Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak with Elif Shafak

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

This week's book guest is There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak.Sara and Cariad are joined by the award winning Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak. Elif has published 21 books and is best known for her novels, which include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Three Daughters of Eve and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Her works have been translated into 57 languages and she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Costa Book Awards, the British Book Awards and the Women's Prize For Fiction.In this episode they discuss the British Museum, archaeology, buried rivers, Samuel Beckett, literature festivals and Hemingway's writing schedule.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Trigger warning: In this episode we discuss genocide, sexual slavery and trafficking.There are Rivers in the Sky is available to buy here.You can find Elif on Instagram @shafakelifHer website is www.elifsafak.comHer Substack is called Unmapped StorylandsTickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Cariad’s children's book The Christmas Wish-tastrophe is available to buy now.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdos Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shaffak. What's it about? It's an epic running through water, genetics, history, love and myth. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, one of the main characters is a raindrop.

In this episode we discuss The British Museum, Archaeology, Buried Rivers, literature festivals, Samuel Beckett, and Hemingway's writing schedule. And joining us this week is Elif Shafak. Elif is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She's published 21 books, 13 of which had novels, and her books have been translated into 58 languages. 10 minutes, 38 seconds in The Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize,

and the 40 Rules of Love was chosen by the BBC amongst the 100 novels that shaped our world. She's also been a finalist in the Costa Award, the British Book Awards, and the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her website is Elifshafak.com, and her substack is also available called Unmapped Storylands. There Are Rivers in the Sky is available to buy now. Trigger warning, in this episode, we discussed genocide, sexual slavery and trafficking. Hello, Shavek, thank you so much for being here.

We're so honored to have you. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure for me. We absolutely loved reading There Are Rivers in the Sky. This is your new book. And it's amazing. It's done so well as well. Are you happy with how it's been received so far?

Yeah, I really appreciate your words. I've been on a book tour this last month, last week, And the reaction or the feedback from the readers has been really very heartwarming. To me, that's so precious. And when I say readers are very diverse readership I'm talking about. But also that shows my age across generations. You know, people say my mother used to read you and now I'm reading you. And I'm also seeing more and more male readers reading fiction, which is so good.

Particularly young male readers. I'm seeing many of them coming to the evening. events, especially with this book. So that makes me happy. Oh, what do you think it might have been that appealed to them? Yeah, I've been really thinking about this. It happened particularly with the last two books, the Island of Missing Trees, I've observed this. The 40 Rules of Love also has its own readership over the years, which has been very loyal, if I may put it in these terms. But I think with this book, there are rivers in the sky, history, archaeology, issues about cultural artifacts, cultural heritage, politics.

You know, there are perhaps many other themes that appealed to male readers. And I honestly think we have to read, we should be reading across the board, fiction and non-fiction. Not only Eurocentric literature, but, you know, from all over the world, north, south, east, west. I think the mind and the heart has always nourished better if we leave our comfort zones. So I love interdisciplinary conversations anyway And it makes me happy to see people of diverse backgrounds Reading the same story Absolutely

I was so awestruck at the amount of research you must have done To write a book like this So we should say it starts with a raindrop And we are in Assyrian times with Ashurbanipal I'd never heard of this king And obviously this is a real historical person Who had a huge library

And because And I did know that fact about the sort of the clay, that when these places were ransacked and damaged, actually fire made them harder and that's why they survived, which is just so incredible, isn't it? It is fascinating. I mean, we're talking about one of the wealthiest empires in world history, and this king is the most educated, cultured king that the empire has ever seen.

Actually, he was not expected to be the king. That's why while his brothers were trained in warfare and all of that, he was just given education, the best education that was available at the time. But the fact that he's very educated doesn't mean he's less cruel. So this is the king who has built a legendary library and really changed the course of history. We're talking about thousands and thousands of clay tablets brought over from all over the empire and beyond, all kinds of knowledge accumulated in a sense. and one of those stories available found in the library is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest piece of literature known in world history. And if I may say this, to me it's fascinating that Ashrabanipal himself has, of course, died,

empires have come and gone, even the strongest, biggest, you know, architectural structures have crumbled, perished, the wealthiest empires are no more. But the very fact that a poem made of words and breath has, survived. And here we are thousands of years later talking about that poem. To me, it's fascinating. And it also shows maybe the resilience of literature. Of story, yeah. We start with this raidrop and this snowflake fall and we're connecting all to the rivers, the river Tigris. And then, of course, we jump to Victorian, London and the River Thames.

