Page 4 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

H— NARIN

By the River Tigris, 2014

O n the banks of the Tigris in south-east Turkey, beneath the canopy of a clear blue sky, a group of mostly elderly Yazidis are gathered one afternoon in late spring. They form a semicircle, facing a girl in a white dress. She is being baptized with sacred water brought over from the Valley of Lalish in Iraq.

The child’s name is Narin. Nine years old this month, she has delicately carved features – a wide forehead, straight nose, arched eyebrows over large, strikingly bright sage-green eyes. As she listens to the sheikh reciting prayers on her behalf, she notices a bird swoop low overhead, darting towards the bushes, but she cannot tell what species it is. She glances at her grandmother standing proudly by her side. The old woman knows all about birds and can accurately mimic hundreds of avian songs, but this is not the right moment to ask her. Focusing her attention back on the ceremony, Narin waits quietly, respectfully. She lifts her gaze again only when the holy water is sprinkled on her forehead.

The first drop falls on her brow and slides down gently, resting on her eyelashes – thick, copious and straight, their tips bronzed by the sun. Narin wipes it away and smiles.

‘Lamb of faith,’ says the sheikh. ‘May your path always be blessed.’

The tufts of milkweed by their feet shiver in the sudden breeze that gusts in from the river. Into the descending quiet, Narin hears her grandmother speak, her voice tinkling in a loving echo.

‘Lamb of faith, dilê min .’

Dilê min – ‘my heart’. That is how Grandma expresses her affection, by turning her own body into an anatomy of love. When she misses Narin, she says, ‘Come and sit next to me, the corner of my liver’; when she wants to raise her spirits, she says, ‘Cheer up, the pulse of my neck’; when she cooks her favourite food, she says, ‘Eat up, the light of my eye; if your tummy is full, then mine rejoices’; and when she wishes to advise her that there is a hidden blessing in every trial, she says, ‘Don’t forget, my soul, if God closes one door, He opens another. That is why you must never despair, the air in my lungs.’ Heart, liver, stomach, lungs, neck, eyes, soul … It is as if love, by its fluid nature, its riverine force, is all about the melding of markers, to the extent that you can no longer tell where your being ends and another’s begins.

‘May life be kind to you, child, and when it is not, may you emerge stronger,’ intones the sheikh.

The second drop lands on Narin’s collar; a pale, round shadow forms over the white fabric, like the centre of a moonflower.

Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the girl looks around, half expecting to find the world altered somehow, now that the ceremony is almost over. But everything seems to be the same – the brambles that catch at the hem of her dress, the jagged rocks by the shoreline, the patches of sun-scorched grass pushing through the grit, the muddy smell that rises from the silt of the river and lingers in her nostrils … They are all exactly as they used to be. So are the expressions on the faces of the adults present, both happy and worried for her. Grown-ups are not good at masking their concerns, although they can hide their delight and curiosity surprisingly well. Whereas with children it is the other way round. Children can tactfully mute their anxiety and conceal their sorrow, but will struggle not to express their excitement. That is what growing up means, in some simple way: learning to repress all expressions of pure happiness and joy.

Narin is good at hiding her worries – and she has many. Today she is upset that her father was not able to attend her baptism. A highly popular and sought-after qanun player who performs at weddings and circumcisions across the region, he often needs to be on the road for days on end. He travels widely not only in Turkey but also across Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, returning from each trip with funny stories to tell. Then he is gone again. Narin understands that, as much as he loves her, Father cannot stay for too long in one place. People say this has been the way with him ever since he lost the love of his life – in the same afternoon, in the same hour, the door of life opened for Narin and closed for her mother. From that day forth, despite all attempts to find him a suitable match, Father refused to remarry and the child was raised by her grandmother.

Grandma is everything to her.

‘May this consecrated water bring goodness and kindness into your life, protect you from troubles.’ The sheikh raises his hand, about to sprinkle the third and last drop. ‘May it –’

A deafening rumble, as if rising from the bowels of the earth, drowns out the final incantations. Startled, they all turn in the same direction.

A bulldozer. A mud-splattered, dirty yellow, mechanical behemoth. The vehicle, its engine having roared to life, rolls into motion across the clearing, belching puffs of black smoke into the clear air. It creaks and groans into forward gear and lumbers towards them, making the ground shudder, its heavy metal blade suspended ready to strike.

