Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Elif Shafak - There Are Rivers In The Sky (Penguin, 2025) ****


Elif Shafak gets better by each book. "There Are Rivers In The Sky" brings the triple story over time and geography: Mesopotamia/Iraq/Turkey and London. The album starts in the realm of Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian emperor, educated and cruel. A rare cuneiform lapis lazuli tablet and a raindrop are the recurring motives or red thread throughout the lives of the three protagonists: Arthur, living in the 19th Century, is a very poor and very intelligent young man, and his promise is luckily noticed by an archeologist of the British Museum. Narin, a young Yazidi girl, living with her father and grandmother near the Tigris on the border between Turkey and Iraq. Zaleekha, a young woman living in London in 2018, a hydrologist researcher who just separated from her husband. 

The waters of the sky, the Thames and the Tigris are recurring motives in the book, unifying the stories of the three protagonists, as is the lapis lazuli tablet with text from the Gilgamesh epic, and the 'lamassus', the huge sculptures that represent human, bird and lion. 

Elif Shafak's writing is brilliant, and alternates between epic descriptions, situational dialogue, historical/cultural facts and little pieces of wisdom or smart descriptions. 

The book starts like this, and it immediately made me laughing out loud for the beauty of the writing, the imagery and the epic value of nature. A majestic opening. 

"It is an early-summer afternoon in Nineveh, the sky swollen with impending rain. A strange, sullen silence has settled on the city: the birds have not sung since the dawn; the butterflies and dragon­flies have gone into hiding; the frogs have abandone_d their breeding grounds; the geese have fallen quiet, sensing danger. Even the sheep have been muted, urinating frequently, overcome by fear. The air smells different - a sharp, salty scent. All day, dark shadows have been amassing on the horizon, like an enemy army that has set up camp, gathering force. They look remarkably still and calm from a distance, but that is an optical illusion, a trick of the eye: the clouds are rolling steadily closer, propelled by a forceful wind, determined to drench the world and shape it anew. In this region where the summers are long and scorching, the rivers mercurial and unforgiv­ing, and the memory of the last flood not yet washed away, water is both the harbinger of life and the messenger of death" (p. 3)

Likewise, this introduction to the Thames was also worth mentioning: 

"Winter arrives early in London this year, and once it presents itself it does not wish to leave. (...) Ready for the cold spell, caterpillars and frogs gently allow themselves to freeze, content not to thaw until next spring. Prayers and profanities, as soon as they leave their speaker's mouths, form into icicles that dangle from the bare branches of trees. They tinkle sometimes in the wind, - a light, loose, jingling sound" (p. 20). 

The whole book is about the triangle of Arthur pulling himself up, despite all the odds against him, to become an explorer and archeologist, the devastating story of Narin, who wants to live and whose life is in danger for the simple reason that she is a Yazidi girl. And Zaleekha who is uncertain, who lives between worlds, torn between the Middle-East and the West, struggling with her identity, her family, her future and her feelings.  

"She was silent when she should have spoken; she spoke when she should have been silent. Either way, guilt is her most loyal companion" (p. 205)

I'll give some more excerpts, starting with the most gruesome: the horror of humanity which is omnipresent in the novel. It is a dialogue between young Narin and her grandmother: 

"'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.' 
 'Why so much hatred towards us?' 
'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. 
But why?' 
'Because the tree remembers what the axe forgets.' 
'What does that mean?' 
'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 red with our blood, the soil dried up with our grief­and they still haven't finished hating us.' (p. 43)

Or the following: 

"Remember though, what defies comprehension isn't the mysteries of the world, but the cruelties that humans are capable of inflicting upon each other". (p. 222) 

Shafak's nature is alive, even the immaterial things: the stones speak, water has memory, the same drop of water falls on the heads of different characters.  

  "For too long the Londoners have been saying that the river is a silent murderer. But Arthur understands that it is, actually, the other way round. It is humans who are killing the water" (p. 158)

"It scares Arthur, travelling by river (on the Tigris). The vessel sways, its timbers creaking under the pressure, and it unsettles him, the velocity of the flow, foaming with wrath. Along the way he spots destitute villages. Poverty has a topography all of its own. It rises from the ribs of the earth, stretching its naked limbs against the sky, its features dry and gaunt, sore to the touch. Poverty is a nation with no borders, and he is no foreigner in it but a native son." (p. 312)

Despite all the horror of humanity, there is hope: the individuals who manage to rise above their situation, despite their limitations and their vulnerabilities. But they are kind and generous, which gives us a feeling that not everything is lost, that there are possibilities for better, even in small efforts.  

"Grandma loves the strong tea from Russia, which she drinks with a cube of sugar squeezed between her teeth. She says if you drink tea this way, the words you speak will be sweeter" (p. 140)

It's an excellent book, one that I loved reading: smart, entertaining, captivating, and highly relevant for our time. If I have to give to things that I liked less, these two come to mind. First, the stylistic power of her writing diminishes as the novel progresses, not unlike her previous novel. Second, the little recurring motives are a little too programmatic and gimmicky for me. 

Yet I can highly recommend it. 

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