There Are Rivers in the Sky

There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024) is a novel by Elif Shafak. Through the journey of a single drop of water across time, the book explores the stories of three people across countries and cultures: an Englishman born by the River Thames in the 19th century, a Yazidi girl who lives by the Tigris River in 2014, and a Turkish English hydrologist in England in 2018. The book explores themes of the cyclical and interconnected nature of life and water, the impact of ancient texts on modern lives, and cultural plunder in historical discovery and archaeological excavation. 

Shafak is a Turkish British writer whose books have earned numerous accolades and have been translated into more than 50 languages. Her novel The Island of Missing Trees (2021) was a finalist for the Costa Award, British Book Awards, RSL Ondaatje Prize, and Women’s Prize for Fiction. The novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World (2019) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize, while The Forty Rules of Love (2009) was chosen by the BBC as one of the “100 Novels That Shaped Our World.” There Are Rivers in the Sky was a top five Sunday Times bestseller.

This guide refers to the 2024 Penguin Books Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain references to or descriptions of genocide, racism, sexual violence, enslavement, domestic and child abuse, addiction, a disease epidemic, death by suicide, and deaths of loved ones.

Plot Summary

The story begins with a raindrop that falls onto the head of Assyrian King Ashurbanipal in Mesopotamia in the 640s BCE. The rest of the narrative unfolds through three timelines and locations, following three main characters, told in alternating chapters: Arthur Smyth, who lives in England in the late 19th century; Narin, a Yazidi girl who moves between Turkey and Iraq in 2014; and Zaleekhah, a Turkish English hydrologist who lives in England in 2018.

Arthur, who is christened “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums,” is born by the River Thames in 1840. He has a gift of extraordinary memory and an affinity for languages and obtains an apprenticeship in a printing press as a young boy. Arthur reads all the books printed by the press and is especially fascinated by a book titled Nineveh and Its Remains. His interest in Mesopotamia was ignited when he witnessed stone sculptures called lamassus being brought into the British Museum, having been excavated from the banks of the Tigris river. 

Following a chance meeting with the author Charles Dickens and a conversation about Arthur’s interest in ancient civilizations, Dickens sends Arthur some clothes that he can wear to visit the British Museum. Arthur begins to spend every lunch break at the museum deciphering the cuneiform writing on the clay tablets. He is discovered by one of the museum officials, Samuel Birch, who is amazed at the boy’s ability to read the tablets and offers him a part-time job at the museum to continue doing so. This eventually transitions to a full-time position after Arthur discovers that some of the tablets contain verses from The Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian epic poem considered to be the first known work of literature.

After years of work, Arthur discovers mentions of a flood or deluge similar to the one in the story of Noah’s ark from the Bible. This is a historic discovery, as the clay tablets predate the Bible by thousands of years, and both Arthur and The Epic of Gilgamesh are thrust into the spotlight. Arthur’s lifelong dream comes true when he is sponsored to go on an excavation mission to Nineveh to search for the missing lines of poetry from the Flood Tablet. Before he leaves, he gets pressured into an engagement with a young woman named Mabel.

Arthur sails to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey), where it takes a while for official permission to arrive from the sultan for his excavation. He explores the city in the meantime and is taken to a brothel by some of the clerks at the embassy. There, he is enthralled when he sees a qanun, an ancient musical instrument, being used by one of the women. A fire breaks out in the brothel that night, and Arthur manages to escape and save the qanun as well.

Arthur receives his official permission the next morning, and he sets out for Nineveh. He breaks his journey at a village called Zêrav near his excavation site, which is inhabited by Yazidis. Arthur is warmly welcomed by the community, and he chooses to stay with them for the duration of his work despite the local official’s disapproval of Arthur’s friendship with the “devil-worshippers,” as the Yazidis are termed. Arthur also grows fond of Leila, the adopted daughter of his host, who is a faqra (diviner) and is descended from a long line of seers. During a local festival, Arthur witnesses Leila foretell a coming massacre, where Yazidi men will be killed and their women and girls abducted. He also realizes that he is in love with Leila, and he gifts her the qanun.

