There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

Grandma says one should also pay homage to the sun and the moon, which are celestial siblings. Every morning at dawn she goes up to the roof to salute the first light, and when she prays she faces the sun. After dark she sends a prayer to the orb of night. One must always walk the earth with wonder, for it is full of miracles yet to be witnessed. Trees you must think of not only for what they are above ground but also for what remains invisible below. Birds, rocks, tussocks and thickets of gorse, even the tiniest insects are to be treasured.

Ash is precious, essential for many cures. Sometimes Grandma dips a clove of garlic in the powdery residue and draws symbols on the forehead of an ailing patient. No one can touch that person until the mark completely wears off. At other times, Grandma takes a coin and bends it into a crescent. Then she drops the metal into a bowl of pellucid water, which she places under the bed of a sick person.

Numbers are important and Grandma’s favorite is seven. In order to process an emotion, be it good or bad, you must allow seven days to pass. So if you fall in love, with a lightness to your moves like the speck of pollen on the wing of a butterfly, you have to wait seven days, and, if after that period you still feel the same way, then and only then can you trust your heart. Never make a major decision unless you have spent seven days contemplating it. If you are cross with someone, or are on the verge of breaking ties with them, once again, you must delay any reaction for seven moons. This is the only way to ensure you will not be led astray by rage or revenge. A deal ought to brew for seven days before it is sealed; a house has to be blessed in seven corners before anyone moves in. You cannot bake a loaf of bread unless the yeast has rested for seven cycles. A newborn baby must be guarded from evil spirits for seven sunrises. There are seven days in a week, seven sages walking the earth, seven regions in the human body, seven sleepers in a cave escaping persecution, seven cardinal sins for which seven doors to hell have been reserved.

Of the seven days, Wednesdays are the most propitious. That is when Grandma prepares her balms, ointments and tinctures, because, as everyone knows, Melek Tawûs descended on this venerated day, making it the most auspicious time to do good. If you have a hidden wish, something too intimate to share, you may just as well whisper it to a flowing stream, preferably on a Wednesday. The current will take care of it. Equally, if you wake up from a nightmare in the ...

Grandma says one should be kind to every living being, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, for you can never know in what shape or form you or a loved one will be reborn. “Yesterday ...

Rivers have personalities. Some calm down with age, winding ponderously across fertile plains and meadows; others become bitter, surging with rage, tumbling through steep gorges; while yet others remain agitated and confused till the end. No two rivers are alike. The Tigris is, and has always been, “the mad one,” “the swift one.” Not like its twin, the Euphrates, which, having a gentler disposition, courses at a slower pace, taking its time, absorbing its surroundings as it passes by. These two mighty currents—though both spring from the womb of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey and run parallel for most of their lengthy peregrinations until they perish together in the Persian Gulf—are strikingly dissimilar—much as two siblings can be very different, despite sharing the same parents.

“They speak to each other, you know, the Tigris and the Euphrates. When the wind blows this way, you can hear them.” Narin scoffs. “Really—can you hear them now?” “I can, actually,” says the old woman, craning her neck. “Listen, they’re gossiping again, those two. They are very chatty. Euphrates is complaining. She says: ‘Why are you so restless, my Tigris? You’re tiring everyone—and yourself. Why this endless rage of yours?’ ” Narin draws closer. “And what does Tigris say?” “Tigris says, ‘Why’re you asking, my Euphrates? Even if I were to explain, you’d never understand. You’re blessed with calmness of spirit. I’m not like you. It’s so hard to be me—it’s hard to have to fight all the time.’ ” “And how does Euphrates reply?” “Let me see…” Grandma says, her head bent in concentration. For a while she listens, nodding. “Mm-hmm.” “Tell me!” “Oh, Euphrates says, ‘But you’re mistaken about me. If you only knew how difficult it is to be calm and composed. If you only knew, it takes a fierce fight inside to remain peaceful on the outside.’ ” “What does that mean?” “That tranquillity does not come easily.” The child is silent for a moment, her lips compressed. “Which river is wiser, do you think, Grandma?” “Well, if you promise not to mention it to our Tigris…” “I promise,” Narin says instantly. “Good, in that case I’ll tell you. Actually, I agree with Euphrates. Better to be a gentle soul than one consumed by anger, resentment and vengeance. Anyone can wage war, but maintaining p...

