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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. That is what growing up means, in some simple way: learning to repress all expressions of pure happiness and joy.
On the first day, Sunday, He created the angel Azra’il; on Monday, Darda’il; on Tuesday, Israfil; on Wednesday, Mika’il; on Thursday, Gibra’il; on Friday, Shimna’il; and on Saturday, Nura’il. God chose the benevolent Melek Tawûs as the leader of the archangels. He is the peacock angel.
They’ve done it in Seoul. It’s called “daylighting” – returning a lost river to the open air.’
‘Remember, child, never look down upon anyone. You must treat everyone and everything with respect. We believe the earth is sacred. Don’t trample on it carelessly. Our people never get married in April, because that’s when the land is pregnant. You cannot dance and jump and stomp all over it. You have to treat it gently. Do not ever pollute the soil, the air or the river. That’s why I never spit on the ground. You shouldn’t do it either.’
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 middle of the night, turn on the tap and tell it to the water. It will soothe your pounding heart, wash away your fears.
‘Because I trust God – He would not give us a stomach ache without growing mint nearby.’
Outside in the courtyard, the pine trees tower over him, silvery and needle-sharp, as if a giant seamstress has used the green hillside as her pincushion.
‘We believe an onion shared with guests tastes better than roast lamb.’
Should you take a handful of sand and let it run through your fingers, you can hear the sighing of the sails and the singing of the sailors. Roiling under the bare desert, still alive, is the spirit of water.
There are those who say the Yazidis are heretical Muslims or renegade Christians. Others claim they are apostate Jews, or an odd Zoroastrian sect lost in the folds of history. Some insist that their caste system must have been derived from Hinduism. There is a widespread assumption that the Yazidis are an ersatz version of an original creed, a stray offshoot. Arthur disagrees. More and more it seems to him that their lineage, as rooted in the soil as the native trees, can actually be traced back to the time of the Ancient Mesopotamians.
They kill the water first. In this land where rivers are sacred and every drop of rain is a blessing, they creep in at dead of night and poison all the wells, shafts and fountains in the village.
Çarşema Sor, ‘Red Wednesday’ – the festival that welcomes spring and hails new beginnings. The day the universe was created from a white pearl, and water and land were separated from each other. A time of rebirth and revival. April is ‘the bride of the year’. The villagers boil eggs and paint them in the brightest colours, ready for the festive game hekkane. A mixture of broken eggshells, wild flowers and clay is applied to the entrances of homes. They decorate the graves, celebrating the arrival of the new year with the living and the dead.
It occurs to him on that night that there is a side to friendship that resembles faith. Both are built on the fragility of trust.
‘In Ancient Sumerian, ki-ang was “to love” – strangely, the word meant “to measure the earth”. Love was not a feeling or an emotion as much as an anchor that rooted you to a place. All these years I have never yet found myself compelled to measure the earth.
To write is to free yourself from the constraints of place and time.
If the spoken word is a trick of the gods, the written word is the triumph of humans.
The temple at Eresh, dedicated to Nisaba, is known as Esagin, the ‘House of Lapis Lazuli’, for this is her stone and this is her colour.
There is an immense loneliness in his heart, where there should have been intimacy.
To whom does the object belong – the itinerant bards who recited the poem, travelling from city to city; the king who ordered it to be put in writing; the scribe who laboured in setting it down; the librarian who scrupulously stored it; the archaeologist who unearthed it centuries later; the museum that will keep it safe – or does it belong only to the people of this land, and, if so, will minorities like the Yazidis ever be counted amongst them?
