To write a novel about water, Elif Shafak transformed herself into a river – and left behind a book with everything she carries within her.
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The result is turbulent prose – profound stories that touch your heart, a rushing river that noticeably slows down in places, and a flood of words that seem too hectic to grasp in their entirety. >
“There are rivers in the sky”, Elif Shafak, Viking, 2024.
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There are rivers in heaven traces the journey of a drop of water, beginning with a raindrop stuck to the hair of the Assyrian tyrant Ashurbanipal, who ruled in the 600s B.C. The drop evaporates—as does his civilization—and returns to Victorian England as a snowflake that finds its way to the mouth of Arthur, closely modeled on the Assyriologist George W. Smyth. The novel follows Arthur as he leaves the Thames to reach the Tigris, and delves deeply into his inner world and the unique scientific disposition that takes him from the London slums to the halls of the British Museum, where he translates The Epic of Gilgamesh. So far, so good. But we are also introduced to two other storylines running parallel to each other – one about the Yazidi girl Narin, who is preparing to leave the 12,000-year-old city of Hasankeyf in Turkey to visit the Tigris in Iraq in 2014, and the other about the hydrologist Zaleekhah in London in 2018, who finds a home on a houseboat on the Thames when life gets the better of her. The stories of Arthur, Narin and Zaleekhah develop like three streams, but we read with the implicit knowledge that they will soon become one.>
Water affects them all and the reasons for this are not really invented. When you read how Narin and her grandmother, a healer, talk about leaving their beloved hometown and moving to Lalish in Iraq, you are reminded of the history of the Turkish administration planning Dousing Hasankeyf to build a dam made headlines around the world in 2019. Arthur’s brother dies of cholera after “gifting” his family two fresh jugs of water from a faucet. Zaleekhah’s parents died in a flash flood. She is now exploring the memory of water – the central theme of the book. If at any point the reader is in danger of forgetting that the ecological and historical significance of water is what drives the book, Shafak has a dialogue, a meditative line or a mention of a water-related tragedy ready.
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The capricious and immortal drop of water in Ashurbanipal’s hair appears again and again throughout the nearly 500-page book, and is another reminder of why we should take water seriously. Thanks to the sheer number of water-related experiences the characters have, the novel is almost an encyclopedia of all that water can do to people and animals. Shafak uses no ruse here – he makes water’s role blatantly clear throughout the book. Water is both the protagonist and the repository of all mystery in Shafak’s novel – the source of misery, the bringer of joy, easy to ignore and, as Robert Burns once said of the Thames, “liquid history.”
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This is Shafak’s 21st book, and while her writing style leaves some unimpressed, the appeal it has for many others is evident in the way her books climb the bestseller lists as soon as they are published. Her style is undeniably busy, unconventional word choices falling like thick drops. The effect is pleasant, slowing down the reading in an age of fast-paced consumerism. >
One must, however, grapple with the fundamental question of why three such different people in such different places were chosen to tell this particular story. The answer may lie beyond the novel and within the author herself. As someone who grew up all over the world but considers Istanbul and London her two homes, it is not surprising that Shafak chooses protagonists who travel from west to east (Arthur), from east to areas ravaged by the west (Narin), and from east to west (Zaleekhah’s family). Shafak is willing to oscillate between east and west and the hodgepodge of mixed identities she ascribes to her characters. These stories are her stories. The politics of one group above another is the politics of their lived lives.
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When Arthur talks about how new words evoke images, sounds and tastes in his head, one is reminded of a TED Talk years ago in which Shafak spoke of a young reader who asked her if she could taste words. When Narin’s grandmother talks about curing head ailments with remedies passed down to her from her foremothers, one is reminded of another TED Talk in which Shafak Mentions her own grandmother, who also cured skin diseases using unconventional methods. >
And so it was that, in order to write a novel about water, Shafak transformed her own life into the river that carried with it everything that appeared on its pages. This novel cares little for structural purity and progresses with a self-sustaining cadence not unlike that of rivers.>