“Whether turbid or placid, in this land where the stones are ancient and the stories are spoken but rarely written down, it is the rivers that govern the days of our lives. Many kings have come and many kings have gone, and God knows most were ruthless, but here in Mesopotamia, my love, never forget the only true ruler is water.”

She says one should never claim to know a story but merely to carry it. For that is where chiroks must be kept—cradled in the warmth of your breast, close to your beating heart.

“Grandma…does every sickness in this world have a cure?” “It does, my love.” “How can you be sure?” “Because I trust God—He would not give us a stomachache without growing mint nearby.”

“Wisdom is a mountain capped with snow. I’ve yet to meet the person who’s given it a hug.” “What does that mean?” “It means no matter how much you know, there is far more that you don’t. So you must always make an effort to keep learning.

In those days, in those far-off days, in olden times…there lived a famous sheikh. One morning, he woke up and declared he’d studied everything worth knowing. He’d nothing left to learn! That same afternoon the angel Gibra’il appeared to him disguised as a dervish.” “What’s a dervish?” “A humble seeker of truth,” replies Grandma. “Now the dervish and the sheikh walked to the shores of the Tigris. When they reached the river, they watched a swallow swoop down, scoop up water and fly away. The dervish said to his companion, ‘Tell me, did the river sink any lower when the bird drank from it? Knowledge is a vast expanse of water, and you’ve managed to take in no more than the swallow’s beakful.’ The sheikh understood his mistake and realized that no matter how much one knows there is a lot more one does not.”

Most of Grandma’s stories feature water—surging, searching. She says, just like two drops of rain join on a windowpane, weaving their paths slowly and steadily, an invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet.

The divisions that make up class are, in truth, the borders on a map. When you are born into wealth and privilege, you inherit a plan that outlines the paths ahead, indicating the shortcuts and byways available to reach your destination, informing you of the lush valleys where you may rest and the tricky terrain to avoid. If you enter the world without such a map, you are bereft of proper guidance. You lose your way more easily, trying to pass through what you thought were orchards and gardens, only to discover they are marshland and peat bogs.

gallimaufry.”

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There is the mysterious River Fleet, for instance—the largest and most important of London’s subterranean rivers, the “hollow stream.” Once a broad tidal basin and an important artery bringing goods and business into the capital, it has repeatedly endured abuse at the hands of humans, choked and polluted with discarded carcasses and putrefying offal from the meat markets and tanneries lining its banks—next, all at once, it was deemed too filthy, too malodorous, too unpleasant to look at and therefore no longer of use. A solution was found to hide it from sight, cover its ugliness under stacks of bricks. It lay buried for about 250 years, until it was rediscovered and reopened—only to be buried again. A legendary river, then an open sewer, then an aimless canal, then an open sewer again and, eventually, forgotten by almost everyone. Still alive, though. A watery specter that refuses to die.

Toward the end of his life, the professor became preoccupied with a hypothesis he referred to in his notes as “aquatic memory.” He argued that, under certain circumstances, water—the universal solvent—retained evidence, or “memory,” of the solute particles that had dissolved in it, no matter how many times it was diluted or purified. Even if years passed, or centuries, and not a single original molecule remained, each droplet of water maintained a unique structure, distinguishable from the next, marked forever by what it once contained. Water, in other words, remembered.

It doesn’t occur to him that we are drawn to the kind of stories that are already present within us, germinating and pushing their way through to the surface, like seeds ready to sprout at the first hint of sun.

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.

“Tell me the story of the Flood…” “What do you want to know about it, my heart?” “How did it start?” “With a single drop of water.” Grandma cranes her head as if to see better through a keyhole into some other space. “It fell from the infinite skies—a harbinger of what was to come. No one paid it any attention, of course. Then it started to rain in earnest, and it didn’t stop for days and nights. The rivers rose, the land disappeared. Many died, but we Yazidis were saved thanks to a brave woman—her name was Pira-Fat.” “Wait! What happened to Baba Noah and the Ark?” “That was the first Flood, Tofanê Nebî Noh—it affected the children of Adam and Eve. As I told you before, we descend from Adam alone; Eve was not involved in our creation. The second Flood impacted the Yazidis, but we survived.” “How?” “Thanks to Mother Pira-Fat. She could float above the waters like a bird or a butterfly or an angel, you might also say. In her hands she held a glass jar. She put our seeds there, and after the waters retreated she planted our seeds, and so we grew back like plants and populated the earth again.” “So there were two Floods, then?” “At least two, for sure. But when I was a girl I heard community elders say, actually, there were three—if not more.” Narin sighs. “I just don’t understand why God keeps doing this.” “Doing what?” “I mean, afflicting us with storms and torrents.” “Well, others might say it is His way of punishing humans for going astray. The waves are sent down to clean...