They are everywhere these days. Ever since the land around has been earmarked for a major dam-building scheme by the Turkish government, the vast plains of the River Tigris are filled with an unbearable racket – an endless hammering, banging, drilling, boring, tempering and hewing. It is a controversial operation, protested by ecological activists and local farmers alike. Foreign companies, initially interested in a lucrative enterprise, have withdrawn their support over concerns about human rights, cultural heritage and environmental destruction. Yet the construction has not slowed. Every morning, all along the riverbank, earth-movers, tip lorries and bulldozers rumble away, hauling heaps of basalt, clay and limestone to form the foundation of what will someday become the largest hydropower plant in the country.

By the time the Ilisu Dam is completed, over eighty thousand people will have been displaced, more than two hundred villages and forty hamlets evacuated. When the work began, the peasants, most of them Kurdish, were forced out of their homes, their fields and orchards expropriated, leaving them in despair. The government deposited token payments into their accounts in return for the confiscated lands. Many families, like Narin’s, have not touched the money, refusing to agree to such a miserly deal. Some are planning to sue the authorities, but people in this area are poor, and the state simply too powerful. Court cases take long years and don’t necessarily end in favour of the plaintiff. Either way, the construction is going ahead.

Hasankeyf, an ancient settlement along the River Tigris – once known as Castrum Kefa , the ‘Castle of the Rock’ – will be inundated, as soon as the water level rises to 60 metres. Its limestone cliffs and man-made caves, its unexplored historical sites and unplumbed secrets, will disappear under an artificial lake. A 12,000-year-old history will be obliterated by a dam that will last 50 years – the lifespan of a mule. This region – home to churches, chapels, mosques, monasteries, synagogues and shrines – has already lost so much of its heritage. Most local populations have migrated to cities, near and far, where they have been swallowed by the currents of urban life, severed from the traditions that always sustained them. It was usually the elderly who stayed behind, delaying leaving until the last moment possible; they were the ones who found it hardest to part with their memories.

The bulldozer stops in front of the group, barely a few centimetres away from Narin. The driver, a man with a drooping moustache, pulls up the brake lever, pops his head out of the window.

‘Why are you people gathered here? Move! Government orders.’

‘ Effendi , we were about to finish,’ the sheikh says. ‘If you could kindly give us a few minutes.’

‘Finish what?’ the man asks, a look of suspicion crossing his face. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

The sheikh purses his lips, not wanting to tell a stranger that they were in the midst of a baptism ceremony. He only says, ‘We live here.’

‘Not for long, though. Why haven’t you left yet? You’ve been ordered to move to the cities. The project will move faster with you people out of sight. You’re slowing us down.’

Grandma takes a step forward and crosses her arms. ‘Can’t you go dig over there, son?’

‘No, I can’t! This is where I feel like working today,’ replies the man, annoyed at being challenged by a woman.

‘Does it make any difference where you start?’ Grandma insists, a determined set to her jaw. ‘You’re going to excavate the entire area anyway.’

‘I’m not moving, woman. You’d better leave, all you lot, go now, scram – or I’ll file a complaint that you’re preventing a government official from doing his work. Then you’ll get into trouble.’

Without waiting for a response, the man draws in his head. As he is about to turn on the engine, he mutters something under his breath, too quietly for anyone to hear – but Narin, standing closest, reads his lips.

‘Filthy fucking devil-worshippers!’

A second later the roar of the machine fills the air, the sound overpowering after the initial lull.

For a confused moment the group remains rooted to the spot, watching the bulldozer scoop away at the earth, hauling out chunks of alluvium from the shores of the Tigris, disturbing the bones of antediluvian animals and dormant rocks that witnessed thousands of years of Mesopotamian history. The machine veers back and forth, and catches underground tubers, dangling like monstrous tooth extractions, in its maw, and rips out the roots of long-ago-felled trees.

‘Let’s move a bit further up,’ says the sheikh over the din. ‘We don’t want trouble.’

They follow him silently, trudging up the river in single file, searching for a spot where the noise may be a bit less intense.

‘How about here?’ suggests the sheikh, pointing to a clear patch. ‘This seems good enough.’

They form a semicircle again, all the while feeling the gaze of the bulldozer driver burning through his window, scrutinizing their every move.

‘We’d better hurry,’ says the sheikh, unable to hide his nervousness. Holding up the bottle with the remaining sacred water, he resumes his position. ‘My child, may your –’

No sooner has the holy man uttered these words than he halts, his face paling. The bulldozer is coming towards them. The powerful machine drives disturbingly close, lowers its scoop and begins digging, making it impossible for them to hear each other speak.