So I think it's an incredible piece of work that you have managed to link such past history, as you said, such like epic epic history that you know for even even if you do know history you're sort of like oh yeah the assyria when's that like that's a long time ago well that's why i found it so interesting because i was then learning about i mean i've been to turkey i made a documentary there about about eight or nine years ago but my my knowledge was so surface so getting to read a really brilliant story that was also educating me and putting things in context having lived in london all my life having like a relationship with the thames having like understand this river and what it means to our history.

And I love that. Again, I'm saying of what the Tigris means and like another river and a different personalities of a river and stuff like that. I thought, it was just such, like you said, it was so much history that you were learning in a very narrative way. Carriads and I used to be tour guides. So we used to talk about the Thames every day.

So I loved so much when you were talking about, you know, tamesis and how it used to freeze over and how it used to be clean. And then it was so disgusting. But now it's very, very clean again. and it has over 200 types of fish. That's what we always used to say to people, and it's brown because it's fast flowing, not because it's dirty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a zombie river, isn't it? I mean, not that long ago it was declared dead. Yeah, yeah. Because of the way we mistreated as human beings, the river. The very fact that it renewed itself, as it said, home to more than 200 and many more biospecies. But I think as human beings, we learn nothing from history.

And here we are, as we're speaking, again, water companies are pumping sewage. into our rivers, in the name of money, in the name of greed. So when you follow the journey over a river or trees or parts of nature or nature itself, I don't think we can believe in this idea of linear progressive history. No, it's like waves, isn't it? It goes forward and backwards. I wanted to go back just to Gilgamesh, actually.

Yes, let's go back, yeah. Because I'm really interested in you and what you were already interested in before you started writing. So the epic of Gilgamesh, that poem, was it something that you were already loved and were already familiar with? I had a very, very limited knowledge of the epic. You know, it's something you read a little bit about. We do not know much about it. We forget. I think actually in that regard, Turkey is interesting.

Of course, we're a country that has a rich history, complex history, but that does not translate into strong memory. If anything, I think we're a society of collective amnesia. So our relationship with the past is full of ruptures and forgettings. As a writer, something that intrigues me is not only stories but also silences. So, for instance, the history that we learn at school is mostly his story, by which I mean the story of a few men in positions of power and authority like sultans and so on. But the moment you start asking, how was the Ottoman Empire like for an Armenian silversmith or a Jewish miller or an Arab peasant or a Kurdish farmer, a Greek sailor, what was life like for them or for women? You know, what did they think or how did they experience the empire?

Then there's a huge silence. So I think to be a writer is a bit like a linguistic archaeologist. You need to dig deep down those layers of history but also layers of silences. And so in that regard, the Epic of Gilgamesh is also one of those forgotten stories. And I'm very interested in eco-feminism, you know, the kind of feminism that tries to connect the dots. Oh, yeah. I think we cannot be single-issue people, especially now in this world. So if we care about, for instance, the story of water.

And by that, I mean climate crisis is primarily freshwater crisis, right? For us, coming from the Middle East, this is another theoretical debate, of the more. most tan water stress nations in the world, seven are in the Middle East and in North Africa. So our rivers are dying. In Europe, understandably, people forget that we're living in a time of water scarcity because of flush floods and obviously sea levels are rising all around the world. But in the Middle East, this is very visible. Like every day you look at these rivers that are drying up.

And this has massive consequences for women. Women are water carriers, for everyone, but particularly for women and children. for minorities. So all I'm trying to say is if we care about water scarcity, we care about gender inequality, if we care about gender inequality, we care about racial inequality and so on. So I'm interested in that kind of eco-feminism that tries to connect adults. And that's one of the reasons I came to the epic of Gilgamesh. How does the story come? Or does the story come and then the really huge things you care about become part of it? Actually, the story comes usually with a small idea.

I mean, in this case, I know it looks like like the canvas of this novel is quite broad in the sense that it does span centuries and continents and cultures. But actually, everything is connected

via a tiny small drop of water. So it starts with a small, you know? And I didn't want to take that water, even a droplet for granted. Perhaps I see the whole novel as my love letter to water. And maybe it's a little bit mystical as well, maybe in the sense that William Blake would have, you know, spoken of,

like to see the universe in a grain of sand, to see a whole story inside the drop of water. That's something that always intrigues me. But what I found fascinating as I was writing this book was many people have been obsessed throughout the centuries with this idea of water memory. Does water retain some kind of memory from poets to scientists? And I wanted to explore that idea. And so lots of the characters in the book, even if they're fictionalised, are sort of based on true people. So I was so fascinated actually in the character.

