hasankeyf, connected by custom and faith as much as by stories and songs. Their numbers dwindled with every decade of deprivation, migration and forced conversion. Today only twelve Yazidis are left in their village, and tomorrow, they, too, will be gone.

Before that day arrives, Grandma believes, the girl should hear the birds, susurrations and prayers of the sacred Valley of Lalish for the first and last time. Narin should behold the one place on earth where despair turns into hope and even the loneliest souls find solace.

The ear never forgets what the heart has heard.”

“That is what happens when you love someone—you carry their face behind your eyelids, and their whispers in your ears, so that even in deep sleep, years later, you can still see and hear them in your dreams.”

“Well, this world is a school and we are its students. Each of us studies something as we pass through. Some people learn love, kindness. Others, I’m afraid, abuse and brutality. But the best students are those who acquire generosity and compassion from their encounters with hardship and cruelty. The ones who choose not to inflict their suffering on to others. And what you learn is what you take with you to your grave.”

“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.”

“It means it’s not the harmer who bears the scars, but the one who has been harmed. For us, memory is all we have. If you want to know who you are, you need to learn the stories of your ancestors. Since time immemorial, the Yazidis have been misunderstood, maligned, mistreated. Ours is a history of pain and persecution. Seventy-two times we have been massacred. The Tigris turned red with our blood, the soil dried up with our grief—and they still haven’t finished hating us.”

Arabella is unwell—again. People tell him something is the matter with her head, an excessive sentimentality strains her fragile nerves—a quintessentially female condition, they say. But Arthur believes that if only his mother could eat better and not have to be cold and in penury all the time, she could be cured. She could be happy.

Words always come to him with their distinctive flavors. “Accident” is gamey, like burning fat and stale sausages, bags o’ mystery, whose ingredients no one really knows. “School” has a pungency that lingers on the tongue, like licking old boots. And “mother” is buttery, warm and sweet, though with an acidic undertone, reminiscent of an apple pie gone sour. For years, Arthur assumed it must be the same for everyone, that other people also experienced similar associations, until he realized this was not the case. Since then he has been careful not to mention it to anyone. A quiet boy by nature, there are lots of things he keeps to himself.

The pupils, many of whom are so poor they risk frostbite from sleeping in cheap lodgings, groan as they set to calculate wealth the likes of which they have never known and never will.

“No, not like that. The whole city was destroyed by its enemies. It was tragic: everything Ashurbanipal built was reduced to rubble. Nothing remained, only ruins. Precious artifacts were covered under hills of sand. Until we British arrived and rescued them from oblivion. Well, the French were excavating, too, but never mind them. This was solely our discovery!”

One by one the gas lamps along the street come alive, casting a brave glow into the gathering darkness. Tomorrow morning, the same man will appear again to snuff out each one. An unwavering pendulum swings between day and night. Light and shadow. Good and bad. Perhaps it is the same with past and present—they are not completely distinct. They bleed into each other.

“People like us”…immigrants, exiles, refugees, newcomers, outsiders…Too many words for a shared, recognizable sentiment that, no matter how often described, remains largely undefined. Children of uprooted parents are born into the memory tribe. Both their present and their future are forever shaped by their ancestral past, regardless of whether they have any knowledge of it. If they flourish and prosper, their achievements will be attributed to a whole community; and, in the same way, their failures will be chalked up to something bigger and older than themselves, be it family, religion or ethnicity. While the journey of life may be full of reversals of fortune, children from displaced families can never allow themselves to fall below the level at which their parents started out. Yet she is doing precisely that. Falling. Failing. She cannot help but feel that, in letting herself down, she is letting her ancestors down.

A tear falls on the back of her hand. Lacrimal fluid, composed of intricate patterns of crystallized salt invisible to the eye. This drop, water from her own body, containing a trace of her DNA, was a snowflake once upon a time or a wisp of steam, perhaps here or many kilometers away, repeatedly mutating from liquid to solid to vapor and back again, yet retaining its molecular essence. It remained hidden under the fossil-filled earth for tens if not thousands of years, climbed up to the skies and returned to earth in mist, fog, monsoon or hailstorm, perpetually displaced and relocated. Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.

But Grandma’s specialty is of an entirely different kind. She treats those who are afflicted by anxiety, depression and maladies of the mind. She relies on the potency of plants, preparing concentrated tinctures that are widely sought across the region. Yet the key element for her is, and always has been, water. She says it washes away disease, purifies the mind, calms the heart. Water is the best cure for melancholy.

