Ashurbanipal's counselor is burned alive in the Nineveh library galleries as a raindrop silently witnesses the horror.

Arthur Smyth is born on the muddy Thames banks and christened 'King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums' by toshers.

Nine-year-old Narin's baptism ceremony is interrupted by dam construction workers who insult the Yazidi group as devil-worshippers.

Zaleekhah moves onto a Thames houseboat following her separation from her husband, quietly contemplating death by water.

Samuel Birch discovers Arthur visiting the British Museum daily and is astonished to learn the boy can read cuneiform.

Arthur announces to the Society of Biblical Archaeology that a Mesopotamian clay tablet describes a flood predating the Bible.

The Daily Telegraph sponsors Arthur for a Nineveh excavation, and Mabel's father pressures Arthur into a formal engagement.

A fire breaks out at a Constantinople brothel; Arthur escapes the blaze and rescues a qanun from the flames.

Arthur arrives at the Yazidi village of Zêrav near the excavation site and is warmly welcomed by the sheikh and Leila.

ISIS militants execute Yazidi men and abduct women near Nineveh; Besma receives a warning call and flees toward Mount Sinjar with Narin.

Leila sings at the Yazidi new year and falls into a vision, foretelling a coming massacre of the community.

Arthur discovers the missing lines of the Flood Tablet at the excavation site and is immediately ordered to return to England.

Besma gives Narin the very last drop of water on Mount Sinjar; ISIS militants ambush and capture them both.

Zaleekhah finds a photograph of a young girl with medical details written in her uncle's handwriting and realizes his plan.

Zaleekhah and Nen buy Narin's freedom and travel to Hasankeyf, where all three meet at the riverside cemetery.

The story begins in ancient Nineveh, where a raindrop witnesses a king's cruelty before journeying across millennia to touch the lives of three strangers. Arthur Smyth is born into poverty on the Thames and eventually dedicates his life to deciphering the world's oldest poem, earning enough renown to be sent on an excavation to Nineveh. There, he falls in love with a Yazidi seer named Leila and discovers the missing lines of the Flood Tablet before being ordered home. In 2014, a young Yazidi girl named Narin watches her community destroyed by ISIS militants and is sold into slavery, while in 2018, a grieving hydrologist named Zaleekhah moves onto a Thames houseboat and slowly finds both love and purpose. The three storylines converge when Zaleekhah uncovers a devastating secret about her uncle and, together with a new partner, rescues Narin and brings all three narrative threads to rest at the same riverside cemetery.

The headline events driving three lives across centuries of water and history.

Ashurbanipal decides to hide a lapis lazuli tablet inscribed with a dedication to the goddess Nisaba, calling it blasphemous.

Arthur is abused by a new headmaster after defending himself, and he walks out of school for good.

Arthur's father drags him to the Bradbury and Evans printing press and secures him a job as an errand boy.

Arthur borrows a copy of Nineveh and Its Remains from the printing press and his fascination with ancient Mesopotamia deepens.

Narin reads Arthur's tombstone inscription for the first time during her German cousins' visit to the Hasankeyf cemetery.

Arthur's twin brother dies after drinking cholera-contaminated water that Arthur himself had brought home from a London pump.

Arthur meets Charles Dickens at the printing press; Dickens later sends him a set of respectable clothes as a gift.

Besma explains to Narin that their ancestor Leila gave up prophecy after a predicted massacre came true, and the family gift shifted to water dowsing.

Zaleekhah wanders into Nen's tattoo parlor opposite the British Museum and the two women meet for the first time.

Uncle Malek interrogates Nen at Zaleekhah's birthday dinner and the two clash bitterly over their interpretations of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Arthur presents Leila with the qanun he rescued from the Constantinople brothel fire as a gift during his stay in Nineveh.

Arthur returns to England, marries Mabel, and they have twins, but he grows cold and distant, consumed by longing for Nineveh.

