Page 33 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

—O— ARTHUR

By the River Tigris, 1872

I n the village of Zêrav the children greet him first. Giggling, wide-eyed, they scuttle out of their homes, curious to meet the unexpected visitor. Behind them walks a group of elderly men, long, thin plaits emerging from beneath their caps. The one in the middle, dressed head-to-toe in white, seems to be the sheikh. He carries a cane carved from alabaster, topped with a silver ornament – an emblem of a tree between two peacocks.

‘Tell them who we are and ask them if we can spend the night here,’ says Arthur to the guide. ‘Would they be kind enough to put us up?’

‘You are welcome here,’ says the sheikh, after Arthur’s words are translated. ‘We believe every guest is God-sent.’

Ushered to the sheikh’s house, they are first offered goat’s milk and dried figs, and then a sumptuous dinner of rice with pomegranate syrup, chicken biryani, date cake and kubba Mosul , a rich meat pie made of bulgur dough, stuffed with ground lamb, raisins, pine nuts and almonds.

‘Maybe there were some who advised you not to stop at our village. It is good that you did not listen to them,’ says the sheikh.

Arthur blushes, trying not to glance at his guide, who is sitting by his side, arms folded across his chest. The man has not touched his meal and does not look anyone in the eye. Sensing that he is deliberately refraining from consuming the food, Arthur, for the first time in his life, eats with a sharpened appetite.

‘I am very sorry people say bad things about you,’ says Arthur, between mouthfuls. ‘That must be hurtful.’

The sheikh smiles, the wrinkles around his eyes crinkling. ‘We are children of God, like everyone else. But people are unfair, and life has taught us to be strong, resilient. Otherwise we could never have survived.’

After dinner they are served coffee in tiny cups.

‘You need to be careful,’ says the sheikh. ‘The Pasha of Mosul thinks you are here for gold. He is a powerful man.’

A shadow of surprise crosses Arthur’s face as he understands that people across the region have been talking about him.

Pensively, he shakes his head. ‘I am not interested in gold. I am looking for an ancient poem about the Great Flood.’

The sheikh lifts his chin. ‘Well, then, you are in the right place because this is where it all happened – the Ark and the Deluge. We believe seven thousand years have passed since – every millennium one of the seven angels descended to earth to help humankind – not that humans have learnt much.’

Little by little, those present head home, leaving only a few men in the room. As the fire crackles in a brazier, the sheikh asks, ‘Do you have a wife back in your country? Children?’

‘No,’ Arthur replies curtly.

‘No one waiting for you?’

Arthur hesitates. ‘I have a fiancée.’

‘You love her?’

It is not bashfulness that prevents Arthur from speaking but an inexplicable sadness. For he has no language, even with a translator by his side, to explain how, ever since he was a boy, he has been pulled by a ghost river, a flow so strong it doesn’t let him rest or take root. The current that carries him along is stronger than matters of the heart – or so he believes.

Still unsure how to respond, Arthur pivots on his heel, sensing a movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone has entered the room.

‘That’s my adopted daughter,’ says the sheikh. ‘Women do not join evening conversations – but she is different. She is a faqra .’

‘A faqra ?’

‘Yes, Leila is a diviner.’

A faqra , they tell him, can detect things that others walk past without noticing. She knows the landscape in the way a reed warbler knows the ins and outs of marsh waters. She can tell a storm from the flight of herons, the shape of ant hills or the antics of spiders. A faqra learns things she wishes she never did and, once she does, she cannot unlearn them. This is why it is said that they die early, their hearts unable to carry the burden for too long. That first night in the village, Arthur learns that to be a Yazidi one must be born into the faith. Since no one can convert in or marry out, and since the community has been attacked and forcefully converted so many times, its population remains small in number in comparison with their neighbours. The sheikh’s adopted daughter comes from a long line of seers. They recount the past and predict the future, unveil mysteries that remain shrouded from the rest of us. Although a gift, it is also an affliction that must be borne with dignity. The faqrya live in a temporal zone of their own, a cyclical history that spools back to the beginning of time. They understand the echoes through centuries, ride the waves of suffering, collect the remains of stories. They are the custodians of knowledge, the memory-keepers. In a culture where very little, if ever, is put into writing, they are the librarians.

The bed they offer him is soft and clean, and the sheets smell of rosemary. After the itchy mattress at Jacob’s Inn, his body rejoices. He instantly falls asleep. Late in the night, he wakes up to a strange sound – a distant rustle. His heart racing, he opens the window and looks out.

There, under a moon so bright he could read by it, standing between clumps of heather, is a shadow. He instantly knows who it is – the sheikh’s daughter. Leila wears a white robe that reaches her ankles. Her hair, long and dark, hangs loose over her shoulders. Her bare feet tread the ground as gently as if she were stepping on a lush carpet. Arthur can tell she is sleepwalking. It is such a curious sight that he can only watch, spellbound. But worried that he is intruding, he pulls his head back. When he returns to sleep, he has the most peculiar dream – he sees his mother, young and beautiful as she was, mudlarking by the River Thames in the same white robe, its hem dragging through the sludge.

Early in the morning, Arthur wakes to the sound of joyful laughter. About twenty children have gathered outside his window, jostling to get a better view of him. When they see him stir, they run away, laughing.

‘How long have you been watching me?’ Arthur says with a smile.

He searches everywhere for his guide, but it quickly becomes apparent that he has left in the dark without notice, refusing to accept Yazidi hospitality. Mortified by the man’s behaviour, when Arthur sits at breakfast with everyone else, once again, he ends up eating for two. Not a difficult thing to do, as the food is delicious: crumbled white cheese with wild herbs, black honey from the bee hives of Sinjar, freshly baked flatbread and the most delectable butter. Arthur tucks in heartily, although with such haste to get to work that the villagers look on bemused. When he tries to explain why he is rushing, he falters.

It is the sheikh’s middle son who comes to his aid. The young man – Dishan – has spent time in Constantinople and studied in Baghdad and can speak English and French, in addition to Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish. He gladly agrees to act as his new interpreter.

‘Please tell them I must start excavating. I am very grateful for the kindness shown to me.’

‘Go look for your poem,’ the sheikh says when Arthur’s words are translated. ‘But there is no need for you to sleep in a tent. Our village is close to the site. It would make things easier for you to stay here. You can be our guest for as long as you’d like.’

‘That is … that is very generous of you,’ Arthur says. ‘I would not want to be a burden.’

‘Not a burden,’ says the sheikh. ‘We believe an onion shared with guests tastes better than roast lamb.’

Ni-ne-veh . The joy of being here at last! Arthur feels like a suitor reunited with a long-lost love.

There is something humbling about labouring at an archaeological excavation. You toil away in the heat and dust with your trowel and brush at the bottom of a pit, inching your way through the deposits of millennia. The border separating the present moment from the distant past dissolves and you find yourself tumbling into a vanished world that, though dead and buried, comes curiously to life. Your perceptions shift: you are made to realize the vulnerability of all that seems robust and majestic – palaces, aqueducts, temples – but, equally, the resilience of what appears small and insignificant – an ivory ring, a bronze coin, a wishbone … Nothing is trivial for an archaeologist. Even the most mundane finding is extraordinary.

They call it Kouyunjik – the mound covering the ruins of the North Palace. Located just on the opposite bank of the Tigris, 40 feet high, it is a hill with mysteries buried inside. This is where, one early-summer afternoon thousands of years ago, a tiny raindrop fell from the skies on the head of King Ashurbanipal, and this is where Arthur Smyth is now digging through layers of earth, layers of time.