There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

The Architect’s Apprentice The Bastard of Istanbul Black Milk The Flea Palace The Forty Rules of Love The Gaze The Happiness of Blond People Honour The Saint of Incipient Insanities Three Daughters of Eve How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World The Island of Missing Trees

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.

‘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.’

‘Eat, Narin. 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.’

‘Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire – because they want to have them in their possession. It’s all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It’s all out of fear! Then there is the third kind – when people hate those they have hurt.’

‘Because the tree remembers what the ...

‘It means it’s not the harmer who bears the scars, but the one who has been harmed. For us, memory is all we have. If you want to know who you are, you need to learn the stories of your ancestors. Since time immemorial, the Yazidis have been misunderstood, maligned, mistreated. Ours is a history of pain and persecution. Seventy-two times we have been massacred. The Tigris turned...

Water hardens in adverse circumstances, not unlike the human heart.

‘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.

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

when times are confusing, everybody is a little lost. 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. That is why this is the perfect time to be in the business of publishing!’

For every displaced person understands that uncertainty is not tangential to human existence but the very essence of it.

Since one can never be sure what tomorrow will bring, one cannot trust Dame Fortuna – the goddess of destiny and luck – even when she seems to favour you for once. One needs to always be prepared for a crisis, calamity or sudden exodus. Being an outsider is all about survival, and no one survives by being unambitious; no one gets ahead by holding back. Immigrants don’t die of existential fatigue or nihilistic boredom; they die from working too hard.

‘Exactly. You’re at that stage when you’re too old to rebel, too young to admit defeat.’

love that manifests only in a profound and bruising coldness, and leaves the other person hurting, can it ever be deemed love?

‘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.’

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. But as a water-dowser, it is the Tigris that the old woman holds in the highest esteem.

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...

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

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. ‘Umm, 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.’

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.

‘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.”

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 short-cuts 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.

Women are expected to be like rivers – readjusting, shapeshifting.

The-hero-that-is-no-hero matures only after multiple defeats.

As Arthur spends more time in middle-class circles, he becomes aware of something about them that he did not know previously: their preoccupation with marital bliss and domestic life. Neither the slum dwellers who struggle every day to keep body and soul together nor, he suspects, aristocrats, interested as they are in preserving their inheritance and fortunes, share this notion of marriage as a romantic ideal, almost to the point of holiness. Over and over he is told that the matrimonial home is an Englishman’s personal fortress against the entire world. But Arthur has far more pressing matters on his mind. There is not a single day, not a single hour, that is not dominated by the Mesopotamian tablets.

There are invisible beings all around that offer help and guidance without humans ever realizing, let alone appreciating, it.

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.

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.

‘Why are women left out of history? Why do we have to piece their stories back together from fragments – like broken shards of pottery?’

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

Sometimes he sketches his surroundings – children playing Knucklebones, men with fezzes and turbans, fruit-sellers bearing trays of figs

‘For me, the epic is primarily about both the fragility and resilience of being human, and, also, it is about the possibility for change.

Learning to care for others, not just yourself.

So it is a story in which there is no hero in the traditional sense, and everything is either fractured or fluid – like life itself.’

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

‘Don’t,’ Nen says, softly. ‘Don’t apologize for others.’

‘When I first moved to London, my brothers gave me a fish. A tetra. I called her Ki-ang. It means “to love” in Ancient Sumerian. I didn’t know the noun for “love”, so the verb had to do. Anyways Ki-ang was very cute, but I thought she must be lonely and so I bought another fish to keep her company – and for a while things were fine, and the second fish grew bigger, but one morning, when I checked, there was only one fish in the bowl. Love had disappeared.’ The cab pulls over in front of them, and the driver pokes his head out of the window, nodding in their direction. ‘Was it an angelfish, the other one?’ asks Zaleekhah. ‘Yeah, you see, you know how these stories go. But I didn’t. It turns out you can never keep the two together for too long, because the chances are the angelfish will gobble up the tetra.’ They stride towards the car. Nen opens the door for Zaleekhah. ‘It’s just it got me thinking tonight … I never gave the second fish a name, but if I could now, I’d call it “Gratitude”.’ Zaleekhah gets into the cab. Through the open window she looks at Nen. ‘You’re saying Gratitude swallows Love.’ ‘Yes, if it gets too big.’ Nen’s gaze is unflinching. ‘Forgive me, I don’t mean to pry into your personal life. All I’m saying is, one needs to keep an eye on that Gratitude fish, I learnt to my cost.’