There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

And thus Arthur starts to assemble an ancient story, piece by broken piece. Powerful and remorseless, Gilgamesh is a callous brute at the start of the epic. He deflowers newly married women on their wedding nights, attacks their humiliated husbands, tyrannizes entire communities. Deluded by hubris, infatuated by desire, blinded by ambition, he is ultimately debased and humbled by failure. This is something that puzzles Arthur. In all the books he has read, the heroes were apparent, clearly delineated. That they were superior to others in talent, courage, or intelligence was beyond doubt. But in the Mesopotamian imagination nothing is definite. The divine and the mundane, the good and the evil, the overworld and the netherworld—all are in a perpetual dance. Gilgamesh, the earliest recorded tale in the history of humanity, the oldest surviving poem, is also startlingly fluid and fluctuating, as its principal character shifts and pivots, repeatedly failing his trials. The-hero-that-is-no-hero matures only after multiple defeats. The narrative breaks apart and is restored again, like the sea that smashes against the jetty, destroying and renewing itself.