There are extraordinary people who appear unexpectedly on our paths, and, just as suddenly, they disappear, leaving their indelible marks and a sense of regret. Brief and bright, like a match striking a flame in the dark, they heat the damp kindling of our hearts and then they are gone.

“Gentlemen, the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible. Bear in mind that this poem was handed down orally for centuries before being recorded by scribes and kept in the library of King Ashurbanipal. This means that the Mesopotamian narrative of the Flood is actually much older than the Ark of Noah in the Holy Scriptures. I leave it to you to decide as to the implications of this finding.”

“My lords, gentlemen, the story of humanity cannot be written without the story of water.” Arthur clutches the edge of the lectern to stop himself from trembling. “Yet we hardly pay sufficient regard to this remarkable compound on which our lives and our futures depend. The findings that I intend to present to you today concern rivers and rainstorms, and the memory of an ancient flood. That memory, distressing as it was, has never left the people of the land that I will be talking about—Mesopotamia. As many here will already know, this word, in Greek, means ‘between rivers.’ ”

His voice rising with excitement, he tells them that thousands of years ago, in Nineveh, there lived a remarkable king called Ashurbanipal. Unlike any other ruler, before or after, he was devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. To this end he amassed a monumental library, ordering his emissaries to gather tablets from far and wide. Gilgamesh is merely one of the many stories in this library—an important one nonetheless. It was an essential part of the oral tradition, central to the collective imagination long before it was written down on clay around 1800 BC, all of which sets the date of the epic almost a thousand years before the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, nearly a millennium before the Book of Genesis. A thin film of perspiration on his brow, Arthur explains how Ashurbanipal’s library was burned when the city was attacked by its enemies. The destruction was total, palaces and temples reduced to naught. The inhabitants were slaughtered, treasures looted, buildings razed to the ground. But, being made of river mud and water, cuneiform tablets proved astonishingly resilient. While flames can easily consume papyrus and parchment, and devour rolls of paper, they cannot harm clay. Quite the opposite, in fact: the fire only baked and hardened them further. This is how they have survived under the earth while centuries have come and gone.

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“Oh, I’m an only child.” “And what was that like growing up?” “A bit lonely,” says Zaleekhah. “But my cousin Helen was like a sister to me, if that counts.” “Cousins, friends, books, songs, poems, trees…anything that brings meaning into our lives counts.”

“Well, I’d say, it is a typical case of melancholy,” says the doctor. “And how exactly would that be defined?” The physician explains that in a recently published article on insanity by his esteemed colleague Dr. Blandford, four different types of melancholy have been identified: gloomy, restless, mischievous and self-complacent. Each has a different root cause, and thus requires its own treatment. “Which one afflicts my mother?” Arthur asks. “Restless melancholy,” replies the man firmly. “And is that very bad?” “A rather precarious combination, I am afraid. The restlessness exhausts the mind, making it extremely hard to quieten down. Meanwhile the melancholy, an unreasonable sadness, paralyzes the body. It is almost like being pulled in two opposing directions at the same time.” Arthur wonders if sadness can ever be unreasonable. What if it has its own reasons, even if they may not be obvious to others?

