Page 10 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

—H ZALEEKHAH

By the River Thames, 2018

S hortly before dawn Zaleekhah opens the door and steps out on to the deck. Inadvertently, she glances at the next houseboat, half expecting to see her new neighbours lying in wait for her. But everyone is asleep at this hour, including the river. Dark and satiny, the Thames folds itself into pleats, dreaming of its previous lives.

Wrapped in a fleece, trainers on her feet and her hair swept back into a tight ponytail, she crosses the gangway quietly. Running is a need, like breathing. She has done it her whole adult life. Her husband used to joke, in their moments of tenderness, that she wasn’t running so much as running away.

What are you trying to escape from, sweetheart?

As she sets off at a steady pace, her nostrils resist the cold air; her hamstrings protest. The first few minutes she always finds the hardest, as if her limbs need persuading. But the human body is good at adapting, more liquid than solid, and soon she is whizzing down the Chelsea Embankment.

She skips over dry leaves, cigarette butts, dog mess, broken glass. The city glides past on both sides, brick after brick, stucco after stucco, concrete after concrete, still beautiful. A double-decker bus coasts by, withdrawn faces at its windows. It is the hour of the day when different lives overlap, unlikely stories intersect – early risers and late nightclubbers, people with little in common, cross paths.

Zaleekhah is not the only one out running at this hour. A tall, hefty man is rapidly approaching from the opposite direction. As he nears, noisily gulping air, rings of sweat on his shirt, he passes uncomfortably close. He does not look at her. It does not occur to him that he might frighten her with his proximity, having never had cause to feel such fear himself.

A few metres ahead, Zaleekhah notices an elderly man carrying a bucket and a spade, in search of mitten crabs. There are many along the Chelsea shore, she knows, their numbers having swelled in the last decades. Digging their burrows into the mud, they block water outlets, threaten native species, cause erosion and damage riverbanks, increasing London’s flood risk. She and her colleagues have examined dozens of shore and mitten crabs living in the Thames. In every single crustacean they inspected they encountered harmful plastics, their stomachs and intestines clogged with pollutants. More than a few times Zaleekhah found traces of sanitary pads in their alimentary canals. When crabs consume contaminants, they cannot easily flush them out of their system and hence these will be passed up the food chain. No one can tell how many die every year as a consequence of their poisonous diet. They are not the only marine species suffering. Just like dolphins in other parts of the world retain the residues of long-banned chemicals, the eels of the Thames are receptacles for high concentrations of coffee and cocaine.

The Thames is a zombie. The river that returned from the dead. Once declared no longer capable of sustaining life, a watery corpse decomposing in its bed, today it is home to more than 125 species of fish and no fewer than 400 invertebrates, as well as seahorses, seals and even sharks. Now considered one of the most handsome and cleanest natural streams in the world, it nevertheless continues to ingest the waste of a city of millions.

In the last ten years, her team has partnered with institutions in various countries. Covering a vast area from the Arctic to the Mediterranean and the sub-Sahara, they observed the way water responds to physical pressures, increases in temperature and other stress factors, all of which have a detrimental impact on food chains and trophic levels. Conducting joint experiments, they examined both freshwater and saltwater ecosystems – geothermally heated Icelandic streams, groundwater extracted from springs and boreholes in Italy, the canals and dykes of the Netherlands, farmland salinization in Bangladesh, meltwater lakes in Siberia … Cases that, though seemingly unrelated, were profoundly connected. The researchers came from a range of disciplines but shared a single understanding: climate crisis is essentially a water crisis.

It always surprises Zaleekhah how little thought and even less research humanity has devoted to water – the oldest and most common substance ever known. Older than the earth. Older than the sun. And millions of years older than the solar system itself. Given all the advances in technology, people assume that science understands water, but, in truth, only a small number of scientists specialize in the field and much remains to be discovered. Water is still the biggest mystery. Studying how it responds to growing threats – overpopulation, chemical pollution, habitat alteration, acidification and biodiversity loss – has brought Zaleekhah to the conclusion that every drop of rain that emerges through the aquatic cycle is, in its own way, a tiny survivor. If she’d had a streak of spirituality, she would have called it sacred .

Breathing deeply, the breeze at her back, Zaleekhah streaks along the winding path by the Thames. She moves effortlessly for a while, the ground pleasantly resilient under her feet. She does not like to listen to music when she is out running, only the rhythm of her heart against her ribs, and the sounds of the city that change with the season – hushed in winter, exuberant at this time of year. She can feel her leg muscles straining but keeps going.

