My maternal grandmother, the woman who raised me until I was ten years old, had never heard of the Greek philosopher and mathematician Thales of Miletus, but she, too, believed that water was the fundamental principle of life. She wished to teach me how to listen to gentle rain or murmuring streams, but, in my ignorance, I have been a rather poor student. In the end, as in many other things, it was literature that connected me with the realities and mysteries that had been in front of me all along. Holding a host of still unknown properties, water remains a great mystery.
The stories and silences of Mesopotamia—current-day Iraq and parts of current-day Turkey, Iran, Syria and Kuwait—are shaped by rivers, past and present, dead and dying. Of the ten most water-stressed nations in the world, seven are in the Middle East and North Africa. The Tigris and the Euphrates, once the cradle of civilization, are at their lowest levels in history. As the Mesopotamian rivers dry up, day by day, thousand-year-old settlements emerge from beneath their receding shores.
King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums is a fictional character who lives inside my imagination, but I have loosely based him on an actual historical figure: George Smith—the working-class genius who decoded cuneiform, traveled to the Ottoman Empire and died on the way back in a village close to the border between Turkey and Syria. A self-taught pioneer Assyriologist who not only discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh, he also dedicated his life to the ancient poem. Books by and about this remarkable character have been central to my research, such as his Assyrian Discoveries: An Account of Explorations and Discoveries on the Site of Nineveh, during 1873 and 1874 and The Chaldean Account of Genesis. I would especially like to highlight David Damrosch’s fabulous masterpiece The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. Irving Finkel’s The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood offers illuminating and helpful insights. I have learned a lot from Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (translated by Stephanie Dalley) and The Epic of Gilgamesh (translated by Andrew George). The lovers of the poem hail from all around the globe and I count myself among them. Gilgamesh Among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic by Theodore Ziolkowski is a fascinating source on the continuing influence and allure of the world’s oldest work of literature.
Austen Henry Layard’s groundbreaking work Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-Worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians has been crucial in my research and attentive readers will notice that I have played with the word order in the original title. Assyrian Palace Sculptures by Paul Collins, I Am Ashurbanipal: King of the World, King of Assyria, edited by Gareth Brereton, and Winged Bull: The Extraordinary Life of Henry Layard, the Adventurer Who Discovered the Lost City of Nineveh by Jeff Pearce have been precious sources. The scene where Arthur witnesses a kadi, a religious judge, grant permission to deceive and even slaughter the Yazidis on the grounds that they are not “people of the book” is based on Layard’s own accounts. It is real.
Many things in this book are inspired by actual events and historical characters—such as Obaysch the Hippo, sent as a present by an Ottoman pasha to England, and Tapputi, the Ancient Mesopotamian female perfume maker…Gingerbread cuneiform biscuits also exist and they are delicious; you can find a recipe on the Penn Museum website. For other culinary traditions and rituals, you can consult Jean Bottéro’s The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia.
Charles Dickens was indeed published by Bradbury & Evans after he left Chapman & Hall in 1844. One can still chance upon first editions of Bleak House and Little Dorrit in the catalogs of antiquarian booksellers, though they are very expensive. Dickens broke up with the company in 1859, when they refused to print an advertisement in Punch magazine explaining why he was separating from his wife. For the purposes of the narrative, I have altered details or dates to suit the flow of the story. For instance, Layard’s book was actually published by John Murray. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám—the astronomer-poet of Persia—was printed by Quaritch. There was a famed Egyptologist in the British Museum by the name of Dr. Samuel Birch who was employed as the Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, but I have made alterations to the time of his post. There was indeed a suicide that shook the English printing and publishing business, but it was that of the young Henry Bradbury, the son of William Bradbury. Dr. John Snow is real, of course, and his discovery that cholera spread through drinking water rather than inhaling unpleasant odors contributed greatly to our understanding of pandemics. Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World; Peter Ackroyd’s Thames: Sacred River (2 vols.) and London Under; Stephen Halliday’s The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis; Nicholas Barton’s The Lost Rivers of London; Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames; Jonathan Schneer’s The Thames: England’s River; Jerry White’s London in the 19th Century; Michelle Higgs’s A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England; and Jonathon Shears’s The Great Exhibition, 1851 were all most valuable sources. The scene where Arthur sees Istanbul for the first time was inspired by the writings of the nineteenth-century novelist and poet Edmondo De Amicis, who vividly captured Constantinople through the eyes of a foreigner. The letter from the Secretary of the British Museum is real—I changed only a few words. I have also used bits and pieces from George Smith’s diary, which, remarkably, he kept until his last moments.
Hasankeyf, a first-degree historical and preservation site included in the World Heritage List, is today erased. The place left a big mark on me when I visited it many moons ago, long before it was drowned by the controversial Ilisu Dam. The Arabs called it Hisn Kayfa; the Romans called it Kefa; but for consistency I have kept the Ancient Assyrian name Castrum Kefa. I must also point out that, although the lamassus at the British Museum are actually from both Nimrud and Khorsabad, I made small changes here and there, as I wanted to situate Nineveh at the center of my narrative arc. The story of the king who was buried with his servants and storytellers is also true, though I moved the date of the archaeological discovery. The Library of Ashurbanipal, spread across four different locations, is not only fascinating of itself but also deeply relevant today, as libraries come increasingly under threat.
The scientist Berenberg, although an imaginary character, is loosely based on the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who developed the theory of “water memory” at the cost of his career and professional reputation. I am interested in his work not from the standpoint of science or homoeopathy but simply as a novelist who is drawn to human stories. I loved and treasured all my readings about water, and, while I cannot do justice to the vast array of literature on the subject, I particularly would like to mention Elixir: A Human History of Water by Brian Fagan; Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World by Helen Czerski; When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce; How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea by Tristan Gooley; and The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer, where you will encounter the line that inspired the title of this novel.
The debate on museums and who owns cultural heritage is a complicated one, and there is no better space than literature, especially the novel as a literary genre, within which to freely explore the most complex issues of our time with nuance, depth, care and empathy. Fiction allows us to grasp important and sensitive subjects from multiple angles—a freedom we are steadily losing in the age of social media and unfeeling algorithms. The Museum Makers: A Journey Backwards—from Old Boxes of Dark Family Secrets to a Golden Era of Museums by Rachel Morris explores the human instinct for collection. From Nineveh to New York: The Strange Story of the Assyrian Reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum and the Hidden Masterpiece at Canford School by John Malcolm Russell, based almost entirely on unpublished archives, offers a fascinating insight into Lady Charlotte Guest, “the richest woman in England,” who owned such a huge collection of artifacts from Mesopotamia that she had her own “Nineveh Porch” at her country house, Canford Manor. Arthur stumbling across items from Nineveh in a wealthy house in England is inspired by this historical episode.
The research process for this novel has been intense, immense and interdisciplinary. I loved reading a diverse range of books and academic articles, from global environmental crisis and conservation hydrology to Ancient Akkadian funeral and libation rites to the ethnomedicinal plants of Mesopotamia. Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire by Faisal H. Husain; Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Their Environment from Headwaters to Mouth, edited by Laith A. Jawad; and Wounded Tigris: A Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization by Leon McCarron helped me both from historical and geographical perspectives. Yet perhaps the greatest challenge arose when I delved into the richness and complexity of Yazidi culture and traditions. A collective identity that has been transmitted throughout the centuries mostly through songs, stories, lullabies and poems could not be understood solely by focusing on written texts. I have debated a lot which spelling to use—Yazidi, Yezidi or Êzidi—and the only reason I chose the first was to maintain the continuity in the novel with the nineteenth-century script and Arthur’s discovery of Layard’s book.
Another challenge was that the practices of Yazidi communities differed, depending on place or period. Some tenets, such as not eating fish or believing in reincarnation, can vary widely between, for instance, Yazidis in Iraq and Yazidis in Armenia. I tried not to lose sight of this fascinating plurality and aimed to honor the significance of oral heritage. To this end, I examined songs, myths, legends and folk tales, as well as superstitions. The Yezidi Religious Textual Tradition: From Oral to Written by Khanna Omarkhali; The Religion of the Peacock Angel: The Yezidis and Their Spirit World by Garnik S. Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova; God and Sheikh Adi Are Perfect: Sacred Poems and Religious Narratives from the Yezidi Tradition by Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Khalil Jindy Rashow; The Yezidis by Eszter Spät; The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan by Christine Allison; The Role of Nature in Yezidism by Rezan Shivan Aysif; Yezidism in Europe: Different Generations Speak About Their Religion by Philip G. Kreyenbroek; Ezidiler: 73. Ferman by Nurcan Baysal; and The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion by Birgül Açikyildiz have been most valuable and illuminating. I am profoundly grateful to people both from local communities and the diaspora who kindly and generously opened their hearts and memories to me, even when those memories were full of pain and suffering.
In my novel there is a genocide in the late nineteenth century by the shores of the Tigris, and this is based on historical facts. I have, however, changed the precise date and some relevant details for the narrative flow. Muhammad Pasha of Rawanduz, known as Mirê Kor, along with Bedir Khan Beg, massacred thousands of Yazidis in 1832. Those who ran toward the river were trapped, as, unbeknownst to them, all the boats had been destroyed. The genocide that took place in 2014 happened in front of the eyes of the entire world. Sinjar: 14 Days That Saved the Yazidis from Islamic State by Susan Shand; Yezidi Sunset: The Genocide by ISIS in Iraq by Paul Martin Kingery; and Shadow on the Mountain: A Yazidi Memoir of Terror, Resistance and Hope by Shaker Jeffrey and Katharine Holstein are heartbreaking and powerful accounts. State Responsibility and the Genocide of the Yazidis, edited by Baroness Helena Kennedy, Aarif Abraham, Lord David Alton and Tatyana Eatwell, is a pivotal document, and I want to emphasize the meticulous investigations of the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC). The comment in my novel by my fictional character Salma about her wish to have been gassed at Halabja rather than being captured and raped by ISIS is taken from the words of a survivor.
The memoirs and personal accounts of enslaved Yazidi women were extremely difficult to read at times but hugely important. Nadia Murad’s The Last Girl; Farida Khalaf’s The Girl Who Beat ISIS; Dunya Mikhail’s The Beekeeper of Sinjar: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq; and Christina Lamb’s Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women left a huge impact on me. I am deeply thankful to psychologist and trauma therapist Professor Dr. Jan Kizilhan for his time and thoughts. For many years, Kizilhan and his team have carried out remarkable and selfless work to contribute both to individual and collective healing, helping the most vulnerable and traumatized. I also want to express my gratitude to Mona Kizilhan, Aarif Abraham, Leyla Ferman, Düzen Tekkal and her wise father, all of whom kindly and patiently answered my questions, no matter how foolish or small. Dr. Leyla Ferman, the cofounder of the YJC and director of Women for Justice, shared with me firsthand witness accounts from Sinjar, and thus I learned about the way desperate families trapped on the mountain had tried to portion drops of water to keep their children alive. Leyla’s family took this surname after a grandfather who was born during a time of ferman/genocide, so as to keep the memory of their history alive. I have read transcriptions of Yazidi ballads and songs that still to this day preserve the memory of past atrocities. I am immensely grateful to human rights lawyers, campaigners and survivors who have spoken with me either in person or through video conference. I have learned so much from your courage, resilience of spirit and hard work for justice and recognition.
As I was writing this book, an influential Nigerian politician and his wife were jailed, found guilty by an Old Bailey jury under the Modern Slavery Act. This is the first organ-trafficking conviction in the UK. The couple had made arrangements with a doctor to lure a poor street vendor from Nigeria to the UK to harvest his kidney to help their sick daughter, who needed an organ transplant. I kept reading and researching about this extraordinary case, surprised to find out that Turkey, my motherland, appeared in such trial records as a key site for networks of illegal organ trafficking. While I followed this legal and ethical story, I was simultaneously studying the testimonies of Yazidi survivors and the two issues connected in my mind. Today around three thousand Yazidi women and girls are still missing, many of them held captive in typical family homes in cities and towns across the Middle East. One incident in particular shook me to the core. In 2021, a seven-year-old Yazidi girl was found in a horrible state in an ordinary neighborhood in Ankara, not far from my maternal grandmother’s house where I grew up, after an online auction to sell her to the highest bidder was foiled by the police. The Yazidi genocide, horrific and harrowing though it has been, is not over yet.
I close my eyes and think of Thales of Miletus sitting on the banks of the winding Maeander River (the Great Menderes in present-day Turkey), which gave us the word “meander” (from Greek maiandros and Latin maeander). I picture him there, watching the water with a sense of wonder and respect, observing its restless movement and renewal. Then I imagine a tiny drop splashing on to the philosopher’s hand…the very drop that might have been inside my coffee this morning or perhaps inside yours, connecting us all beyond the borders of time, geography and identity.