I finished reading this book a few weeks ago but I have hesitated about writing about it. It’s difficult to say why, maybe because the distance the novel covers is so huge that I don’t really know where to start. It is three stories in one and these are joined together by water. This book made me think seriously about water and the way in which the West is so nonchalant and profligate with it. We use it without thought and we abuse and waste it egregiously. Life in water stressed countries must be so different, so laborious and exhausting.
Arthur, born into grinding poverty by the Thames in Victorian London, clambers out of his cold, muddy childhood by dint of his resilience and his amazing memory. He achieves a regular, paid job in a printing press and becomes obsessed by a book about ancient Mesopotamia, in particular Nineveh and thus the poem ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh.’ I remembered researching this story some years ago when I was writing the story of Noah’s Flood from the standpoint of Mrs Noah. It is essentially a flood tale, preceding Noah and all the many watery stories in other cultures. Becoming engrossed in the fragments owned by the British Museum and teaching himself to read hieroglyphs, Arthur finds employment there and eventually is funded for a trip to Mesopotamia, searching for lost remnants of the Gilgamesh poem.
Narin is a Yazidi girl living by the river Tigris and the time now is 2014. She is waiting for holy water to be brought from Iraq for her baptism. At this point I realised that the fiction had shifted sideways into modern history. I am ashamed to say that I only had a vague recollection of the genocide reaped upon the Syrian Yazidi population by Isis during those years. The Yazidis are often written of as ‘Devil Worshippers,’ apparently feared and hated by the local Christian and Muslim communities. I searched around a little but could not find a clear explanation of how and why they are called this. Water is essential to the Yazidi beliefs and they have a great respect for the rivers Euphrates and Tigris that run through those lands. Modern day engineering schemes for re- routing rivers, damming and creating hydro – electric plants run amok through religious practices and ancient cultural traditions. Eventually, through the violent death of her family, Narin is left to the mercy of modern day slavery and exploitation. Throughout this wide- spanning story, the reader is constantly aware that the author, Elif Shafak, is Turkish and has an understanding of the area to the east of Europe that emanates from her own life, culture and upbringing. It puts a slightly different colour on her narrative.
Finally, in the third story we are in London in 2018. Zaleekhah is a hydrologist who is renting a houseboat on the Thames, recovering from a broken relationship. An unexpected connection with the owner of the boat changes everything in totally unforeseen ways. These three stories are not written as separate sections of the book. The author entwines them with consummate skill, with rich writing that spans continents, centuries, rivers and everything watery. It is a very clever book, completely engrossing and satisfying. It raises many modern questions about water use and conservation and is a great read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.