How is a goddess erased from history? What can be done to reinstate her? In her stunning new novel, Elif Shafak ponders these questions in reference to Nisaba, the ancient Sumerian goddess of writing. There Are Rivers in the Sky (464 pages; Knopf) is profound and multi-layered, braiding three distinct stories that eventually merge to form the narrative, like tributaries forming a single river. The tale begins with a single raindrop that falls from the sky onto the beard of King Ashurbanipal of Nineveh, who assembled an impressive library that included a version of the Epic of Gilgamesh etched onto a brightly-hued tablet of lapis lazuli. The raindrop is the first of many allusions to water—rivers, floods, the cycle of ascension into the atmosphere and return, its life-giving properties—that permeate the novel and are central to its theme of cyclical renewal. Shafak writes, “rivers are fluid bridges—channels of communication between separate worlds. They link one bank to the other, the past to the future…”
Just as Shafak’s protagonist, a young Assyriologist named Arthur, sifts through the wreckage of time, examining debris to find a fragment of the poem, Shafak seems to employ careful brushwork to reveal how the cultural transmission of knowledge works. And in the process, she raises questions about land rights, displacement, appropriation, and survival. There Are Rivers in the Sky is more than historical fiction, given its breadth of subject matter, emphasis on language, and cultural sensitivity. It employs a lens of cultural poetics, an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the importance of understanding certain texts within their historical and social contexts.
Traveling from ancient Mesopotamia to Victorian England, just as many of the former’s historical artifacts were taken and moved to the latter’s museums, Shafak’s story partly takes place in the 19th century, where it focuses on Arthur Smyth, a character based on the actual British Assyriologist George Smith. Not just from humble beginnings, Arthur is literally from the bottom, having been born in a sewer to a tosher who swigged laudanum. He is a gifted child, whose passion for antiquity is ignited by witnessing an installation at the British Museum of lamassu, Assyrian figures that look like winged lions with human heads. Eventually, this leads him to a role deciphering the Epic of Gilgamesh and to expeditions to Nineveh, where he encounters the Yazidis, an isolated and historically oppressed religious minority who are mistakenly thought of as “devil-worshippers.”
The next strand of the novel, set in 2014, is based on the underreported 2014 Yazidi genocide perpetrated by ISIS. It concerns Narin, a young Yazidi girl, and Besma, her grandmother, who travel back to their spiritual home in Lalish in northern Iraq for Narin’s baptism. Besma, a diviner for whom water heals, orally imparts the wisdom of Yazidi culture to Narin, who is slowly losing her hearing. The third and final strand of the narrative follows Zaleekha, a hydrologist who lives in a houseboat on the Thames, who develops a relationship with Nen, a tattoo artist who sketches at the British Museum. Each storyline is compelling, and as they begin to overlap, the significance of the artifacts and cultural knowledge they contain becomes visceral in its impact.
And by centering in the novel the Epic of Gilgamesh (which predates the Bible and the Illiad, and, as Stephen Greenblatt noted in is 2017 book The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, was replaced as the foundational myth for Western civilization by the more problematic story of the Garden of Eden, which went on to capture minds and influence our culture, laws, and moralistic views), Shafak both reexamines and preserves lost histories—that of ancient Nineveh, the culture of the Yazidis, even the forgotten goddess Nisaba. At a time when women’s rights are under attack and books are being banned, writers with the scope, vision, and imagination of Elif Shafak should be treasured. With There Are Rivers in the Sky, she has created a sweeping, compelling, and poetic fiction, not only showing how people are affected by world events and cultural transmission, but offering hope and understanding to move us forward.
H.L. Onstad’s fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Harvard Review, Solstice Magazine, and HA Journal, a publication of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities.