Page 8 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

H— NARIN

By the River Tigris, 2014

‘ G randma, those who say awful things about us –’

‘What about them, my heart?’

‘It’s just I wish they had met you. If they only truly knew you, they would love you! How can anyone not love you?’

‘Narin, joy of my life.’

The breeze from the Tigris tousles the girl’s hair and the ends of the old woman’s headscarf, loosely knotted around her neck. They have been making their way along a narrow trail up the hill, gathering sorrel, wild garlic, coltsfoot and spotted dead nettle. As the temperature scales up another notch, they stop to catch their breath. They sit in the shade of a rocky outcrop, from where they can observe the yellow bulldozers and tipper lorries roaring down below.

‘Will you tell me a story, Grandma?’

‘Which story do you want, my soul?’

‘The one about how God created this world.’

‘Again? I’ve told you many times.’

Narin is worried that, when she goes deaf, it is not only her father’s music that she will miss but also the stories of her childhood. Grandma is illiterate and innumerate. She can scrawl her name on a piece of paper, but she cannot write down the words she carries within her. And so, before Narin loses her power of hearing, she wants to listen to every tale the old woman knows, so that she can still hear them when all else is silent. That is why she now pleads, ‘Once more – will you?’

‘All right, then. In those days, in those far-off days …’

Grandma’s stories usually begin the same way, words that have been recited like an incantation for millennia.

Narin cannot help chiming in: ‘ In those far-off years, in olden times …’

‘Olden times it was indeed,’ says Grandma placidly. ‘Long before the earth came into being, there was only God – Xwedê – and nothing else. Back then everything was calm and peaceful. All around there was pure stillness, because sounds had not been invented yet. Not even a whisper. Then one morning, God decided to mould a pearl from His precious essence and fill it with divine light. A pearl so shiny He could admire His own reflection on its surface.’

Narin clasps her knees together in anticipation of what comes next.

‘God entrusted the pearl to a magical bird called Anfar , and the bird kept it in his nest as if it were an egg. There the gem remained, unseen, untouched, unharmed. That blissful state lasted for forty days – or, perhaps, forty thousand years. It would not make any difference, because time, too, was inside the pearl. It was not yet born. It was not divided into years, months, weeks or hours. Time was whole, and the pearl was part of the whole, like everything else.’

Narin holds her breath. This is the bit of the story she likes best, when God starts to act in strange ways.

‘But then, for a reason we will never know, God stepped on the pearl with all His might, smashing it to pieces. This is how Xwedê brought into being the mountains, the forests and the valleys. From the scattered shards He chiselled the sun and the moon. He hung the stars in the firmament like ornaments. He drew water from the core of the pearl and filled the fountains, streams and oceans. He created the seven angels from His own divine light – sur . That is why we call them “Seven Lights” – Heft Sur . He made them as if lighting seven candles from one. On the first day, Sunday, He created the angel Azra’il ; on Monday, Darda’il ; on Tuesday, Israfil ; on Wednesday, Mika’il ; on Thursday, Gibra’il ; on Friday, Shimna’il ; and on Saturday, Nura’il . God chose the benevolent Melek Taw?s as the leader of the archangels. He is the peacock angel. Then He made the seven heavens and –’

‘Wait, which language did the angels speak?’

‘The language of silence.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means they did not need words to understand one another. They communicated through glowing light.’ Grandma smiles longingly, as if wishing to be with them now. ‘After that, God made humans – Adam and Eve. Christians, Jews, Muslims and everyone else in this world have sprung from this couple, but we Yazidis, my love, descended from Adam alone. No Eve involved.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘Well, Adam and Eve quarrelled one day. Each believed they were more important than the other. To find the answer they put their seeds in a jar and waited for a month. When Eve opened her jar, there wasn’t anything in it. But when Adam opened his, inside he found a boy and a girl. These are our ancestors. We are the only people who descended from Adam alone.’

‘Was Eve upset?’

‘No, not really – later on Eve gave birth to many children of her own. She was a busy woman.’

Grandma passes her palm across her eyebrows, touching the tattoo on her forehead. The ink is made from soot, ash and mother’s milk. Drawing patterns on the face – deq – used to be common among the women of this region, but the custom is fading. Some people have stars or moons or suns on their chins; others diamonds to attract strength and ward off the evil eye. Yet others have tiny honeycombs so that their words will always be sweet. Grandma’s tattoo, which she inherited from her own grandmother, is three wedge-shaped vertical marks:

Narin, too, wants the same design someday. It is not fair that they won’t let her, considering that Grandma got hers when she was a little girl. But times have changed, and they advise her not to rush. A tattoo is like a promise, they say, an oath inscribed into your skin, and you need to be sure you can keep it before you commit to it.

Her head bent in thought, Narin sighs. ‘I just don’t understand why God smashed that beautiful pearl.’

‘Well, I think Xwedê did this for our sake. Otherwise human beings would not exist. None of us. There would be no rays of sun to greet every morning, no eggs to paint in bright colours on Red Wednesday, no doves cooing in the eaves, no lovers secretly holding hands …’

Narin giggles.

‘Imagine, there’d be no stories to tell,’ Grandma says. ‘God destroyed His beloved pearl for us. And also maybe … because He wanted company.’

‘Are you saying God is lonely?’

‘Not any more, my heart – now that we are all here on earth. Every time we utter His holy name, He hears us. Every day we must pray to God, who is merciful, full of love and compassion. He is the judge of kings and beggars; the sovereign of the moon, the sun, the fire and the water. Prayer is not about asking for things. It is a conversation. When God is less lonely, we are less lonely.’

Pressing her lips together, Narin contemplates. Although she does not intend to question the ways of God, she cannot help wondering what would have happened if He had not done what He did. If only Xwedê had not smashed that lovely pearl, the universe would have remained as it was – complete, content. Then there would be no pain, no sorrow, no fear.

Grandma comes from a long line of healers. For generations, women – and several men – on her maternal side have relieved the suffering of the sick and the dying. Healing, she often says, resembles kite-flying. While a kite may aspire to drift freely in the skies, flying in all directions at once, its strings need to remain tethered to a fixed point. One can therefore master only a particular field, two at most. Some healers exclusively minister to victims of scorpion stings and snake bites, which are becoming more frequent these days, as the construction of the dam accelerates and the water level drops downstream. In times of drought and famine, venomous animals exhibit bizarre behaviour and start to attack humans in swarms. The lack of water, Grandma says, addles their brains and drives them wild, and who can blame them?

Other healers, like the descendants of Sora-Soran, ease creaking joints and repair broken hips. But Grandma’s speciality is of an entirely different kind. She treats those who are afflicted by anxiety, depression and maladies of the mind. She relies on the potency of plants, preparing concentrated tinctures that are widely sought across the region. Yet the key element for her is, and always has been, water. She says it washes away disease, purifies the mind, calms the heart. Water is the best cure for melancholy.

Whenever there is a prolonged dry spell or an invasion of locusts ravaging the crops, the villagers gather in a ritual prayer to summon rain. They walk in a silent procession until they reach high ground, where they line up and call the dark clouds. It works, sometimes. But when it doesn’t, they go to Besma. She can discern the locations of lost rivers, hidden canals and forgotten creeks – aquatic sources tucked away in the most unlikely places, even under barren hills.

At times she uses L-shaped brass rods that pull towards each other when she approaches a vein of water. At other times, she lightly holds a twig and walks around until she senses the tug. Occasionally she chooses a pendulum, waiting for it to swing. Ultimately, Grandma says, the implements are just a medium – rod, twig or pendulum; it is the human body that responds to sources in nature. The water inside us communes with the water outside us. A good diviner can tell the depth of an underground stream, and even whether it is contaminated or clean.

Grandma is a water-dowser.

Grandma is a spring-finder.

A bird swoops towards them and lands on a rock nearby. It is a small, olive-brown chiffchaff. A migratory passerine with a sweet song. They wait for a moment, hoping it might sing. When it does not, the child asks, quietly, ‘After the dam is built, what will happen to your pistachio trees?’

‘They will drown, I’m afraid.’

‘I didn’t know trees could drown.’

‘Just like humans – if they are left without vital air. We cannot save our grove, but I’ll take a cutting before we leave. I’ll make sure at least one tree comes with us wherever we go. Would you like that?’

‘Yes, please,’ says Narin, comforted by the thought of a travelling tree. ‘But what about the birds? They will be safe, no?’

‘They will be safer, but they will have nowhere to build their nests. So they will have to leave.’

‘The marbled duck –’

‘She’ll go elsewhere to lay her eggs. The willow-warbler, the red-wattled lapwing, the bluethroat, the kestrel, the eagle that soars high above – they won’t come back to Hasankeyf.’

‘I wish we had a huge ship,’ says Narin. ‘Then we could take all the animals and plants with us and sail away.’

‘Like Baba Noah,’ says Grandma. ‘He built an ark and invited his family and friends on board. He brought two of every animal, and he did not forget to take pistachios so they could grow into trees someday. And when the flood rose, the ship drifted away. They rode the waves for a long time, until the timbers scraped dry land. With a bone-jarring jolt they stopped at the peak of a mountain – Sinjar.’