Once again, they walk away.

‘I’m afraid that man is not going to leave us in peace,’ says the sheikh. ‘He’s doing it deliberately; he wants to intimidate us.’

‘We shouldn’t have come here. It clearly wasn’t a good idea,’ says a neighbour. As far as he is concerned, this ritual could just as well have been held in the village; there was no need to drag themselves to the banks of the Tigris, since they do not require full immersion in flowing water, like the Mandeans – the disciples of John the Baptist – but Narin’s grandmother insisted they stay close to the river, and, as anyone will attest, she is a headstrong woman.

Ideally, they all acknowledge, the baptism ceremony, Mor Kirin , should be performed in Lalish, the holiest temple of the Yazidi faith, tucked away in a peaceful valley surrounded by undulating hills north of Mosul in Iraq. Narin should wear a wreath of flowers around her head – daffodils, periwinkles, gardenias. She should drink from the sacred fountain of Zamzam and then be baptized at Kaniya Sp? , the ‘White Spring’ – the only place on earth that remained safe and clean when God sent down the Great Flood. Miraculously forming a whirlpool, the spring never mixed with the muddy, dirty floodwaters, staying forever pure.

Yet until now their circumstances prevented the family from taking the child to Iraq. Money was tight; it was never the right moment. Besides, for quite some time, Narin’s health has been deteriorating. So this year water from the venerated Valley of Lalish – sealed in a bottle and entrusted to a qawwal – was brought over instead. One should be baptized as early in life as possible, girls sooner than boys, but it isn’t uncommon for children to be initiated into the faith when they are older, if they are sick or unable to travel.

‘We can return later in the day,’ says the sheikh. ‘Or we can continue in the village.’

‘Or perhaps it is a sign,’ remarks Grandma. ‘It was not meant to be.’

The lines on the sheikh’s forehead deepen. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Maybe the last drop was not meant to fall.’ Grandma shakes her head. ‘The time or the place was not auspicious.’

‘Do you wish to delay the ceremony, Besma?’

Grandma responds with a slight nod. ‘I do, most respected sheikh.’

A shudder of unease ripples through the group.

‘But don’t you know your granddaughter is getting older?’ a neighbour interjects. ‘She should have been baptized long ago.’

Another neighbour says, ‘That’s right. Besides, if you put it off, even for a couple of weeks, maybe you won’t find us here next time. Things are bad already. Who can tell which one of us will still be around come tomorrow?’

People across the region, from every sect, creed and tribe, have been affected by the construction of the dam. But for the tiny Yazidi community, added to the sadness of losing their ancestral land is the fear of being subject to discrimination in the places where they are to be resettled. Leaving home is never easy, but it is much, much harder when you have nowhere to go.

Over the past decades, their village has dried up and shrivelled, crumpling at the edges, like scorched parchment. Many families migrated to Europe, becoming immigrants in countries where the sun does not raise its golden head for months on end. Some come back to visit in the summer to help repair the fountains and shrines, but none of them plan to return for good. In hamlets and villages where their ancestors once thrived in their thousands, only a handful of Yazidis is left. Grandma always says she will be one of the last to go. She cannot abandon her pistachio trees. But primarily it is the river she cannot part from. Every so often she walks to these shores, lamenting that the ground under her feet is about to be flooded, thousands of years of history gone, knowing that these are her last prayers to the Tigris.

Once upon a time there was a large, flourishing Yazidi community in and around Hasankeyf, connected by custom and faith as much as by stories and songs. Their numbers dwindled with every decade of deprivation, migration and forced conversion. Today only twelve Yazidis are left in their village, and tomorrow, they, too, will be gone.

‘I was just thinking,’ says Grandma, her expression both fierce and loving. ‘Narin is the beat of my heart, the light of my eyes. God knows what she means to me. I always wanted her to be baptized in the holy Valley of Lalish. Not over here, when the earth is being hollowed out and the Tigris is in distress …’ She waves her hand towards the river, leaving the sentence hanging in the air.

The sheikh inhales. ‘You want to take the child to Iraq?’

‘I do, venerable sheikh. We were not able to travel all these years. But my son-in-law received invitations to sing at three big weddings in Mosul this summer. Maybe he could take us with him. I will speak to him – let’s see what he thinks. If he agrees with me, we can make things work. Just the same, I’m very grateful that you all came here today.’