Arthur returns to Nineveh on a second expedition and finds the Yazidi village of Zêrav completely destroyed, its inhabitants massacred.

Narin is taken to Mosul and sold to an ISIS commander as a sabaya; Salma warns a militant that Narin descends from a cursed line.

Arthur dies of dysentery on the road to Castrum Kefa, too weak to find clean water; Leila receives his body and buries him in her community's cemetery.

Behind the headline events, a web of smaller but consequential scenes determines the course of each character's life. Arthur's path from slum child to museum scholar is built on a series of encounters — a brutal headmaster, a tyrannical father, a publishing apprenticeship, and a chance meeting with a famous novelist — that each nudge him closer to his destiny. In the Yazidi storyline, Besma passes on her community's history and the family's inherited gifts, while Narin discovers the identity of the Englishman buried in their cemetery. Zaleekhah's arc gains depth through her introduction to Nen, a fraught birthday dinner, and the gradual revelation of her uncle's true nature. Each of these secondary events feeds the novel's central themes of plunder, persecution, and the strange persistence of the past, and together they fill in the human detail around the story's major turning points.

The quieter but crucial moments that give each storyline its shape and texture.

A snowflake carrying memories of Ashurbanipal's Nineveh falls onto newborn Arthur's lips, linking his life to ancient Mesopotamia from birth.

Besma tells Narin that an Englishman is buried in their cemetery, having traveled far in search of a poem and died by the Tigris.

Zaleekhah visits Uncle Malek and finds him reading Nineveh and Its Remains as research for bidding on an ancient Assyrian tablet at auction.

Arthur visits the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, sees exhibits from around the globe, and feels an overwhelming desire to travel the world.

Arthur discovers that one of the British Museum tablets contains poetry rather than legal records, and Birch agrees to let him continue working.

Arthur visits his mother Arabella in a psychiatric hospital and leaves her a lamassu he has carved himself for her protection.

An old Yazidi man in the Constantinople bazaar, after Arthur helps him, tells Arthur he has a restless heart — the same phrase used of Gilgamesh.

Crossing into Iraq, Khaled explains to Narin how Assyrian imperial conquests forced mass migrations, drawing a direct parallel to the Yazidis' own displacement.

Narin and Besma discover a tortured corpse floating down the Tigris near Zêrav, a sign of the violence closing in around them.

Zaleekhah gets a cuneiform water symbol tattooed in blue ink on her wrist at Nen's parlor, marking a moment of personal transformation.

Arthur witnesses the local pasha and a qadi making thinly veiled plans to harm the Yazidis but cannot bring himself to warn his hosts.

Zaleekhah and Nen share their first kiss; Zaleekhah confesses that she is tired of feeling perpetually incomplete and disconnected.

Arthur hears a rumor of a Yazidi woman wandering the area alone with a qanun and sets out immediately for Castrum Kefa, hoping to find Leila.

Uncle Malek arrives unannounced at the houseboat, discovers Nen has stayed the night, and tells Zaleekhah he no longer recognizes her.

At the cemetery, Narin notices the cuneiform water tattoo on Zaleekhah's wrist — the same symbol as Besma's forehead tattoo — and a seed of trust forms between them.

Beneath the surface of the plot runs a current of revelations — moments when characters learn something that changes how they see themselves or the world. The novel seeds these across all three timelines, from the snowflake that carries Ashurbanipal's memory into Arthur's first breath, to the cuneiform tattoo that sparks an unexpected bond between a freed girl and her rescuer. Arthur's journey is shaped by a series of private turning points: a chance discovery of poetry on a clay tablet, a warning from a Yazidi stranger, and a secret he witnesses but cannot act on in time. Narin's story turns on the stories Besma tells her, the growing signs of danger she is too young to fully read, and the small acts of defiance she manages even in captivity. Zaleekhah's arc hinges on confronting the difference between gratitude and love, confessing the trauma she has carried since childhood, and choosing to act decisively when it matters most.

The discoveries, confessions, and decisive moments that shift each character's fate.