‘Where is Mount Sinjar?’

‘It’s in Iraq. When we travel to Nineveh with your father, before you’re baptized in the holy Valley of Lalish, I can tell you more about it.’

Narin beams.

‘Listen, that was not all,’ says Grandma. ‘When the ship crashed into the mountaintop, a hole opened up in the hull. Floodwaters poured in. They were all going to die – humans, animals and plants. But then, out of nowhere, a black snake appeared! It coiled and coiled like a thick rope, plugging the breach. Thanks to the serpent, everyone was saved. For this reason, we Yazidis respect serpents and depict them at the entrance of sacred buildings. In our village, we also remember the great Shahmaran – “the Snake Queen”. She has a woman’s head and a snake’s body.’

‘How can something be both human and animal at the same time?’

‘Oh, it’s possible. We aren’t that different. All over Mesopotamia there were hybrid creatures once upon a time. In fact, my grandmother Leila saw one in her youth. It was a giant with the head of a man, the torso of a bull and the wings of a mighty bird. It had five legs! She knew what it was called: lamassu .’

‘ Lamassu ,’ Narin repeats. ‘What a funny name. Was Leila scared?’

‘She was not, my heart. She knew they were harmless.’

Narin sighs pensively. Her great-great-grandmother Leila sounds like an amazing woman. What a pity she will never get to meet her. The world would have been a much more interesting place if everyone was given a chance to meet their ancestors at least for an hour in their lifetime.

To their right on a slope lies a cemetery – many of its stones broken and crumbling. Although originally arranged in separate sections according to faith, its internal boundaries have been eroded over the course of time, mixing up the tombs of Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Yazidis, Arameans, Zoroastrians … Now, turning in that direction, the child asks, ‘Grandma, when they finish the dam and water covers everything, the graves will be submerged. Not even Baba Noah could have rescued cemeteries from the flood.’

Not expecting this comment, the old woman’s shoulders droop a little. ‘Well, the government says they’ll relocate all the graves.’

‘Do you believe them?’

‘Not really.’

‘What about my mother’s …’ Narin leaves the question hanging in mid-air.

Grandma pulls the child close and kisses the top of her head. ‘I promise, the pupil of my eye. We’ll do everything we can to make sure all our family graves are carried somewhere safe and dry.’

Grandma says that, just like a puff of vapour ascends to the skies, only to return as rain, hail or sleet, every Yazidi will come back to earth at least seven times. While it is true that the body is mortal, the soul is a perennial traveller – not unlike a drop of water.

‘Don’t forget, for us, death is more a hiatus than an end.’

Narin listens, gazing down at the backs of the old woman’s hands, as if trying to commit them to memory – weathered and intersected with raised veins. She likes to touch these veins, blue and green, running beneath her grandmother’s skin like underground streams. As she traces them with her finger, she asks, ‘What about the Englishman?’

‘What about him?’ says Grandma, her tone suddenly changing. They seldom talk about the foreigner buried in this land.

‘Well, he is of a different faith. What will happen to his grave when the dam is built and this area is flooded?’

‘It will disappear below the waters,’ Grandma says flatly. ‘His grave has been neglected for as long as I can remember. No family or friends ever come to visit. Perhaps they aren’t even aware that he is here – his people, I mean.’

Narin is surprised at the hardness in Grandmother’s voice. She asks, ‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘No, he died long before I was born. My grandmother Leila had known him.’

‘What was he doing here? You never told me.’

‘There is not much to tell,’ says Grandma. ‘Some people are restless like rivers.’

‘But there must be a reason why he came.’

‘Well, they say he was looking for a poem.’

‘A poem?’ echoes Narin.

Grandma glances away. ‘The Englishman travelled many miles from his home to find the missing verses of an ancient poem and to take what was not his to take. But they say he also left something behind – his heart. So he returned and he died here. He perished of thirst on the banks of the River Tigris. That’s all you need to know.’

‘Why did he die of thirst when –’

‘That’s enough chatting for today.’ The old woman rises to her feet, too hastily for her age. Her knees creak. ‘It’s getting late; let’s go back now. We don’t want people worrying about us.’

Slowly, Narin gets up. This isn’t like Grandma, cutting her off mid-conversation.

They walk in silence, their shadows pacing beside them. The grass beneath their feet gives off an ancient smell. Another bulldozer belches a gust of dark smoke into the air. Another pistachio tree sighs before the floodwaters arrive. The earth around Castrum Kefa is a canvas of scars.

By the time they reach the old Yazidi village with its shrinking population, Narin has all but forgotten about the Englishman buried by the River Tigris.