Thus saying, Grandma opens a bag. Inside there are sweets wrapped in colourful foil, which she distributes to everyone present, thanking them for attending the holy occasion.

‘God bless your feet, neighbours. May your toes never stumble over a pebble.’

‘You, too, old soul,’ says the sheikh, sighing.

Taking turns, they hug Narin, and, even though the ceremony has not been finalized, they give her gifts – a sachet with dried rosemary, a vial of oil distilled from clove buds, a pot of rose salve, a jar of apricot jam, a garland of fragrant flowers … Lastly, the sheikh hands her the bottle from the Valley of Lalish, and, aware of its significance, the girl carefully places it in the front pocket of her dress.

‘We’d better be on our way, then,’ says a neighbour. The village is not far, but the heat of the afternoon, now noticeably stronger, may slow them down.

‘You walk ahead of us,’ says Grandma. ‘We’ll catch up with you.’

No one is surprised by her words this time. They all know that Besma loves being near the Tigris and will never miss an opportunity to spend time by the river, as if pulled towards the waterway by some unseen force. Whenever she visits the area, she takes Narin with her. She teaches the child the names of the native plants alongside their medicinal and culinary uses. Together they collect tree resin, which they apply to wooden trays and bowls as a varnish. They search for roots and leaves and bark that can be used for dye.

‘We’ll take the gifts to your house so your hands will be free,’ says the sheikh. ‘Just be careful, though. Don’t be late.’

‘We’ll be fine, honourable sheikh, don’t worry. I might teach Narin how to collect cat’s-tails – it’s the season.’

A neighbour leans in close, her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Besma, dear, are you sure you want to go to Iraq? You’re old, Narin is unwell, poor thing … and the roads aren’t safe, I hear.’

‘Yes, but when was it ever safe? Not in living memory. When were the troubles of Mesopotamia over? There has never been a good time to travel,’ Grandma says, her face concentrated in thought. ‘Don’t you think the child should fully experience the holy Lalish while she still can?’

When Narin was born, she was a placid and healthy baby. As yet unaware that she did not have a mother, she approached life with an endless curiosity and an appetite for discovery. Raised on goat’s milk, sour yogurt soup and herbal concoctions, she would grab the beads suspended over her cradle, hung there to ward off evil spirits; giggle at her father making silly faces; and, later, chase the chickens in the yard or jump gaily over ditches. But, whatever the illness was that struck her before she started school, it progressed quickly, and, since last year, her auditory world has been retreating behind a periodic buzzing and ringing in her ears. Her faculty of hearing is fading. The transition from sounds to silence will be slow and gradual but irrevocable.

The doctor they visited at the university hospital in Diyarbakir told them they should prepare themselves. In as little as eight months’ time, Narin will have gone completely deaf. A rare genetic disease. She will first lose her ability to detect high-frequency sounds. Soon after, she will struggle to understand when several people speak at the same time. It will happen not at once but bit by painful bit; her range of hearing will contract from the outer margins, like curtains closing on the last act of a play. Some day before long, Narin will wake up to discover that the early-morning chorus of long-tailed tits, crested larks, barn swallows and white wagtails has fallen silent. She will no longer be able to catch the delighted squeal of an infant or the whistle of a train receding into the distance, nor the bleating of newborn lambs; she will hear only those that remain in her recollection.

Before that day arrives, Grandma believes, the girl should hear the birds, susurrations and prayers of the sacred Valley of Lalish for the first and last time. Narin should behold the one place on earth where despair turns into hope and even the loneliest souls find solace.

After the others leave, the old woman and the child walk by the river, their shadows following beside them. They pass stands of thorny sedge and pick their way through dense thickets of reeds and rushes. In lulls between the steady rhythm of their footsteps, they can hear the croaking of frogs, the whirring of insects. Every so often they pause to examine the flora. Across the rich alluvial soils of the Tigris, a variety of vegetation flourishes. Grandma guides Narin’s fingers, teaching her how to recognize plants solely by touch. Leaves are complex things, the child learns. Some are leathery with sunken veins; others smooth and waxy; yet others covered in a fine downy hair, like a teenage boy sporting an incipient moustache.

‘Grandma?’

‘Umm?’

‘When I go deaf, will I forget your voice?’