A sharp pain stabs her in the lower abdomen, then mercifully eases, only to return in waves. Her appendix complains but instead of slowing down she speeds up, determined to bear down on the discomfort for as long as she can. Ahead of her, the embankment stretches out. She can feel sweat dampening her shirt as she drives herself harder, panting. Her mind numbs, arriving at an emptiness that allows her to hold every fear and sadness without hurting. In that liminal state in which the border between the present and the past disappears, memories, no longer contained by gravity, float like feathers in the air around and above her. She remembers things she wanted to believe she had forgotten. Before she knows it, the feathers are smothering her, covering her mouth, blocking her nostrils. She gulps air, chest heaving. She knows that if she does not run fast enough, she will drown in her past.

Zaleekhah closes her eyes. Inside the darkness behind her eyelids, she is seven years old again. A summer’s afternoon in Turkey, the last light of the day brushing the tops of the trees. Cicadas buzz in the bushes, the hypnotic sound mixing with the tramp of hiking boots.

It’s hot, very hot. On both sides of the dusty trail are rock formations in fascinating colours and stripes, their shapes so unusual they could have been sculpted by invisible hands. Someone is walking ahead, carrying a large backpack. Her father. Every now and then he glances back over his shoulder. When he smiles, a dimple appears in his cheek. Behind him is her mother, a burnt-orange bandana wound round her head. The two of them move in tandem, their shadows blend, like water molecules clinging to each other. Up ahead clouds of flies rise and fall along the track, as though above a corpse.

Zaleekhah stops, gasping. As soon as she opens her eyes, she winces, shocked to discover she is merely centimetres away from the spot where the embankment peters out. Another few seconds and she would have crashed into the wall.

After that she runs more slowly, watchfully. She will not allow her mind to go there again. She must compose herself ahead of the dinner at her uncle’s house, given that she could not come up with an excuse to turn down the invite.

‘Normal,’ she mutters to herself, without realizing she is speaking out loud. ‘Just be normal.’

At seven o’clock Zaleekhah arrives at Uncle Malek’s address in The Boltons – a well-preserved part of South Kensington and one of the richest areas of London. The residents of this exclusive enclave include old-money British families and several of the wealthiest émigrés from the Middle East, Asia and Russia. Some pay extra tax every year to keep their ownership of these often-empty homes secret.

Overlooking an oval communal garden with an Anglican church at its centre, Uncle’s house is a five-storey, white-stucco-fronted mansion of handsome proportions. Behind an ivory balustraded wall lies a front garden with a neatly trimmed hedge, flowering bushes and a weeping Japanese cherry tree; steps of Portland stone lead up to an imposing portico flanked by Tuscan columns supporting a first-floor balcony. With ten bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a gym, sauna, cinema, indoor pool and large south-facing garden, Uncle’s house is the epitome of opulence. Zaleekhah knows every square inch of the property, as this is where she lived after her parents died.

She punches the code into the keypad and waits for the double gates to open. The scent of mimosas and the smell of freshly mown grass fill the air as she strides into the manicured garden. An Andalusian fountain tinkles in one corner, commissioned from an artisan in Spain, one of the last practitioners of a dying craft. Under the artful floodlights, the place looks like it has been designed to be photographed for lifestyle magazines – polished and perfect.

A feeling of unease creeps into her belly. During the years she spent here, Zaleekhah has always felt out of step with her surroundings, a guilty discomfort following her wherever she went, as though she were leaving muddy footprints on expensive carpet. An old awkwardness that she thought she had long outgrown hits her with surprising speed. Her pulse quickens, and for a moment she almost turns back and leaves. The last time she felt this nervous before having a conversation with Uncle was when she was eighteen and about to move to a student hall of residence in East London. It had taken her months to make up her mind and even longer to work out how to break the news that, instead of studying international economics and finance, as he had hoped, she would be studying for a degree in Environmental Sciences.

‘Science, really, darling? I mean it’s an admirable choice, but is there a future in it?’

The younger Zaleekhah did not know if there was a future in science, especially if ‘future’ meant money. All she knew was that she loved the vastness of the field, its infinite possibilities, the discoveries waiting to be made. Starting with Conservation Biology, she later went on to switch to Aquatic Resource Management and Hydrogeology. Despite the years that have passed, she senses that her choice of profession never ceases to bewilder Uncle, though he has done his best to hide his disappointment.

Time is circles within circles. It neither dies nor declines but whirls in epicycles. Like a wheel that continues to spin even after its power is turned off, family conflicts live on long after the individual members have passed away. Although he would never put it in so many words, Zaleekhah senses that, deep within, Uncle worries she will turn out to be just like her mother – a small-town teacher married to another small-town teacher on the outskirts of Manchester, indifferent to the trappings of wealth and status, intensely critical of the world and its inequalities but content with her own humble place in the universe.