“I wish we had a huge ship,” says Narin. “Then we could take all the animals and plants with us and sail away.” “Like Baba Noah,” says Grandma. “He built an ark and invited his family and friends on board. He brought two of every animal, and he did not forget to take pistachios so they could grow into trees someday. And when the flood rose, the ship drifted away. They rode the waves for a long time, until the timbers scraped dry land. With a bone-jarring jolt they stopped at the peak of a mountain—Sinjar.” “Where is Mount Sinjar?” “It’s in Iraq. When we travel to Nineveh with your father, before you’re baptized in the holy Valley of Lalish, I can tell you more about it.” Narin beams. “Listen, that was not all,” says Grandma. “When the ship crashed into the mountaintop, a hole opened up in the hull. Floodwaters poured in. They were all going to die—humans, animals and plants. But then, out of nowhere, a black snake appeared! It coiled and coiled like a thick rope, plugging the breach. Thanks to the serpent, everyone was saved. For this reason, we Yazidis respect serpents and depict them at the entrance of sacred buildings. In our village, we also remember the great Shahmaran—‘the Snake Queen.’ She has a woman’s head and a snake’s body.” “How can something be both human and animal at the same time?” “Oh, it’s possible. We aren’t that different. All over Mesopotamia there were hybrid creatures once upon a time. In fact, my grandmother Leila saw one in her youth. It was a gian...

If, as the poets say, the journey of life resembles the march of rivers to the sea, at times meandering aimlessly, at others purposeful and unswerving, the bend in the flow is where the story takes a sudden turn, winding away from its predicted course into a fresh and unexpected direction. Becoming an apprentice at one of England’s leading printing and publishing houses is the twist that changes Arthur’s destiny forever.

“Words are like birds,” says Mr. Bradbury. “When you publish books, you are setting caged birds free. They can go wherever they please. They can fly over the highest walls and across vast distances, settling in the mansions of the gentry, in farmsteads and laborers’ cottages alike. You never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet songs.”

More and more, he comes to realize that people fall into three camps: those who hardly, if ever, see beauty, even when it strikes them between the eyes; those who recognize it only when it is made apparent to them; and those rare souls who find beauty everywhere they turn, even in the most unexpected places.

How strange that having money makes one feel less safe.

If poverty were a place, a hostile landscape into which you were deliberately pushed or accidentally stumbled, it would be an accursed forest—a damp and gloomy wildwood suspended in time. The branches clutch at you, the boles block your way, the brambles draw you in, determined not to let you out. Even when you manage to cut down one obstacle, instantly it is replaced by another. You tear the skin off your hands as you work doggedly to clear a path elsewhere, but the moment you turn your back the trees close in on you again. Poverty saps your will, little by little.

How can a man hold so much loathing in his heart for his own flesh and blood? He wonders, and not for the first time, what his father sees when he looks at him. Does he despise him because they are very different? Or is it just the opposite—is it because he cannot bear to recognize himself in his son?

It always surprises Zaleekhah how little thought and even less research humanity has devoted to water—the oldest and most common substance ever known. Older than the earth. Older than the sun. And millions of years older than the solar system itself. Given all the advances in technology, people assume that science understands water, but, in truth, only a small number of scientists specialize in the field and much remains to be discovered. Water is still the biggest mystery. Studying how it responds to growing threats—overpopulation, chemical pollution, habitat alteration, acidification and biodiversity loss—has brought Zaleekhah to the conclusion that every drop of rain that emerges through the aquatic cycle is, in its own way, a tiny survivor. If she’d had a streak of spirituality, she would have called it sacred.

Uncle often says that, while others can decide on a simple and unassuming life, those who come from troubled regions or difficult backgrounds do not have that luxury. For every displaced person understands that uncertainty is not tangential to human existence but the very essence of it. Since one can never be sure what tomorrow will bring, one cannot trust Dame Fortuna—the goddess of destiny and luck—even when she seems to favor you for once. One needs to always be prepared for a crisis, calamity or sudden exodus. Being an outsider is all about survival, and no one survives by being unambitious; no one gets ahead by holding back. Immigrants don’t die of existential fatigue or nihilistic boredom; they die from working too hard.

Something wells up in his chest—a new desire. The world is immense, and the life he has tasted but a mere speck in the spectrum of possibilities and destinies available to human beings. Beyond the shores of the River Thames, there are other capitals, old and modern, each with its own tempests and tides, meandering, flowing. He is seized, and not for the first time, by an urge to travel far and wide, a frightening impulse for an introvert like him. He longs to see distant kingdoms and provinces whose tongues are foreign and customs different, not just to read about them in books.

King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums Born by the River Thames 1840 Died by the River Tigris 1876 “Hi, Arthur…” she says. “I’m sorry you’ll be submerged in water when they finish building the dam. Our houses and grapevines and fig groves, even Grandma’s pistachio trees, will drown…Hasankeyf is going to disappear. It’s very sad, but there’s nothing we can do about it. The government wants us all to leave. You won’t be seeing our community again.”