So it's Arthur of the Suez and Slums. And, I mean, if it was just purely made up by you, it would still be so fascinating. You have this sort of like almost Dickensian. He's not an orphan. He's got a family. But he's not well treated. They're very poor. His mum was given laudanum at his birth and then remained addicted to it.

And so so heartbreakingly sad, and yet his brain and his fascination, he teaches himself to be able to read the crucifix. Cuneiform. Cuneiform. Cuneiform. On these tablets at the British Museum. And this imagery, which is so powerful of him running on his lunch break. Oh, my God. Yes, sweating.

18 minutes there, eating a sandwich on the way. That obsession, the passion that he has for it. And he was based on a real historical figure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's a strange thing for a writer to say this, but I really fell in love with this character. So the three characters in this book,

they are connected to each other, like the atoms in a water molecule, like the H2O. So Arthur is my O, is the oxygen at the center. I call him King Arthur of the Sewers and the slums, and there's a reason why he's given this unusual name. Of course, it's a fictional character, and I made up, you know, his childhood, his upbringing. However, as you said, it's this person.

is loosely based on an actual historical figure who is fascinating. His real name was George Smith. And he is born in the slum tenements of Chelsea at the time by the River Thames. And I think had he been alive today, we would have respected the beauty and the neurodivergence of his mind. But of course, at the time he gets no such recognition, no support whatsoever, pulled out of school at a early age and purely with the power of his visual memory and by coincidence he comes to the British Museum and he sees these shattered tablets, clay tablets that were brought from the Middle East that were once upon a time in the Library of King Ashurbanipal. And at the time almost no one

can read this to such an extent that they call that the Cuneiform they call chicken scratches. But Arthur or George Smith, he little by little he starts piecing them together. He realizes that there's meaning there, there's a script there. And he's the one who actually decoded and discovered the flood tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The actual George Smith came to the Middle East to find the missing lines in the poem, 17 missing lines. And he lost his life there and he's buried in a village between Syria and Turkey today. And he's almost forgotten. So there was a part of me that wanted to bring this extraordinary person.

person to life. And telling that story because it's a complex one and you writing about it allows its complexity, you know, these things were stolen, they were put in the British Museum, but then a British person with no education, oddly was able to go and sort of give it back to people. And that's the beauty of literature. I think inside the novel, we can hold nuanced conversations. You know, we can take a very critical approach towards colonial institutional history. How do did all these artifacts end up in major museums across the Western world? I don't think it's enough to say, well, the doors of a museum are open to anyone who would like to visit. How many people can even get a visa? So we have to have engaged in these difficult conversations. And I think

museums should, museums should lead the way rather than trying to avoid these conversations. However, as we question the past, when you look at the history, it's so layered, for instance, what were the Ottomans doing? Yeah. You know, what were my ancestors doing, right? So that's not a very clean slate either. As we open these to debate, right, and give a plurality of opinions and show the nuances.

At the same time, I can appreciate the genuine dedication and passion of individual scholars like George Smith. So these people also dedicated their lives, their energy, and they love their work. That's why I love, that's one of the reasons. many reasons why I love the novel as a genre, you can hold all these nuanced and difficult conversations inside literature, unlike on social media. Or even journalism, I mean, there isn't nuance.

So did you know about George Smith already? So he was someone sort of living in your brain? He has been living in my brain for a long time. I feel like we're friends now, honestly. I felt so sad when I finished the novel. Yeah, it was like saying goodbye to him. So I didn't know much about him before. It was water that brought me to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

And then the Epic of Gilgamesh brought me to the flood tablet. The flood tablet brought me to George Smith. And that opened up a new world. But after that, I've been reading, I've been doing really an insane amount of research. I read everything, anything I could find about him, the era, you know, from water science to old Assyrian rituals, funerals. It was crazy the research for this book, but I loved every moment. So we have the Ashbonapal storyline. We have Arthur's storyline, but there's two other storyline.

So we have Narin, who is Yassidi, Yazidi. And then we have... Zalika. That's the story of her life, because her name is difficult to pronounce for many people. Zalika, who is also living in London and is a hydrologist scientist and working from an ecological point of view. I wanted to talk a little bit about Naren's story because that's something I was really unfamiliar with the Yazidis.

