Lives shaped by the flow of water, across eras

The protagonist of Elif Shafak’s new novel, There are Rivers in the Sky, is a drop of water, ostensibly a humble speck of liquid but, in the universe of the story, a wielder of immense power and significance. It originates circa 640 BCE, during the reign of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal, travels down centuries to reach Victorian England and modern-day Iraq, before ending up in contemporary London. From the banks of the life-giving Tigris in ancient Mesopotamia to the murky depths of the Thames, its journey is at once a metaphor for life and rebirth, as well as a testimony to the reality of the natural cycle on Earth.

Structured around the peregrinations of this fleeting drop are four stories, anchored and interlinked by four unlikely characters. There is, first of all, the tyrant Ashurbanipal, a patron of learning, under whom The Epic of Gilgamesh was written. He is, by far, the most tenuous presence among the four. Shadowy and spectral with no flesh and bones, it is as though he is simply copied out of the pages of history. Then there is Arthur Smyth, modelled on George Smyth, a British Assyriologist who lived in 19th century England, the most arresting figure among the quartet. A bright Yazidi girl called Narin, growing up in Hasankeyf with a debilitating disease, is the third character. And last but not least, there is a British hydrologist called Zaleekah, given to thinking in sweeping, aphoristic hypotheses. The climate crisis affecting the Anthropocene Age, she believes, is essentially a water crisis. 

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Readers familiar with Shafak’s ornate style won’t be surprised by the audacious leaps of her imagination and vivid storytelling. In contrast with the protagonist of her last novel The Island of Missing Trees, who was a talking tree, the raindrop in There are Rivers is rather tame. It only bears silent witness to the churnings of history. All the talking is done by humans, though often in a register that’s unlikely to be spoken outside of the pages of a novel. In the sections on Narin, for instance, Shafak’s florid prose keeps soaring to cringeworthy heights of cliché. “When someone gives you the food they’ve prepared, they give you their heart,” Narin is told by her grandmother, who is a custodian of Yazidi culture and “a water dowser” with psychic gifts. With her extensive research, Shafak paints a gritty portrait of the hardships faced by the Yazidis in the hands of the ISIS army. But her sentences are overburdened with the weight of the tragedy she must describe. In spite of its noble intentions, the writing in this section has the unfortunate tendency to read like poor imitation of Rumi.

Zaleekah’s story suffers from a similar propensity to slip into operatic modes of despair. At the heart of her trauma is a natural disaster which turned her world upside down as a child, leaving her orphaned and in the care of an uncle. But Zaleekah’s interiority is never fully fleshed out for the reader to offer her the advantage of their empathy. Although a reputed scientist by training, she is prone to being waylaid by woo-woo epiphanies, susceptible to gleaning clues to the Big Questions from the wisdom shared by her tattooist landlady Nen and, in general, given to appearing somewhat ungrateful, plagued by solipsistic problems due to her obstinately negative attitude to her circumstances.

The most attractive segment of Shafak’s novel focuses on the incredulous life and work of Arthur Smyth, born to the poorest of the poor toshers and scavengers by the T h a m e s a n d christened King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums. Gifted with a photographic and capacious memory, Arthur overcomes every obstacle of class and poverty to get himself a basic education, , followed by a series of jobs that enable him to read and learn facts about the ancient world, and, finally, a position at the British Museum that sees him rise to becoming the most pioneering Assyriologist of his time, lauded for being the discoverer and translator of The Epic of Gilgamesh. The alchemy between the pace and the plot of Arthur’s rags-to-riches story is complemented by Shafak’s keen ear for colloquial speech in Victorian England. Her ability to conjure up the horror of epidemics like cholera feels chillingly real, while cameo appearances by celebrities like Charles Dickens add a rich texture and emotional appeal to Arthur’s story.

There are Rivers in the Sky deserves full marks for grappling with complex themes like climate crisis, colonial archaeology, literary history and scientific research, none of which is easy to synthesise into appealing fiction. With her gift for storytelling, Shafak doesn’t lack the imagination to delve into these hydraheaded subjects, nor the moral conscience to articulate her views on the past, present and future of the world. She falters not in the act of spinning a compelling yarn, but in being able to keep it free of messy tangles, floppiness and clumsy glitches.

Somak Ghoshal is a writer based in Delhi.

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