Arthur finds the missing lines of the tablet and is ordered to return home, despite his pleas that he be allowed to stay on. Back in England, Arthur is thrust into domestic life as he and Mabel get married and have twins. However, he yearns to return to Nineveh, and four years later, he finally does so. He discovers that, in keeping with Leila’s prediction, the Yazidis of Zêrav have been massacred in a plot hatched between the local official and a judge. Arthur grows mournful and listless until he hears of a Yazidi girl with a qanun wandering the area. Hopeful that Leila is still alive, Arthur sets out to find her; however, he contracts dysentery on the way since he cannot find any clean water in the cholera-ridden region, and he dies of dehydration. Arthur’s guide takes his body to Castrum Kefa, where Leila receives it and has him buried in their cemetery. 

In 2014, in the city of Hasankeyf (previously Castrum Kefa), the baptism of a nine-year-old Yazidi girl named Narin is interrupted by men working on a dam. Besma, Narin’s grandmother, decides to take Narin to Lalish, the holiest of Yazidi sites located in Iraq, to complete the ceremony. Narin’s father, Khaled, is warned by relatives that it is not safe for them to travel to Iraq because of growing militant forces. However, Khaled, who is a qanun player, does not heed their advice. 

Along the journey, Besma tells Narin stories from Yazidi culture and also about her grandmother, Leila, who was a seer. Besma describes how Leila stopped foretelling the future after having predicted a massacre; the gifts in the family then shifted to water dowsing, and Besma has inherited this gift, too. Besma also tells Narin about how an Englishman, the same one buried in the Hasankeyf cemetery, gifted their family the qanun.

Shortly after Besma and Narin arrive in Iraq, they are caught in an attack by ISIS militants. They attempt to flee to the Sinjar mountains along with thousands of other Yazidis but are caught and abducted. Besma is killed, while Narin is sold to a commander who assaults her along with other, captured Yazidi women.

In 2018, 31-year-old Zaleekhah, an English hydrologist of Turkish origin, moves into a houseboat on the Thames after separating from her husband. Zaleekhah lost her parents in a flash flood when they were camping by the Tigris when Zaleekhah was seven; she was raised by her mother’s brother, Uncle Malek, ever since. Zaleekhah visits her uncle, and he tries to persuade her to save her marriage. He also reveals that his daughter Helen, Zaleekhah’s cousin, is worried about the health of her daughter, Lily.

Zaleekhah meets and befriends the owner of her houseboat, an Irish woman named Brennen who goes by “Nen.” Nen, who had a childhood fascination with Mesopotamia, owns a tattoo parlor where she tattoos customers in cuneiform. Zaleekhah invites Nen to the birthday dinner that Uncle Malek is hosting for her, and Nen and Uncle Malek disagree over their respective interpretations of The Epic of Gilgamesh. Zaleekhah apologizes to Nen for her uncle’s behavior, and Nen advises Zaleekhah not to let her gratitude toward her uncle overwhelm the love she may feel.

Zaleekhah and Nen begin a relationship, and when Uncle Malek finds out, he disapproves. He also informs Zaleekhah that Lily is in urgent need of a kidney transplant, but he has managed to secure a donor. Zaleekhah discovers that the “donor” whom Uncle Malek has organized is a Yazidi girl—Narin—whom he plans to “buy” from Turkey. An appalled Zaleekhah confronts her uncle about this before she and Nen secure funds to “buy” Narin themselves and set her free. The book ends with Zaleekhah and Nen traveling to Hasankeyf, where they meet Narin at the cemetery. Narin lays flowers at her mother’s and Leila’s graves, and she points out Arthur’s tombstone to Zaleekhah and Nen as they all leave the cemetery.