Like I had heard the name, but the richness of their culture, the horror. But how they had got so caught up in everybody else's wars. Like I found that really shocking. I sort of knew they had been persecuted, but to discover quite how they had ended up being in place of a dam that does exist that has been built. So their water.

was stolen, they were weakened, but they were already already had been persecuted for hundreds of years. So, yeah. Yeah, they're fascinating. I mean, the Yazidis are one of the most misunderstood, maligned and persecuted minorities in the world throughout history. The Yazidi lore talks about 72 genocides, at least, massacres. And this is a beautiful but very vulnerable community

in which memory is transmitted via oral commasuries. culture, ballads, songs. For instance, they do not believe that they're the descendants of Adam and Eve. No Eve involved, the descendants of Adam. They have incredibly interesting tales, you know, going all the way back centuries and centuries. Now, when ISIS fanatics started their genocide against the Yazidi minorities in the Middle East, it was so deliberate. The very first thing that they did was to kill the water.

So they poisoned all the wells and fountains, leaving no water whatsoever to drink. And the second thing they did was to kill all the elderly. In a community like the Yazidis, if you kill grandmothers and grandfathers, you are killing collective memory. And then they killed a man and they kidnapped women and children. As we're speaking, still more than 3,000 Yazidi women are missing. And these women are kept as sexual slaves in ordinary neighborhoods, across the Middle East. While I was writing this novel, one of them was saved from a house in Ankara. Coincidentally, this is the neighborhood where I grew up. It's my maternal grandmother's

house, just two streets away. So it really struck me. How is it possible that people don't see, people don't know, that there's a human being kept as a sexual slave in one of those houses? So when do we become numb? When do we become indifferent? In that sense, I think the Yazidi genocide is still not over. No. So you show in your story, so there's a boy who's quite young when sort of a number of young girls are brought to his house and he's sort of curious but dumb because of his age as in he doesn't have a language to ask questions and his status is very low. And you sort of show or suggest I guess that if it becomes your normality, you don't question it.

And then you have, you know, there are the women in the house who have lower status who are just trying to stay safe or keep out of trouble so that so they are silenced by that. But yeah, it's the normality of those houses. I think it's really powerful. I really appreciate your words. Indeed, as you said, when there's a hierarchy, you know, those at the bottom of the hierarchy feel powerless. But also dehumanization.

I think the Yazidis have been dehumanized. It all starts with words, doesn't it, you know? all kinds of oppression, violence, before that comes words. And when we dehumanize each other, so the Yazidis have been called all kinds of horrible names like devil worshippers. And so people who internalize those horrible words don't see them as equal. And then when you see someone as inferior as not human, then you're not that affected by the suffering that they're going through.

So I think we have to be very careful about how language comes into the picture. Well, that's absolutely what happened with colonialism, wasn't it? You had people going to other countries saying they're un-involved, they don't speak proper language, they live like heathens. You know, this is the kind of thing they would say, which meant you could come home and do whatever you liked with their resources, their land. They weren't respected as human beings. That is so true. Yeah. Was it hard to research that?

Like, was it painful? It was painful. I mean, so when we talk about the three characters in this book, what I tried to do was, I think every story brings its own style along. And in that regard, Arthur's chapters are a bit more Dickensian. Ziliha's chapters are closer to modern contemporary literature. But the parts where I talk about Nourin and her grandmother, the Yazidi communities, are mostly through dialogue because it's based on oral culture. And sometimes people don't realize that many of those stories starts in the same way. Yeah.

That goes back centuries and centuries. It is like once upon a time. So yeah, the grandmother always starts with in those days, in those far-off days, in those far-off years, in olden times. And it's this call and response, isn't it, that proper oral tradition that way? Indeed. And that's also very deliberate because when we read the epic of Gilgamesh, which was also transmitted orally for centuries before it was written down by script. on clay tablets, it also starts like that in parts, like in those days, in olden days. So this is an old, old, ancient tradition.

And I wanted to show that continuity in oral storytelling. I have interviewed so many people while I was writing before I started writing this book. Among them were survivors or people, therapists who were working with survivors. In Germany, there's a big Yazidi community in the diaspora. And there's a lot of individual and collective healing that they are trying to, they have to do now. So to listen to their stories, and I'm very grateful because they entrusted me. They, you know, they opened up. They told me things that were incredibly painful.