There are invisible beings all around that offer help and guidance without humans ever realizing, let alone appreciating, it. Sore-Soran controls the winds and sends a cool breeze when it gets unbearably hot. Mama-Rasan is in charge of harvests, doing her best to grow crops. Xatuna-Farxa is the patroness of pregnant women and toddlers. Pira-Fat, for her part, watches over younger babies, particularly in their first forty days. Mama-Sivan and Garvane-Zarzan protect shepherds and their flocks. And Mama-Rasan is the one who helps when water is scarce. That is why, during times of drought, when the earth is dry like cinders, Grandma takes a ritual cup and asks Narin to write these words inside: Don’t Forget Us, Mama-Rasan. Then she holds up the cup to the skies and says, “Fill it, God. Fill it with Thy mercy.” There is also Pira-Ster, a benevolent spirit who appears in the shape of a gray-haired woman. During daytime she sleeps but as soon as night falls she starts roaming about the house, moving the furniture around. She is caring, if a little crazy and unpredictable. Xudāne-Mālē, “master of the house,” resides inside the fireplace and keeps the family safe. Khalil-Ibrahim, a “friend of God,” looks after larders and pantries. Then there is Jin-Tayyar—the “flying djinni.” Full of mischief and not always well behaved, he likes playing tricks on people. But, while he delights in outwitting those who think they are smart, he is considerate with the weak and the vulnerable. Narin ...

“He was cruel. But it’s also important to ask how everyone else behaved when calamity struck. Many just watched. Some even rushed to fetch wood, to add to the blaze. The lizard, for instance. Only a few good souls tried to save Ibrahim—like the frog. It filled its mouth with water and spat it into the flames, and kept doing this, until it was exhausted. The lizard laughed and said, ‘You are tiny, the fire is massive, what do you think you’ll achieve with your itty-bitty water?’ But the frog said, ‘If I were to do nothing, would I be any different from you?’ Now that was a wise frog. We must always listen to our conscience and help those in need. We don’t throw gasoline on a burning man. We carry him water.”

“Remember, my heart. Story-time is different from clock-time.” Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also appreciates small acts of kindness. That is why minorities do not live in clock-time. They live in story-time.

even though the two families were neighbors, and they shared many a laugh and gossip together, the girl’s parents refrained from eating their food because they regarded Yazidis as heathens. “They thought our bread, even our water, was haram,” Grandma says. “How can that be? We were children. We were friends.” “I’m so sorry, Grandma.” “I’m not telling this to upset you. I want to strengthen your resolve. Our ancestors were resilient and passed this resilience down through generations. But no matter how tall your grandfather, you have to do your own growing.”

Home is where your loved ones are, but the reverse is also true. Those you love are your sanctuary, your shelter, your country and even, when it comes to that, your exile. Wherever they go, you will follow.

The poverty and hardship of his upbringing have kept him from knowing such luxuries. He has no idea what it is like not to have to work every moment of each day, to go for a walk for no other reason than to see and to be seen.

3:34 a.m. She often wakes, to the minute, at this interstice between midnight and dawn. Brahmamuhurtha, the time of the Creator, when light energy is at its strongest, according to various faiths. The most opportune moment to burrow into your own soul and face your deepest fears, they say.

“I forgot to ask: the name of your shop is intriguing—The Forgotten Goddess. What does it mean?” “Her name was Nisaba.” Nen leans forward, as if to confide a secret. “The goddess of writing and agriculture. They called her the ‘Lady colored like the stars of heaven.’ She was the spark of inspiration behind every story and poem. The patron of storytellers, poets and bards.”

That’s the thing about failing: either it makes you super-afraid of failing again or, somehow, you learn to overcome fear.”

That’s for all the women who have gone through some shit of their own—she who saw the deep.”

“People think a tattoo is an act of rebellion or something, but, actually, it’s a form of storytelling. That’s what most customers come in for—not just some random image or word in ink. They come because they have a story to tell.”

“You mean he failed—like any other human being.” “I guess you can put it that way. I was brought up to think differently, though. Uncle always says people like us cannot afford to fail. Immigrants, I mean.” Nen jams her hands in her pockets. “I don’t know your uncle, but I respectfully disagree. I’d have thought especially an immigrant would understand what it feels like to meet loss and still not be defeated.”

He is surprised to learn that the Turks regard storks with great respect, believing that the birds make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and return each year, wiser and holier. There are fewer camels in this city than he expected, but once he sees two of them collide in a lane. The riders instantly find a solution: the camel with the lighter load sits while the other jumps over it. Unspoken agreements and unwritten rules govern daily life, and they must be obeyed by humans and animals alike.

He says, you are a kind person, but you must be careful because you are endowed with a restless heart.” Arthur’s eyes widen as he recalls the line uttered by Gilgamesh’s mother: Why did you endow my son with a restless heart? You have moved him to travel…Just as he wonders if the man might have heard of the epic, another stream of words follows. “What is he saying now?” “That there is a river running through you—whatever that means.”

“All this was once a momentous empire. At its height, Assyria covered Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and parts of Turkey. It was powerful, not only because it was rich but also because it sowed fear. When they conquered a new land, they forced the entire population to migrate. That was cruel. People lost their connection with their birthplace.”

Father says thousands of years later, Yazidi settlements were similarly wiped off the map when Saddam ordered that they be destroyed to make way for the Mosul Dam. All at once the villagers were left homeless. In their own motherland, they became refugees. Saddam also built reservoirs and dikes to divert water from the marshlands—which used to be so green and fertile that many believed them to be the original Garden of Eden. But the tyrant wanted to teach the Marsh Arabs a lesson, and, in doing so, send a message to all dissidents. “You know, Marsh Arabs used to grow rice and cane reeds—and scented cucumbers. Ah, that smell! But when the dictator decimated the marshlands, the water became undrinkable, full of salt. The buffalos were poisoned. The plants died. Twenty thousand square kilometers of bountiful soil, imagine, crumbled into wasteland. People starved to death.” Father says that, in the chaos following the American invasion, all the chemicals and rubble from fuel and weapons contaminated the Tigris. And the Mosul Dam, which Saddam in all his hubris had once named after himself, has now been declared the most perilous dam in the world, built on poor foundations of soluble rock that are dissolving by the day. At some point in the future it could collapse, and, if that happens, in only a matter of hours it will inundate Mosul and the surrounding area, engulfing houses and fields as well as thousands of years of history. He says that one ancient city in particular is i...

The longer he spends in Mesopotamia, the deeper his surprise at its complexities. Its many religions, creeds and sects bewilder him. People from the same area, even from the same town, can be stunningly different. But there are also things that feel oddly familiar from his readings on ancient civilizations. He recognizes certain continuities: the irrigation canals, the unchanging landscape, the bullrushes on the riverbanks…Especially in the south, both houses and boats are made of reeds, and sometimes the same materials are used and reused—houses into boats, boats into houses. If he closes his eyes, he can easily imagine himself in the days of King Ashurbanipal. In some ways it is as though hardly any time has passed, and thousands of years were a mere puff of wind. The past, no matter how remote or unknown, is not bygone. It is alive. The past is a clay tablet, worn and chipped, but hardened by the heat of centuries.

The Tigris is an old river and like everything that has lived for that long, it is liquid memory. “Fast-moving” in Old Persian, “arrowlike” in its inexhaustible agility. The Ancients called it “the tiger.” Idigna in Sumerian, Hiddekel in Hebrew, Dijlah in Arabic, Ava Mezin in Kurdish—“the Great Water.” 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.

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.

Pensively, he shakes his head. “I am not interested in gold. I am looking for an ancient poem about the Great Flood.” The sheikh lifts his chin. “Well, then, you are in the right place because this is where it all happened—the Ark and the Deluge. We believe seven thousand years have passed since—every millennium one of the seven angels descended to earth to help humankind—not that humans have learned much.”

A faqra, they tell him, can detect things that others walk past without noticing. She knows the landscape in the way a reed warbler knows the ins and outs of marsh waters. She can tell a storm from the flight of herons, the shape of ant hills or the antics of spiders. A faqra learns things she wishes she never did and, once she does, she cannot unlearn them. This is why it is said that they die early, their hearts unable to carry the burden for too long. That first night in the village, Arthur learns that to be a Yazidi one must be born into the faith. Since no one can convert in or marry out, and since the community has been attacked and forcefully converted so many times, its population remains small in number in comparison with their neighbors. The sheikh’s adopted daughter comes from a long line of seers. They recount the past and predict the future, unveil mysteries that remain shrouded from the rest of us. Although a gift, it is also an affliction that must be borne with dignity. 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.

There is something humbling about laboring at an archeological excavation. You toil away in the heat and dust with your trowel and brush at the bottom of a pit, inching your way through the deposits of millennia. The border separating the present moment from the distant past dissolves and you find yourself tumbling into a vanished world that, though dead and buried, comes curiously to life. Your perceptions shift: you are made to realize the vulnerability of all that seems robust and majestic—palaces, aqueducts, temples—but, equally, the resilience of what appears small and insignificant—an ivory ring, a bronze coin, a wishbone…Nothing is trivial for an archeologist. Even the most mundane finding is extraordinary.