Uncle often says that, while others can decide on a simple and unassuming life, those who come from troubled regions or difficult backgrounds do not have that luxury. For every displaced person understands that uncertainty is not tangential to human existence but the very essence of it. Since one can never be sure what tomorrow will bring, one cannot trust Dame Fortuna – the goddess of destiny and luck – even when she seems to favour you for once. One needs to always be prepared for a crisis, calamity or sudden exodus. Being an outsider is all about survival, and no one survives by being unambitious; no one gets ahead by holding back. Immigrants don’t die of existential fatigue or nihilistic boredom; they die from working too hard.

Reaching the house now, Zaleekhah rings the bell. The door opens instantly and the family’s long-standing butler appears.

‘Zaleekhah! How wonderful to see you! You’ve been neglecting us.’

‘It’s wonderful to see you too, Kareem. Is this a bad time?’

‘For you there is never a bad time.’ He takes her jacket and handbag – swiftly evaluating and dismissing both as non-designer items.

‘Are they at home – Uncle and Aunt?’ asks Zaleekhah, and immediately finds her own question absurd. They have invited her over for dinner – where else would they be?

But Kareem looks unfazed. ‘Lord Malek is upstairs in his study, and Lady Malek is getting ready. She’ll be downstairs shortly.’

‘I’ll go check on Uncle, then.’

Slowly, Zaleekhah walks down the black-and-white chequerboard marble hallway, her shoes squeaking against the glossy floor as though in protest. There is a buzzing in her ears, throbbing in a low pulse, a frequency only she can hear. Gripping the banister tightly, she makes her way up the curved staircase. A Chinese reverse-glass painted mirror is mounted right across from the entrance – women in silk robes drawing water from a well and armoured warriors wielding their swords. Portraits of illustrious figures glare down at her from their elaborate frames along the wood-panelled walls. Some pose with horses, others with hounds, and one has a blindfolded falcon perched on his shoulder. They are not ancestors. None of these people are related to the Malek family in any way. Uncle purchased them simply because he liked the look of them – and probably because he thinks they confer on him a kind of sophisticated respectability. He is also fond of bird paintings, especially by the Dutch artist Melchior d’Hondecoeter. A keen buyer of Japanese woodblock prints and netsuke – those exquisitely fashioned ivory or wooden toggles – which he adores for their delicate and witty carving. Uncle collects art and antiquities from all around the world. ‘Under this roof,’ he likes to say, ‘East meets West, and they never wish to separate again.’

Upstairs, Zaleekhah stops in front of the first door on the left. Her childhood bedroom. The one opposite belongs to Helen – Aunt and Uncle’s only child. The two girls – merely ten months apart – grew up together in this house. They used to be very close back then, sharing secrets, exchanging clothes and always covering for each other. At night it was their habit to keep their doors open, so they could talk to each other as they drifted off to sleep. When people mistook them for siblings, they would never correct them. That was how they once saw themselves: not as cousins, not as friends, but as sisters.

After Zaleekhah moved out to go to university, something shifted. Not a sudden falling out but a gradual estrangement so subtle and slow as to be almost imperceptible. They still spoke regularly on the phone, and grabbed a coffee every so often, but it was never the same. And when Helen got married and had three children in quick succession, the differences in their lives became too great to ignore. The mutual affection was still there, but there was just never enough time together. Zaleekhah still feels the loss of that sisterhood like a missing limb.

Pushing open the door, she sidles into her old room. Every item inside is both familiar and foreign: the four-poster bed with its peach-pink headboard, the bookcase where she would display her school certificates and incense sticks, the Persian rug where she would sit perusing science magazines … the place has been left largely untouched, although the mess is gone. On good days, she finds it moving that her childhood existence has been so carefully preserved, as if time’s flow has ceased and she could always pick up where she left off. But, on gloomier days, she wonders whether her aunt and uncle keep her room ready for her inevitable return, defeated by the outside world.

She sits on the edge of the bed. The room is strangely odourless, thoroughly sanitized, as if after an accident. A Barbie lolls back on a shelf, one hand raised in a plastic salutation. It has a shiny tiara, silver gown and straight, golden blonde tresses that cannot have been more different from her own unruly, dark brown curls. When she was a girl, Zaleekhah owned many of these dolls, despite showing barely any interest in them. It was Helen who was fond of them, but, since Uncle and Aunt were scrupulous about treating both children in identical fashion, each present was always duplicated. Yet, whereas Helen’s Barbies were fastidiously combed and dressed, and prominently displayed, Zaleekhah’s remained half hidden under the bed or forgotten in a shoe box, resentful of the mistreatment they received.