One of those stories is the families who had to run towards Mount Sinjar when ISIS started their horrific killings, they went up to Mount Sinjar. we're talking about about 50 degrees heat, no shadow, no shade, no trees and no water. And so they told me about how they had to ration even a drop of water. Like you have these bottles, small bottles of water, and you have hundreds of children there who are thirsty and dying of thirst and hunger.

So even a drop of water was so precious. That also stayed with me. You know, all those stories that I wrote about are actually inspired by real actual events. You have the scene with Naren's grandmother and she's got a tiny little bit of water left for her durandot. And then little children keep appearing. Yeah. How do you say no? How do you say no?

Yeah. Yeah. Zalika's story as well, which is, yeah, more contemporary and a much more, and maybe more familiar story of a, yeah, mixed race and movement. Going through divorce, but she's a hydrologist. But having this relative Uncle Malik who doesn't talk about what had happened and where he's from and her what's first for that knowledge but also fear of what, you know, where is the land there from? What happened there? Why did they not go back there?

And yeah, and then her sort of position as a scientist in this water story as well. Yes. I find her story fascinating. As you said, at the beginning of the book, she's going through a rough time, she's going through a divorce, also questioning, in a way, asking existential questions about who she is.

If I may share this with you, I have been observing many immigrant families or any family that comes from a complex background, any family that has experienced some kind of displacement, particularly. I'm always intrigued by generational or intergenerational differences when it comes to memory and trauma. So the older generations, they are the ones who have experienced the biggest hardships,

but they don't necessarily talk about the past. In fact, they do not. It just sits inside their chest. They haven't forgotten, of course they haven't, but they don't even have a language to talk about the past. The second generation, interestingly, does not talk about the past, and is not that much interested in it, understandably because they have to build a new life,

they need to find their feet, tabula rasa, a new beginning. But that leaves the third or the fourth generations, the youngest in these families, who are today asking the biggest, the sharpest questions about identity, cultural heritage, what happened to their ancestors, you know, an ancestral memory.

So you can come across young people with old memories. And Zelija is someone who is trying to understand. She is asking questions. If I may add this, she's also, as you said, she's a water scientist and she's studying buried rivers. The biggest rivers, of course, on our planet are unseen rivers, you know, atmospheric rivers above our heads. But also so many rivers under our feet, what we did as humanity is, as we built our cities, we deemed some rivers too filthy, dirty, unnecessary, insignificant and we covered them. But I think right now with sea levels rising and climate crisis accelerating, that model is not sustainable anymore.

And we're going to see more and more flush floods. So there's a counter-awareness right now in the world that talks about bringing those buried rivers into daylight. And it's called daylighting. And they're very successful examples of this in South Korea. For me, it was also an important metaphor. You know, just because we don't see the past doesn't mean it's dead. It doesn't mean it's still shaping us. It's still shaping the present moment.

The research of epigenetics shows that even if, I mean, the depression that someone might have a second or third generation for an immigrant, epigenetics make sense of it in terms of inherited trauma. And if you're around people who are stressed and scared, that has a huge effect. And even more so if you have a dissonance of not knowing why. Yeah. That is so true because, you know, the absence actually makes absence of words, absence of stories, those silences sometimes can make things worse. We always talk about family stories, but I think we need to talk about family silences as well. Of course, what we mean is not to get stuck in the past, but we have to learn the past. We have to study the past.

And I think what we repress always comes back and it can't be repaired in order to be able to heal as individuals, as individuals, as. communities, memory is crucial and I think memory is a responsibility. So I see storytellers as memory keepers. When a story like this comes to you, because obviously you've written so many books and you now live in England after what happened in Turkey, and you're taken to court after you wrote the Barsavis, but offending Turkishness. It's a moment if you think, I wish there was like a safer story that I could write about or an easier story, but like they're sort of knocking on your door. I always say this time I'm going to write very serious. simple story, very minimalistic. Romantic comedy, yeah. Right, keep it simple. And just I can't. It's naturally,

organically, you know, my heart, my soul, my mind goes in this direction because there's a connection there. There's a genuine connection. But also, I do know, coming from Turkey, it's really hard to be a novelist in Turkey. And if you're a female novelist, it's harder. whatever you write, from politics to history to sexuality to gender, you offend someone. There's a civil society and that's the beauty of Turkey. It's such a complicated country. It's really, really multi-layered. People read, not everyone, of course, but those who read, read passionately.

