Elif Shafak (2024) There are Rivers in the Sky.

Ruth Ozeki, on the book’s cover, describes, There are Rivers in the Sky as ‘A Masterpiece’. Elif Shafak’s novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. She is a wonderful writer who imparts words of wisdom, and I’ll be reading more of her work.

Shafak plays on words. She tells the reader ‘this is the work of a junior scribe’. Her theme is the interconnectedness of being. Water remembers. Water has consciousness. It is involved in the life cycle of all animate beings.

Beginings:

‘By the River Tigris, in olden times.’

‘Later, when the storm has passed, everyone will talk about the destruction it left behind, though no one, not even the king himself, will remember it began with a single raindrop.’

Hafak follows that single raindrop through the thousands of years. From it falling on the head of King Ashurbanipal’s hair in the land of Nineveh, 630 BCE—late called Mesopotamia and now known as modern Iran—to a houseboat in London, falling into a sink, being mixed with other tap water, treated as sewerage and reaching the sea again.

Her characters are born near and dependent on water. Arthur, nicknamed King Arthur of the Slums and Sewerage, was, for example, born on the River Thames, 1840. 

His mother is a tosher. A scavenger that wades through the discarded parts of the great city’s stinking innards to see what the river will bring her. A liquid world. Her husband an alcoholic, wife beater, she has already a child to support. She’s carrying Arthur, but he comes early in the slippery gloop. Her fellow toshers watch as she gives birth. Name him, King Arthur of the Slums and Sewerage.

People would classify King Arthur as a genius in our modern age. But he’s working class. He’s poor. The Victorians covers over his worth, like it covers over its rivers and streams. Bottom of the stinking heap. But King Arthur has a quest. He dares to dream that he will translate ancient poetry from chards of pottery, the Epic of Gilgamesh.             

Zaleekhah, By the River Thames, 2018. She has rented a houseboat looking onto the Chelsea Embankment. An orphan, brought up by her rich uncle and aunt. Her life has fallen apart. She no longer feels she can live with the man she loved. A fellow scientist in the study of hydrology, biogeochemisty and biodiversity. In other words, water. She knows that seven of ten of our planet’s water-stressed regions will be in the Middle East and Africa. Water famine. Also called drought. A toxic mix with famine for world war. Her mentor, Professor Berenberg has died. A good man, his reputation tarnished by his belief in ‘aquatic memory’. She wants to die, too.

Narin, By the River Tigris, 2014.  She is worried that when she goes deaf, she will no longer be able to listen to her grandma’s stories. Grandma is illiterate, but she can read the River. She is a modern tosher. All goodness comes from God and the Tigris. Turkish, Kurdish, Ezidi, Yazidi their ancestors stretch back to Mesopotamia and the seed of Adam (but not Eve). Accused of murdering the ancestors of the Prophet Mohammed. Of being devil worshippers. Pogroms are factored into their lives, but outside their control. Their home is being bulldozed and their River damned. Old memories discarded, washed away. Narin is to be baptised in the river. ISIS coming. The threat of young women and children being enslaved and the others murdered. Prophecy comes from Grandma’s loins, but time may flow differently. God may be kind.  Read on.   

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