Good Fiction

 Elif Shafak

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak relates a tale of several rivers and the people who are fascinated by these rivers. Throughout the novel, one metaphor comes up over and over: that a drop of water has a memory that can connect these disparate individuals just as their personal fascination with rivers connects them. We hear a lot about their experiences with the rivers of London in the 19th and 20th centuries; the rivers of ancient and modern Mesopotamia; and also a bit about the rivers of Paris and the bodies of water around Istanbul. Metaphorically their experiences are reflected in a single drop of water that lasts through the ages. 

I was especially interested in the author’s use of the water-drop metaphor, because it’s based on a completely discredited scientific theory, specifically that of  “the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who developed the theory of ‘water memory’ at the cost of his career and professional reputation.” (p. 475)  What fascinates me is that a scientific disaster like this one can make a good literary device! Other novelists,  poets, dancers, musicians, and narrative writers, have also used this bad science as a good artistic metaphor.

The Lamassus

Each of the characters in the novel has a relationship with the ancient mythical hybrid creatures called Lamassus. 

The author explains:

“Lamassus are protective spirits. Hewn from a single slab of limestone, such sculptures have the head of a man, the wings of an eagle and the hulking body of a bull or a lion. Endowed with the best qualities of each of their three species, they represent anthropoid intelligence, avian insight, and taurine or leonine strength. They are the guardians of gateways that open on to other realms.” (p. 7) 

 

Ancient Times: King Ashurbanipal 

Ashurbanipal was the king of the Assyrians in the seventh century BCE. He collected clay and stone tablets on which were written both mundane records of crops and accountancy and also tablets with verses from the epic poem Gilgamesh. Eventually, archaeologists were fascinated with finding these tablets and reconstructing this ancient poem. Here is an image from that era showing Ashurbanipal and his wife:

“Ashurbanipal and his wife are drinking wine and enjoying a picnic in an idyllic garden, whilst from the boughs of a tree nearby, amidst ripe fruits, dangles the decapitated head of their enemy, the Elamite king Teumman.” (p. 7)

 

Born in 1840: “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums” — From the Thames to the Tigris River

Brought up in the most desperate poverty, the fancifully named “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums” was a young man with some very unusual gifts of memory and recognition of patterns. Although without formal education, he grasps the meaning of the writing on the clay tablets — once owned by Ashurbanipal, now in the British museum — and becomes a scholar, eventually traveling to the site beside the Tigris River where he hopes to find some of the missing verses of Gilgamesh. Here are his thoughts as he approaches the site where he hopes to search for the clay tablets:

“If he closes his eyes he can imagine an utterly different view from thousands of years back and see his surroundings as if looking through cut glass: gardens lush as paradise, palms and grape vines, edible and ornamental plants; pine, olive, juniper, cypress, pomegranate and fig trees all around. Parrots gliding about among the branches, while tame lions roam below. Fruit of all kinds, luxurious orchards and, spreading far out into the distance, grain fields on four sides. All of it possible because thousands of slaves, their bodies tattooed with the identification marks of their owners, labored with pickaxes carving channels to bring water into this barren landscape, diverting the river from the mountains all the way into Nineveh. They were here, the kings and the canal builders. It all happened here—the ambitious dream of King Sennacherib, continued and expanded by his grandson King Ashurbanipal.” (p. 312)

 

Born in 2005: Narin in Turkey and Iraq

Member of a long-persecuted Christian minority in Turkey and Iraq, the child Narin seemed doomed throughout the chapters that described her life. The events she experienced took place in 2014, both in Turkey and later in the same area where King Ashurbanipal once reigned and where Arthur conducted his search for the missing verses of Gilgamesh. At age nine, she wants to know why her people are reviled, but her grandmother instead offers her food:

“Sensing her disappointment, Grandma opens another bag. Inside, wrapped in a cloth to keep them warm, are flatbreads—each spread with sheep’s milk butter and filled with herbed cheese. The old woman makes these every morning at the crack of dawn, settled on a stool in the courtyard. She pats the dough into round pieces, slaps them against the tandoor and bakes them until they are crisp and puffy. She knows how much the girl loves them.” (p. 42)

Born in the 1980s: Zaleekhah in London

Zaleekhah Clarke is a scientist who studies rivers. In 2018 her life is in flux as she has just moved out of  the apartment she shares with her husband, and moved to a houseboat docked in the Thames, another significant river. Her relationship with her uncle, who comes from an unspecified part of “The Levant” includes her views of many rivers in both London and the Middle East. Here is just one example of the water drop that remembers — a tear that she sheds as she first sees her new home, the houseboat:

“A tear falls on the back of her hand. Lacrimal fluid, composed of intricate patterns of crystallized salt invisible to the eye. This drop, water from her own body, containing a trace of her DNA, was a snowflake once upon a time or a wisp of steam, perhaps here or many kilometers away, repeatedly mutating from liquid to solid to vapor and back again, yet retaining its molecular essence. It remained hidden under the fossil-filled earth for tens if not thousands of years, climbed up to the skies and returned to earth in mist, fog, monsoon or hailstorm, perpetually displaced and relocated. Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.” (p. 77)

 

So Many Interesting Stories

My introductions to these major characters are very brief and I haven’t really showed you how interesting they are, maybe just that they are quite intriguing. It’s difficult to capture what really appeals to me in this novel, which is so different from the others I’ve read by Elif Shafak.

I’ll end my very selective and digressive review by quoting the passage about the water drop from the beginning of the novel:

“Dangling from the edge of the storm cloud is a single drop of rain—no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea. For a while it quivers precariously—small, spherical and scared. How frightening it is to observe the earth below opening like a lonely lotus flower. Not that this will be the first time: it has made the journey before—ascending to the sky, descending to terra firma and rising heavenwards again—and yet it still finds the fall terrifying. 

“Remember that drop, inconsequential though it may be compared with the magnitude of the universe. Inside its miniature orb, it holds the secret of infinity, a story uniquely its own. When it finally musters the courage, it leaps into the ether. It is falling now—fast, faster. Gravity always helps. From a height of 3,080 feet it races down. Only three minutes until it reaches the ground.” (p. 4)

Review  © 2024 mae sander for maefood.blogspot.com