The grave of her great-great-grandmother Leila is situated diagonally across, pointing east toward the sunrise as is the custom, but in such a way as to directly overlook the Englishman’s resting place. It is as though, in her afterlife, she is keeping a watchful eye on him. By her grave, too, there is an old oak tree.

This is not just any dinner but a mortuary feast, organized as much for the living as for the dead. There are three parties to this gathering: the hosts, the guests and the deceased. Food is a language that brings them together beyond the borders of time and place.

“When we first moved to Hanover, the Germans hadn’t even heard of the Yazidi faith. In their eyes we were all Turkish and that was it. And then they learned a little more about the region, but this time they started calling us all Kurdish, and that was it. Again, we tried to explain. It took me years to be able to say openly and without fear, ‘I am Êzidî and I’d much rather you called me Êzidî instead of Yazidi, because it leads to a terrible misunderstanding.’ They think we are the descendants of Yazid, the Tyrant of Karbala, who killed the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, and they hate us. But we have nothing to do with any of that. Our name solely means ‘descendants of God.’ Our roots go all the way back to Ancient Mesopotamia.”

“Maybe I am naive. But I’m a musician, brother. I was a kid when I discovered the qanun in the house. They said, ‘Children can’t touch it, it’s more than a hundred years old.’ I wouldn’t stop crying unless they let me hold it. I didn’t sleep properly until I learned to play it. Now they invite me everywhere. Why? Because people need songs like they need bread and water. People need poetry, beauty, love! So long as the sun rises and rivers flow, there will always be weddings and celebrations and music. Even fanatics cannot change that.”

Since the day they were born, the two boys were so alike that no one could tell one from the other—this included the neighbors, the vendors and, at times, even their own mother. Now the healthy one is silent, his mind snagged on a gnawing suspicion that he will still be grappling with in his loneliest hours, long after he is a grown man. He wonders whether it is he who was meant to catch the disease and suffer instead of his brother, and if death, too, has mistaken them.

What they call a river is actually multiple rivers flowing in one. Running deep within the same body of water are several currents, like layers of skin that remain hidden to the eye but are scarred by the same wound.

Between 1853 and the last months of 1854, more than 10,740 Londoners die from the blue terror. Death roams the alleys, its earthy breath snuggling in closer as it slips through cracks in the walls and slides under doors, like the low fog. To survive and to heal, the city must reform, and any meaningful change needs to start with the Thames. Now that more people recognize the consequences of dumping filth into the very water they drink from, it is urgent that a proper sewage system is built. For too long Londoners have been saying the river is a silent murderer. But Arthur understands that it is, actually, the other way round. It is humans who are killing the water.

“The Bièvre—it’s buried under the French capital, and has been for a long time. It was an important waterway until the nineteenth century, when it became heavily polluted. They covered it over and basically forgot about it. The tourists who walk around Paris today admire the Seine, but they don’t realize there’s another river flowing beneath their feet.”

“All I’m saying is that if we don’t find a new approach, we’ll have worse floods in our cities every year. It’s not an impossible task. They’ve done it in Seoul. It’s called ‘daylighting’—returning a lost river to the open air.”

As a general rule, ghosts are better left alone. Why try to raise them from the dead?” “Because they’re still there.” Zaleekhah lowers her eyes and pushes away her plate. “Things don’t disappear just because we wish them to. Even if we cover them with concrete and build over them and pretend they never existed, they’re still part of us, all those ghosts that we thought we’d buried deep inside, and, if we don’t face up to them, they’ll continue to haunt us.”

“I like art very much, but I do not believe it to be my calling.” “So what is your talent, then?” Arthur considers. “Mr. Bradbury always told me I was good at seeing what others did not see—I am not sure whether that counts as a talent.” The author smiles. “It sounds like quite the gift to me. Perhaps you need time to discover how to use it. The sun is weak when it first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day goes on.”

My dear Arthur, I greatly enjoyed our exchange and I have subsequently given much thought to your words. You are a young man of considerable talent and commendable intelligence. I believe you must go to Nineveh and see the River Tigris for yourself. For reasons beyond your power, London has broken your heart. Perhaps when you arrive in the Orient, you will find it within yourself to forgive your home city, and its redoubtable river, the Thames. One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it is left behind. Ever your affectionate friend, Charles Dickens

“I know you don’t believe me, Narin, but a story is a flute through which truth breathes. And these are your family stories.”

“Remember, child, never look down upon anyone. You must treat everyone and everything with respect. We believe the earth is sacred. Don’t trample on it carelessly. Our people never get married in April, because that’s when the land is pregnant. You cannot dance and jump and stomp all over it. You have to treat it gently. Do not ever pollute the soil, the air or the river. That’s why I never spit on the ground. You shouldn’t do it either.”