‘How is that possible? The ear never forgets what the heart has heard.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It means my voice will always be by your side – even after I’m gone. Because I’m impressed here … and here …’ Grandma touches the girl’s temples. ‘That is what happens when you love someone – you carry their face behind your eyelids, and their whispers in your ears, so that even in deep sleep, years later, you can still see and hear them in your dreams.’

Tilting her head, Narin considers. It is a comforting thought, though a bit baffling, but by now she has no doubt Grandma is always wonderfully baffling. For a peaceful instant, which lasts no longer than a breath, she forgets all that has been troubling her, suspended in the warmth of the old woman’s compassion. Then the moment passes, and the child says, ‘That bulldozer-driver … He was not a nice man.’

‘He was not, my heart.’

‘He called us a bad word.’

Grandma stares at the girl, puzzled. Narin is biting her bottom lip, the way she always does when confused or worried.

‘What are you talking about, child?’

‘He called us devil-worshippers.’

A shadow passes across the old woman’s face. ‘Don’t utter those words.’

‘But why did he say that?’

‘Maybe he meant something else?’

The girl shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. And it wasn’t the first time. It happened at the hospital, too. While Baba was speaking to the doctor, they asked me to wait in the corridor. A cleaner walked by, and he said, What are these filthy, fallen devil-worshippers doing here? He was talking about us.’

A quail calls in the undergrowth – a solitary succession of chirrups. When the bird falls quiet, Grandma asks, ‘Did you tell your father?’

‘No, I didn’t want him to be sad.’ Narin folds her hands on her lap. ‘Why do people call us that?’

‘Listen, my soul, there are those who say wrong things about us. They utter harmful lies and hurtful slanders. They’ve no right to do this, but they do it anyway. They vilify us not because they know us well. Quite the opposite: they do not know us at all.’

‘But that doesn’t make any sense. I don’t go around saying horrible things about people I don’t know!’

‘Of course you don’t; that’s because you’re wise.’

Narin is not satisfied with the answer. She does not want to be wise. She wants to understand why people are the way they are and if they can ever change.

Sensing her disappointment, Grandma opens another bag. Inside, wrapped in a cloth to keep them warm, are flatbreads – each spread with sheep’s milk butter and filled with herbed cheese. The old woman makes these every morning at the crack of dawn, settled on a stool in the courtyard. She pats the dough into round pieces, slaps them against the tandoor and bakes them until they are crisp and puffy. She knows how much the girl loves them.

‘Eat, Narin. When the belly is light, the heart will be heavy.’

The child bites into her flatbread, the taste of herbs and butter mixing on her tongue.

As she chews slowly, she says, ‘I just don’t understand –’

‘Well, this world is a school and we are its students. Each of us studies something as we pass through. Some people learn love, kindness. Others, I’m afraid, abuse and brutality. But the best students are those who acquire generosity and compassion from their encounters with hardship and cruelty. The ones who choose not to inflict their suffering on to others. And what you learn is what you take with you to your grave.’

‘Why so much hatred towards us?’

‘Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire – because they want to have them in their possession. It’s all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It’s all out of fear! Then there is the third kind – when people hate those they have hurt.’

‘But why?’

‘Because the tree remembers what the axe forgets.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means it’s not the harmer who bears the scars, but the one who has been harmed. For us, memory is all we have. If you want to know who you are, you need to learn the stories of your ancestors. Since time immemorial, the Yazidis have been misunderstood, maligned, mistreated. Ours is a history of pain and persecution. Seventy-two times we have been massacred. The Tigris turned red with our blood, the soil dried up with our grief – and they still haven’t finished hating us.’

Reaching into the pocket of her dress, Narin takes out the bottle brought from the Valley of Lalish. She holds the glass up to the sun, feeling the caress of the light reflecting off its surface. Then she turns it upside down, waiting for the last drop to fall. Water in its liquid form. This she cannot know, but that drop was a snowflake once upon a time, in a land far away. It passed through what was then the world’s richest and largest city, its chimneys belching clouds of smoke and sulphur. It witnessed the birth of a boy, the force of another river. Ephemeral though it is, it carries within the memories of its previous lives. Gently, it alights on the girl’s hand, quivering.

Holding the drop in her palm like a precious pearl, Narin feels a wave of sadness descend on her. It seems like everything is coming to an end. Hasankeyf will soon be flooded because of the new dam. She will no longer be able to forage for herbs and roots with her grandmother. Someday her hearing, too, will disappear – just like the land she has always known as home.

The child falls silent. So does the old woman. Beside them the river flows, fast and furious, rolling its pebbles like dice.