Elif Shafak

A fagra, they tell him, can detect things that others walk past without noticing. She knows the landscape in the way a reed warbler knows the ins and outs of marsh waters. She can tell a storm from the flight of herons, the shape of ant hills or the antics of spiders. A faqra learns things she wishes she never did and, once she does, she cannot unlearn them.

Yellow - annotation atmosphere/scene The sky is murky and overcast, a hint of thunder in the air, an electric taste on her tongue. When she was little, she always wondered where fish sheltered in a storm. Did they carry on swimming even as the water raged and seethed, trusting it would not affect them, or did they flee at the slightest hint of disruption and, if so, where? Today she knows that her simple question is not an easy one to answer. Scientists understand how sensitive ripar-ian, riverine and marine animals are to temperature and pressure and light, and can track their search for calmer waters, but they are still not entirely sure where fish go in a storm. And if the river is polluted to such a degree that oxygen levels are low, fish cannot breathe properly. Their behaviour becomes erratic - at first they swim faster, moving frantically in search of pockets of air. Then they slow down, falling progressively into a lethal torpor. Massive die-offs can occur in a matter of n Mother fish will exhaust themselves to bring oxygen to th

. In the span of a sentence a storyteller can jump back and forth centuries, as if a millennium could pass in the blink of an eye. But then it takes hours to describe a single event, every minute a stretch, an eternity. 'Remember, my heart. Story-time is different from clock-time.' Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also appreciates small acts of kindness. That is why minorities do not live in clock-time. They live in story-time.

to this remarkable compound on which our lives and our futures depend. The findings that I intend to present to you today concern rivers and rainstorms, and the memory of an ancient flood. That memory, distressing as it was, has never left the people of the land that I will be talking about - Mesopotamia. As many here will already know, this word, in Greek, means "between rivers".

Isis an eary summer afternoon th Nerchtton the impending rain. A strange, sullen silence has settled on the city: the binds have not sung since the dawn, the butterflies and dragonflies have gone into hiding, the frogs have abandoned their breeding grounds the geese have fillen quiet, sensing danger Even the sheep have been muted, urinating frequently, overcome by fear. The air smels different - a sharp, salty scent. All day, dark shadows have been amassing on the horizon, like an enemy army that has set up camp gatbering force. They look remarkably still and calm from a lustance, but that is an optical illusion, a trick of the eye. the clouds aze rolling steadily closer, propelled by a forceful wind, determined to drench the world and shape it anew In this region where the summers are long and scorching, the rivers mercurial and unforgiving and the memory of the last flood not yet washed away, water is boch the harbinger of life and the messenger of death.