But the thing is we have laws in the constitution. For instance, Article 301, which protects Turkishness against insults, even though nobody knows what that means. So when I wrote one of my earlier novels called The Bastard of Istanbul, I was accused of insulting Turkishness. Never before a fiction writer had been brought to court in this way, it was very surreal. And because the words of fictional characters were taken out of the book,

as a result, my Turkish lawyer had to defend my Armenian-American fictional characters in the courtroom. And that went on for a year. There were people on the streets, multinational. You know, burning EU flags, spitting up my pictures. And the prosecutor asked for three years in prison for writing a novel. I was acquitted after a year, but then I had to live with a bodyguard for a year and a half. And then I wish I could say that, you know, right now things are easier, but it didn't get easier. It doesn't get, even as we're speaking, for other novels, I have been accused of crime of obscenity

because I write about issues like gender violence, famicides, incest, child brides, all of which is a reality, you know. So my point is words are heavy in Turkey. But as a novelist, when I'm writing a novel, I am in that world, I'm in that imaginary world. If I were to start thinking, oh, what are people going to say? What are the authorities in Turkey going to say?

I can't write. So I have to forget this. so-called real world. And that imaginary world with Arthur and the mudlarkers, they become my friends, they become my reality. That's the only way I can write. Do you think because you're writing English, is that easier to escape into it? Yes, there's some truth in that. There's a cognitive distance and I think instinctively that's what brought me to writing in English, even though it's a huge challenge for me. I'm an immigrant in this language. There's always a gap between the mind and the tongue, the things you can't quite get right, you can't quite pronounce. So you're always

aware of those gaps. Irish writers like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, they thought that only by writing in another language could you get closer to truth. So Beckett wrote in French and would write completely different versions of things because you have to think with a new brain. Like none of those pathways are just there automatically for you. That is so true. And I experience that all the time because somehow writing in it, in English gives me, yeah, a little bit more distance. It's like when you want to see a painting better, you don't necessarily go closer, you take a step back, right?

And also a sense of lightness. Things become a bit less heavy. Like even the word bastard, if I were to use it in Turkish, it's heavier for me emotionally. But what I realize over the years is if my writing has melancholy, sorrow, longing, I still find these things easier to express in Turkish. And when it comes to humor, irony and satire, and I love humor, by the way.

I love compassionate humor, not condescending humor, but compassionate humor, I think, is our oxygen. So humor is much easier in English. Yeah, I think that's because that's our way of repressing, you know. That's our way of looking like you're talking about something but not really talking about it. That's our silence is jokes. Yeah.

Roundabout. Yeah. English isn't a naturally poetic language. Oh, Sarah. Sorry, just, sorry to have to dissing. Thousands of years of English people just cry down in their ways. No, but that's why when you see it used... Tennyson just had a stroke.

When you see it used, but that's it. So, when you see it used poetic, because it's a poetic language. It's so descriptive. It's not like Italian, not like the Mediterranean languages. They say, they sound poetic. So when English becomes poetic, it's like lots of ugly buildings put together in a beautiful way. I think its rhythm is off. Yeah.

Because it's a mishmash of so many languages. Whereas like Spanish, Italian, French have a bit more. I like, to be honest, yeah, the polarality, the diversity that I find in the language. In Turkey, we have turkified our language. As you know, this was a multi-ethnic, multilingual Ottoman Empire, more than 600 years. So when you look at the language, the syntax was Turkish. And Turkish is very interesting. It's based on agglutination like a train.

You know, you keep adding. So it's closer to Finnish, Hungarian, and you can trace it all. the way to Korean, there's the same linguistic family. And Welsh. Welsh is close to Hungarian and Finnish. No relation to English at all. Exactly. It's nearest relative is Finnish or Hungarian.

That's very, very interesting. But the vocabulary was, you know, a mixture. So there were lots of words coming from Persian, from Arabic, Armenian, Ladino. And when you look at a modern Turkish dictionary, it's half the size of an Ottoman Dictionary. So we've lost so many nuances, actually. And as a writer, I've never believed in this distinction between old words and new words. I think we need all kinds of words, right? Now, when you speak English and you use words like chutzpah, or you use words like Kismet,

and nobody says, wait a second, the first one is a Jewish word, let's take it out of the language, and the second one is an Arabic word, let's take it out of the language. Actually, I like that. It's more like a river and you've been welcoming. We do absorb. You do absorb. I like that. your traditional tablets.