As she rises to her feet, her eyes alight on a shelf where a Noah’s Ark toy set languishes. Animals grouped in pairs wait patiently on the jetty, while Noah gazes down at them from the deck, his expression grim as if the floodwaters are already rising.

Uncle Malek’s study is at the end of the hallway, the door slightly ajar. Zaleekhah knocks and waits. Just as she is about to knock again, she hears the sound of a soft snore coming from inside.

Quietly, she tiptoes in. When she was a child, this room was her favourite place in the entire house. A veritable cabinet of curiosities, the scent of enticing objects always emanated from it – leather-bound books, floating candles in crystal bowls, trays of chocolate truffles and marzipan sweets, antique tobacco pipes, diffusers in porcelain holders … Glancing around now, she takes in the vintage magnifying glasses, the silver wick-snuffers, the framed maps on the walls, the revolving globes, the roses arranged neatly in ceramic vases. Her fingers trace the smooth surface of a glass paperweight with a fossilized eel encased inside. Petrified remains, frozen in time.

Uncle has fallen asleep in an armchair, his head tilted back and his reading glasses halfway down his nose. A faint wheeze escapes regularly from his mouth, his lips quivering with each shallow breath. On his lap is an open book, slowly sliding from his grasp. Careful not to make any noise, Zaleekhah reaches to rescue it. She turns it around and checks the title: Nineveh and Its Remains .

There is an image on the cover. A massive lamassu – man, bull and bird – is being heaved out of a trench by Arab workers tugging on ropes, while a man in European dress stands high up on a stone platform directing their efforts. Zaleekhah does not like the image. She does not like that the Westerner is set above the locals, or that the stone creature is being woken from its slumber. Even so, intrigued, she opens the book. It is an old edition. A second printing, published in 1854 in London by a company called Bradbury and she recalls one morning in front of the bathroom mirror, when she hacked off her braids so unevenly that her scalp showed in places and it took months for her hair to grow back. She was loved, supported and given every opportunity to advance herself in this house. If she had been capable of belonging anywhere, it would have been here. Yet she left this sanctuary as soon as she turned eighteen, unable to settle anywhere for long.

‘Please don’t worry about me,’ Zaleekhah says, her own voice sounding distant in her ears.

Uncle heaves a sigh. ‘So how big is this houseboat?’

‘Big enough for me.’

‘I don’t get it.’ Uncle throws up his hands. ‘Is this some kind of delayed rebellion? Your solo Arab Spring? Because, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not that young any more.’

‘A minute ago you were telling me I’m not that old,’ says Zaleekhah, offering a smile – a lame attempt to lighten the conversation.

‘Exactly. You’re at that stage when you’re too old to rebel, too young to admit defeat.’

A chill runs down her spine, as if she has been caught out. Words sting like the tips of needles. There is a thickness in her throat she cannot swallow away.

Unawares, Uncle continues with his usual elan. ‘Look, this probably is the last thing you want to hear, but in every marriage there are two sides to the story – his and hers. They never match up. My recipe for matrimonial bliss? Voluntary blindness! Cover your eyes. Pull down a sleep mask. Voluntary deafness! Use ear plugs. She said that? I didn’t hear! She did that? I didn’t see! Peace of mind. Unless, of course, he’s done something serious and you’re not telling me.’

It takes Zaleekhah a few seconds to realize what he is talking about. ‘Did he hit me, do you mean? No, nothing like that!’

‘Thank God … and, umm, I don’t mean to pry, but is there another woman?’

‘Oh, no! I mean, not that I know of.’

‘Good. If that’s not the problem either, why on earth can’t you work it out? I hate to see your marriage fail.’

She wants to tell him that she does not necessarily view the breakdown of her marriage as a failure. She has loved, and been loved. What more could one want? It would be naive to assume that love can go on forever – sooner or later, it is bound to wither. She wishes to explain this viewpoint, which sounds wise in her head, and, if not wise, at least sensible, but she struggles to put it into words and what comes out of her mouth is completely different.

‘I just don’t understand why we can’t fail like everyone else.’

‘Because we can’t,’ Uncle says briskly. ‘We keep our scars to ourselves. We don’t show them to anyone – even to our nearest and dearest.’

‘And why is that?’ Zaleekhah insists – something she rarely does.

Uncle Malek gives her one of his long, assessing looks. ‘Why trouble them with things they cannot comprehend?’

A stab of sadness passes through Zaleekhah. It never occurred to her before how lonely her uncle might have felt in his own marriage from time to time. She knows that he adores his daughter, and she has no doubt that, despite all his grumbling, he is devoted to his wife. But something essential separates him from them. Uncle is from elsewhere. Born in another culture, shaped by a different river. He may have become British, and turned his life into a success story, but there is something about him that eludes even those closest to him.

