There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

There are different wells within us. Some fill with each good rain, Others are far, far too deep For that. —Hafiz

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.

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.

Every week another wave of newcomers turns up with their bundles full of dreams whilst the chimneys pump out more nightmares into the sky.

Grown-ups are not good at masking their concerns, although they can hide their delight and curiosity surprisingly well. Whereas with children it is the other way round. Children can tactfully mute their anxiety and conceal their sorrow, but will struggle not to express their excitement.

A twelve-thousand-year-old history will be obliterated by a dam that will last fifty years—the lifespan of a mule.

“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.”

When the belly is light, the heart will be heavy.”

“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.”

Remember, people like us cannot afford to fail.

“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.

A tear falls on the back of her hand. Lacrimal fluid, composed of intricate patterns of crystallized salt invisible to the eye.

Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.

Even after all these years of studying it, water never ceases to surprise her, astonishingly resilient but also acutely vulnerable—a drying, dying force.

London is shrouded in a blanket of fog this morning. There is an unusual stillness to its streets and parks, an uneasy silence that closes in on itself, like a purse pulled tight by its drawstrings.

The world would have been a much more interesting place if everyone was given a chance to meet their ancestors at least for an hour in their lifetime.

While it is true that the body is mortal, the soul is a perennial traveler—not unlike a drop of water.

he is exhilarated by seeing a drawn image come alive, both a reflection of the original and still unique, like a vivid sequel to a fading dream.

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.

Noise escalates, movements multiply; the city gushes forth, like a fountain that never runs dry.

No one is as inwardly confident as they present themselves to be. Hence the reason we must read, my boy. Books, like paper lanterns, provide us with a light amidst the fog.

The first few minutes she always finds the hardest, as if her limbs need persuading. But the human body is good at adapting, more liquid than solid, and soon she is whizzing down the Chelsea Embankment.

It is the hour of the day when different lives overlap, unlikely stories intersect—early risers and late nightclubbers, people with little in common, cross paths.

The researchers came from a range of disciplines but shared a single understanding: climate crisis is essentially a water crisis.

The two of them move in tandem, their shadows blend, like water molecules clinging to each other.

indifferent to the trappings of wealth and status, intensely critical of the world and its inequalities but content with her own humble place in the universe.

“All too often, we humans destroy nature and call it progress.”

Why would anyone so successful, wealthy and accomplished want to end their life? Arthur understands poverty; he even understands crime and delinquency; but the malady of the mind, an ailment that also hounds his own mother, puzzles him more than anything.

It is important that ancestors be properly honored. You cannot simply amble over to their graves. You first need to wash your body, polish your shoes, comb your hair. It does not matter whether your clothes are old or new, cheap or expensive. The dead do not care about such trivialities. But it matters that you are clean—inside and out.

As Narin chews the bread of the dead, nane miriyan, she reflects on the souls of her ancestors.

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.”

Not many foreigners are aware that Tokyo used to be a city of water. It’s still an incredible place, of course, but more than a hundred streams and canals have been filled in and used as a base for roads or just hidden under pavements.

It’s called ‘daylighting’—returning a lost river to the open air.”

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

a story is a flute through which truth breathes.

One must always walk the earth with wonder, for it is full of miracles yet to be witnessed.

Never make a major decision unless you have spent seven days contemplating it.

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.

Equally, if you wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, turn on the tap and tell it to the water. It will soothe your pounding heart, wash away your fears.

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 I was a river. Tomorrow, I may return...

Arthur is too young to understand that, in deciding what will be remembered, a museum, any museum, is also deciding, in part, what will be forgotten.

Remember, though, what defies comprehension isn’t the mysteries of the world, but the cruelties that humans are capable of inflicting upon each other.”

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.”

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.

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

“Where you have set your mind begin the journey Let your heart have no fear, keep your eyes on me.”

Empires have a way of deceiving themselves into believing that, being superior to others, they will last forever. A shared expectation that tomorrow the sun will rise again, the earth will remain fertile, and the waters will never run dry. A comforting delusion that, though we will all die, the buildings we erect and the poems we compose and the civilizations we create will survive.

Arthur is beginning to suspect that civilization is the name we give to what little we have salvaged from a loss that no one wants to remember.