Like, we'll take. We like taking. But it happens in all directions. I like it when French people say Le Weekend. It's so great. It's so great.

We're like, oh, hi, we know you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you don't need to invent your own word because someone else invented it. But the French are quite particular. They don't like, they're not allowed to say they ban the computer. Like, they invent new words.

Oh, I see. Sometimes. No, they have an institution that comes up with new French words because they are so angry that people say the weekend or the computer. Oh God, but I really love it. They invented the ordinator. That's what computer is.

They invented it because they were like, we're not having the same word as everyone. Like that's a very different. I think English people have a like, sure, this one works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kismic, yeah, I like it. Good sound. I understand what you mean by it, even though it's not my language.

But also that's sometimes words are perfectly suited. Like when someone looks like their name. Yes. Why would you change it when it wouldn't be as kismity? But sometimes words are, are themselves. Yeah, but I think that's what English is good at. I think English just goes, sure, this is working. Okay, bad at poetry, good at mentioning when it comes. Good at stealing things. That's what we are good at? Elif, what is your writing day? Like, are you someone that just

goes to the desk, starts at 9 o'clock, or you're someone that you said you have to do all this research before you can sit down? Yeah, I think, you know, with all due respect to male authors of a certain age, I think... They're not listening. We're not listening. They're the only ones to, you know, talk about very, they're very proud of their precise, exact schedule. I've got a shed, my wife brings me lunch. No one's allowed to make any noise before 6 p.m. So they're like, I wake up at this hour and I work, you know, two hours and then I go for a run and then I have my lunch at this specific time. So very, very precise.

For everyone else, I think we juggle. We try to carve out space and time for ourselves. the only thing I can tell you is I do read every day. And I try to take notes, even if I'm not able to write on that specific day. But if I can't work during the day, I work at night, I put on my headphones. I hate silence. I listen to loud music on repeat. I like listening to heavy metal.

I was not expecting it to say. I was waiting for the sort of the classical music. But do you have got to? Does it keep your brain busy? It keeps my brain busy And I love listening to the same song It's like a loop Maybe 70, 80 times

Wow And that's how I concentrate Yeah Because I have to listen to I have to have noise But I have to have Like, so I just wrote a book Set in Regency Times

So I have to listen to Regency music But for you it's just heavy metal There's not like Oh well Victorian, I'm listening to Victoria No no I love Scandinavian, Nordic Viking Yes Like melodic death metal

symphonic death metal, that kind of really fiery music. So do you find that if you don't have music, you have too many layers of thought? So some of the thoughts are kept busy by the music. And my mind keeps running in all directions. So, yeah, I can concentrate you. You do. You do know how it's... I really like human conversation, so I work much better in like a cost of coffee in a busy shopping center.

That does the same thing where there's so much background noise, but I don't like music. music. But brains of, it's really good to just find the thing that works for your brain. I have to have me, I have to have something. I don't have to, I can't do cafe because I tune in. Yeah. What's she saying? What's happened to her, aren't they?

Why are they talking like that about the, oh, it's the sun. I get so distracted. So I need, yeah, like genre music. That's what I have. It's like, this is the genre. This is where you are, like I'm in that film. So then it's like, whereas if I have heavy metal, all my characters would be like, come on.

Let's do this. They would get too aggressive. I wouldn't be able to fight the genre. I think it's such a wonderful thing to say because there are lots of people who in their lives are struggling with wanting to create things whether they want to do it on a massive professional level or whether it's just they've got their stories

or their art that they want to make. And what they get told all the time is you need the privilege of a 12-hour day and someone else making your sandwiches. Yeah, you just can't do it. And someone are working on your level to do that amount of work fitting it in after bedtime. Yeah, I'm so glad we're talking about

because it's so demoralizing, particularly for younger writers. I have had editors, actually, an editor in Istanbul, I'll never forget, telling me if I want to be a serious writer, a professional writer, as opposed to an amateur writer. You know, I should quit and do nothing else, just dedicate. Of course, we dedicate our lives to literature, but sometimes you can't earn a living by just publishing books. So many of us do other things, and I've done, you know, I worked in academia, I sit in. in academia for a long time. Now I'm full-time, of course, writing. But my point is we should encourage people. There's not one single formula, one single method. Recently, I started writing on Substac. And I wrote an essay about this. And I cannot tell you how emotional was the

response from people saying, thank you. This is encouraging because I always thought I could not be a writer because I'm doing another job. Well, let's look at this. history of literature, you know, all the authors, most of them that we today admire and speak of, admiringly, they have had a second, third jobs, you know, from TSA Eliot to Kafka, so many examples. So it's not that easy to have a precise schedule and we should encourage people. And also, I think people think I don't have long enough, whereas actually if you have half an hour and you get to use your half an hour twice a week, it all adds up. Of course.

