There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

How frightening it is, but also how strangely invigorating to realize that the world he has experienced is only one of many possible worlds.

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

Better to be a gentle soul than one consumed by anger, resentment and vengeance. Anyone can wage war, but maintaining peace is a difficult thing.

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.

‘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.’ ‘I understand, Grandma.’

Home is where your absence is felt, the echo of your voice kept alive, no matter how long you have been away or how far you may have strayed, a place that still beats with the pulse of your heart.

Stories venture beyond city walls, traverse deserts and span ravines. To write is to free yourself from the constraints of place and time.

But Arthur is convinced that everyone has a gift. Given a chance and a modicum of support, anyone can elevate their skill. In the end, perhaps what separates one individual from another is not talent but passion. And what is passion if not a restlessness of the heart, an intense yearning to surpass your limits, like a river overflowing its banks?

Time is a river that meanders, branching out into tributaries and rivulets, depositing sediments of stories along its shores in the hope that someday, someone, somewhere, will find them.

The emotions we hold but fail to honour, we try to express through the things we create, trusting that they will outlive us when we are gone, trusting that they will carry something of us through the layers of time, like water seeping through rocks. It is our way of saying to the next generations, those we will never get to meet, ‘Remember us.’ It is our way of admitting we were weak and flawed, and that we made mistakes, some inevitable, others foolish, but deep within we appreciated beauty and poetry, too.