Page 28 of There Are Rivers in the Sky
H— NARIN
By the River Tigris, 2014
‘ D id it ever happen to you, Grandma?’
‘Not to me. But to my younger brother. He came home from school one day sobbing. The other boys had thrown him to the ground and drawn a circle around him.’
‘But why?’
‘Because people have fabricated all kinds of myths and lies about our culture.’
Narin glances at her father. She wants to ask him if he, too, has experienced anything similar, but Baba’s eyes are on the road, his hands on the wheel. They are driving to Iraq, finally on their way to the holy Valley of Lalish. Narin sits in the front, which makes her feel grown up. Grandma is at the back, surrounded by suitcases full of presents for their relatives.
‘If someone were to draw a circle around me, I’d hop over it!’ Narin says.
‘Of course you would, my heart,’ says Grandma. ‘But it’s not some drawing in chalk that hurts. It is the intention behind it.’
When they reach Cizre, near the Turkish–Syrian border, and close to Iraq, Grandma tells Narin of a famous scientist who was born here.
‘His name was Al-Jazari. A precocious child, born and raised in Upper Mesopotamia – like you, my heart.’
Grandma says Al-Jazari adored water. From an early age he was fascinated by the sweeping meanders of silted rivers, the movements of tides. He built exquisite fountains, irrigation devices and water-clocks. And one day he created something no one had ever seen before: a peacock machine.
If you pulled a lever hidden in the tail of the peacock, it released water from its beak so you could wash your hands. A few seconds later, the left door opened and a tiny doll appeared bringing soap. When you finished your ablutions, the right door opened and another doll emerged, carrying fresh towels.
‘That’s amazing!’ remarks Narin.
Father joins the conversation now. ‘Imagine, nine hundred years ago Al-Jazari invented impressive machines, far ahead of his time! They say many of his drawings are somewhere in America today. In a library or museum.’
‘Oh, so they get to see them, but we don’t,’ says Grandma.
‘Well, at least they’ll keep them safe over there, Mama. Otherwise, God knows, they might have been destroyed or lost here.’
Grandma sighs. ‘Safe for whom, though, Khaled? Westerners take our past, our memories. And then they say, “Don’t worry, you can come and see them any time.” But how do we even get there?’
‘Those museums have millions of visitors from all over the world. Their doors are wide open.’
‘Yes, but millions more cannot travel, can they? We’re here, but our history is elsewhere. It’s like they’ve severed our body into pieces, and they say, “Whenever you want, you can come visit your limbs.”’
Khaled turns towards Narin and winks. ‘Your grandma is very sensitive when it comes to this subject.’
Worried that the two people she loves the most are in disagreement, Narin chips in, ‘That peacock clock … so was Al-Jazari a Yazidi, too?’
‘Depends on whom you ask …’ says Grandma. ‘If you ask an Arab, he’ll tell you Al-Jazari was an Arab. Iranians say he was Persian. Kurds say he was Kurdish. No one ever asks us.’
Father presses the accelerator, and they feel the flaws in the road. ‘Arab, Iranian, Kurdish or Yazidi … what we do know is that Al-Jazari loved music. He built a mechanical band of musicians – tiny robots in a boat, playing songs for the guests as they sailed on the water.’
‘No way!’
‘It’s true. He had such a fine mind,’ Father says. ‘And, like every genius born in this land, he’s been forgotten.’
‘But you didn’t forget!’ says Narin, eager to cheer him up. ‘You remember Al-Jazari! And Grandma remembers!’
‘Yes, sweetheart,’ Father says, nodding. ‘We are the memory tribe.’
Narin presses her forehead against the window, the reflection of her face merging with the yellowing fields. When she tires of watching the landscape, she turns back and glances at the box they are bringing with them.
‘Why are we taking the qanun ?’
Father replies. ‘There is a master craftsman in Iraq. Very famous. I want him to take a look at it. The instrument needs repair, but I cannot entrust it to just anyone. It’s very old, and it’s a gift, so we must take good care of it.’
‘A gift from whom?’
There is the briefest silence before Grandma says, ‘The Englishman brought it with him from Istanbul and he gave it to my grandmother.’
‘Why?’
‘Well – it was his way of thanking her. Not only her, the whole village. He was grateful that they had allowed him to stay.’
‘Let me guess,’ says Narin, shrugging. ‘And that, too, happened in olden times!’
After they cross the border into Iraq, they make their way steadily down the Tigris, the river their guide.
Grandma says that once upon a time this region was full of oryxes – large antelopes with long, straight horns, a blend of beauty and stamina. Their coats so bright that they reflected the rays of the sun like smooth mirrors, they could preserve water even in scorching temperatures. Capable of detecting scents from miles away, they could smell the promise of rain in the wind.
When Grandma was a girl, there were about five hundred oryxes in the region. By the time she got married only a handful had remained. The hunters arrived with their safari vehicles and automated weapons. Oil-company executives threw parties for their guests, driving them to the desert to give chase to these heavenly animals.
There were also lions along the Tigris once upon a time. Big cats so majestic and fearsome they inspired artists, who carved them into stone with astonishing detail. They lived alongside gazelles, foxes, lynxes, jackals, leopards and striped hyenas that unleashed bloodcurdling sounds in the night. There were crocodiles, too, though not as many in this part of the river. Once a shark swam all the way from the Ganges in India to see the lights of Baghdad, where it decided to stay for good. But now they are all gone, the animals and the artists, all turned to dust. Only the stones remain, and the stories, buried deep.
With one more pit stop, in three hours they reach the outskirts of Mosul. From here they will drive to the village where Leila was born. Zêrav , ‘Golden Waters’, is situated between the River Tigris and its tributary the River Khosr.
‘Imagine, Narin,’ Father says. ‘All this was once a momentous empire. At its height, Assyria covered Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and parts of Turkey. It was powerful, not only because it was rich but also because it sowed fear. When they conquered a new land, they forced the entire population to migrate. That was cruel. People lost their connection with their birthplace.’
Father says thousands of years later, Yazidi settlements were similarly wiped off the map when Saddam ordered that they be destroyed to make way for the Mosul Dam. All at once the villagers were left homeless. In their own motherland, they became refugees. Saddam also built reservoirs and dikes to divert water from the marshlands – which used to be so green and fertile that many believed them to be the original Garden of Eden. But the tyrant wanted to teach the Marsh Arabs a lesson, and, in doing so, send a message to all dissidents.
‘You know, Marsh Arabs used to grow rice and cane reeds – and scented cucumbers. Ah, that smell! But when the dictator decimated the marshlands, the water became undrinkable, full of salt. The buffalos were poisoned. The plants died. Twenty thousand square kilometres of bountiful soil, imagine, crumbled into wasteland. People starved to death.’
Father says that, in the chaos following the American invasion, all the chemicals and rubble from fuel and weapons contaminated the Tigris. And the Mosul Dam, which Saddam in all his hubris had once named after himself, has now been declared the most perilous dam in the world, built on poor foundations of soluble rock that are dissolving by the day. At some point in the future it could collapse, and, if that happens, in only a matter of hours it will inundate Mosul and the surrounding area, engulfing houses and fields as well as thousands of years of history. He says that one ancient city in particular is in danger of being obliterated: Nineveh.