On the fourth morning, as death quickens its pace, Grandma gives the last of the water she has so carefully guarded to Narin. She places the drop from a plastic bottle with a blue lid on the girl’s tongue as though it were a precious pearl. — She has no way of knowing, but this last drop on Mount Sinjar in August 2014 is the same one that fell on Nineveh one stormy afternoon, thousands of years back, settling in the hair of King Ashurbanipal.
