Between Two Rivers

That’s what they called the ancient city– Mesopotamia

Between Two Rivers

That’s what they called the ancient city–
            Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers.
One river was gentle, the other, a rolling punch. 
The city drowned in a flood, as you know, and 
with it epics and blue stone tablets. But if you 
think for a moment this is a poem of historical
recount, then let me get right to the heart of 
            what I must say–
You were brought into this world by the steady 
ebb of breath, and you will leave it by flooding 
insistence, placed in between what was given 
and what will be taken. Nothing of yours will 
remain belonging to you. Not your libraries. 
Not your halls of power. Not your spoils, your 
riches, your finely woven garments. They’ll say 
there once lived a king, a people, a beautiful 
country. They’ll say a language was born, was 
spoken, inscribed. But try and try as they will, 
they won’t know how to pronounce your name. 
They won’t know what to do with what was left, 
except to place them in glass boxes, awing and 
gawking at how swiftly a great empire drowned, 
tending to the unspoken question squirming in 
their hearts– Who is it that has avoided this 
promised fate? What has lived beyond the 
rivers of light and time?

- Moudi Sbeity

The Standard of Ur

I recently read There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. A phenomenal novel that follows the journey of a single drop of water from ancient Mesopotamia to 1800s London, then modern day London and Turkey. The novel touches on themes of water, melancholy, writing, and the historical and still ongoing persecution of the Yazidis. So I’ve been thinking about rivers, and time, and the fate of every civilization, including ours. And how, if we were to truly see ourselves in the patterns of history, we might at last resolve to change for the better.