The only son of an established Levantine family from the Middle East, Uncle Malek came to England as a boy. In no other part of the world has he grown roots as strong. He has made English friends and English business partners; he married an Englishwoman; he speaks English every day and dreams in English at night; he supports an English football team with a passion bordering on obsession; he earns English money and donates to English charities; he is a member of several English gentlemen’s clubs and has been honoured by the Queen; he has even taken English seaside holidays – and yet he is, and always will be, a foreigner. It is still there, his otherness, under the varnished image, like a splinter that cannot be prised from beneath his flesh.

‘You must stop worrying about me,’ says Zaleekhah. ‘You’ve done so much for me already, I’m forever grateful.’

Uncle looks up at her over the rim of his glasses. His smile, when it arrives, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Why’re you speaking like that, my dear? You’re not planning to sail away on that boat, I hope. Tell me, is it even furnished?’

‘It has a few things,’ says Zaleekhah.

‘Well, you must buy furniture – and a burglar alarm!’

‘It’s a safe place.’

‘Is anywhere in London safe any more?’ Uncle gestures towards the cabinet. ‘Do you mind opening the first drawer for me?’

Zaleekhah does as he asks. Inside there is an elegant silver paper knife and an envelope in Uncle’s monogrammed stationery. She does not need to break its seal to know that it contains a cheque.

‘Take that, my dear.’

‘I really don’t need it – thank you, though.’

If Uncle Malek is disappointed, he does not show it. His voice stays bright as he tries, one more time. ‘Consider it a house … a houseboat gift.’

Gently, Zaleekhah closes the drawer, leaving the envelope untouched. Her gaze falls on the book she put on the coffee table.

‘What’s this you’re reading?’

‘Oh that … I’m done with it.’ Uncle’s expression hardens. ‘Just some research for an approaching auction. I might be bidding. Something exceptional has come up – an item from Nineveh.’

‘I don’t remember you ever buying from Iraq before.’

‘Well, this one is special. A tablet from Ashurbanipal’s library, thousands of years old.’ Uncle lifts his head, looking out of the window. ‘It’s blue. Lapis lazuli. An extraordinary traveller through time.’

Zaleekhah waits for him to explain more, and, when he doesn’t, she says, ‘I broke the little lamassu you gave me.’

‘You broke a protective spirit? That’s not good. We must get you a new one.’

‘I think I can glue it back together.’

‘Oh, yes, that’s a thing, isn’t it?’ says Uncle. ‘Japanese kintsugi – displaying flaws and revealing failures for everyone to see. Very noble – except I’m not a fan.’

This, Zaleekhah knows, has always been the way with her uncle. He once described himself as an ‘upholsterer of imperfections’ – covering stains, padding hard surfaces, softening edges, hiding cracks and holes. Almost as if every mistake were correctable, nearly every loss replaceable, and what remained rough, raw or ruptured should never be seen by others.

Uncle picks up Nineveh and Its Remains . Instead of putting it back on the bookshelf, he deposits it in the top drawer, next to the envelope.

‘Now I hope you’re hungry. Your aunt made poached salmon mousseline in your honour or was it messaline – a recipe from the Titanic . It’s a fad, apparently, re-creating famous last meals. If she keeps going like this, one of these meals will be my last.’

‘But you hate fish,’ says Zaleekhah with a pensive smile.

‘Exactly! Thank you for noticing – and you’re the only one. The last time I enjoyed eating anything with fins and gills I was a boy. My father would take me to these restaurants by the River Tigris. Oh, the masgouf – the grilled carp. Now that was divine, believe me. But ever since I’ve loathed limbless water creatures – except your aunt refuses to accept that. She thinks that if she steams and souses and douses it in some sauce with a French name I can’t even pronounce I won’t realize what I’m eating.’

Zaleekhah falls silent. What she knows about her uncle’s past she has gleaned from oblique comments and overheard conversations, picking up crumbs of information dropped inadvertently over the years. It is at moments like these that it dawns on her how little she has actually managed to learn.

The light in the room shifts then as Uncle steps in front of a brass table lamp – Victorian and newly reconditioned, with a cranberry shade of stained glass shaped like an inverted tulip. When he turns around, his face seems more sharply drawn.

‘Anyway, if you don’t like what’s on your plate,’ Uncle says, ‘just toe the line – that’s what I always do. I’ve learnt not to upset your aunt.’

With that, Uncle Malek opens the door and ushers Zaleekhah into the corridor and down the stairs.