And it builds a muscle of it. But too often you go, well, I've only got my lunch break. And it's like Arthur running to the, which is music. It's like let yourself, you know, use your half an hour. And you sometimes use that limited time in a much more productive way. I mean, Tony Morrison has a beautiful essay about this. And she herself was a single mom. She worked as an editor in the publishing world. Of course, it's ideal if you can find a job in which there's a connection between your writing.

But there are all kinds of examples. So she used to work at night. and we should know these examples otherwise it's quite demoralising to think that some people have it easy and I think you're right there is often get shared on social media

doesn't it like someone's like Ernest Hemingway's writing schedule he's a good one because he was really drunk though he's the one that makes you feel better drinking from 11 cocktail with a two but I think especially as you said as people who have other roles

or caring roles as well indeed you know it's like And that doesn't mean you can't be a good writer. And I think if you don't go and live life in another way, I think it affects your writing. I agree. I like the people who are living life and then writing it down because you feel that kind of outside energy that they're bringing into it.

Like they've gone and lived and they've gone and told you about it rather than that very like I just sit at my desk and this is what I do. I fully agree. And I think this is particularly true for novelists because we have very high inflated egos. We tend to think we're little gods. Imagine you create these worlds and you kill characters, you decide on their faiths. So actually we're very self-centered.

And when we leave that space and do other things and become students of life, it's good for the ego as well. It balances us. Do you enjoy meeting your readers or is it hard work? I really enjoy doing events. And it's an endless mystery to the... introvert in me. I'm an introvert and my natural habitat is just a small room full of books.

I'd be very happy just to stay there. So the public space is not easy for me. However, I also think coming from Turkey, you don't have the luxury of saying, you know, I'm not going to, you know, speak up about issues, about things that are happening outside the window. I also

think, you know, one of the many wonderful things I've learned from past generations of feminist movement is that politics is not only what political parties did yesterday or today, the personal is also political, right? So you might be writing about sexuality, gender, marriage. These are also political themes. So my point is, I think it's important that we come into the public space. We need to hear more women, more minorities. I really believe in that. But there's something beyond that for me. When I do a literary event, a book signing, it's, it's a, it's a, it's, it's,

It warms my heart to see the people coming to those events, the diversity. There's a very emotional bond. I really treasure that. And I think literary festivals are among our last remaining democratic spaces. Well, if anyone listening hasn't been to a literary event, you might wonder who are the kind of people that go. And what I always think so amazing is I think these are people who want a social connection and reading leads to that. So they love what they read, but they also love other people who read, other people. people who are interested and they want to be in a space and they are just the warmest audiences.

Oh, amazing. They are amazing. Curious, sort of accepting people. Lots of people go by themselves. Yep. Yeah. So you don't have to have a friend who's interested or drag someone else. You can just go by yourself. It's just really, really. And that's what makes me really hopeful for humanity. Yeah. Sometimes you said literature festivals, I think people could think, oh, like, it's not for me. But it's like, no, no, if you've read a book. Yeah. Yeah. It's for you. You can come and be like, no, no, page 90. Yeah. No one's going to make you feel stupid. It's the exact opposite. Everyone's sort of admitting they want to learn more. Of course.

Yeah, curious. Very welcoming. Very, very inclusive. And as you said, we go there and we realize we're not alone. Yeah. Not at all. Thank you so much. Thank you.

It was just so nice. There are rivers and skies available to by now and it is really, as it says on the front, a masterpiece. It really, really is a beautiful, beautiful piece of work. So thank you. Thought provoking, emotional, so well researched. And a page turning, gripping. Beautiful story.

Thank you. I really appreciate your words. Thank you so much. I'm very grateful. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. There Are Rivers in the Sky is available to buy now. I will also be on tour next year. I've got a new show called I Am a Strange Gloop, and you can get tickets from sarah pasco.com.com. You can find out about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.