Editors’ Note
Issue 6: Rivers
JUNE 27, 2023
What happens when rivers stop their flow, when they dry up or pour out, when their waters rise or fall? The Sudanese journalist and poet Rania Mamoun writes of fish dying “in open-mouthed / surprise” at the disappearance of their ecosystems; the fish are astonished by the circumstances of their own devastation, a revelation that Mamoun likens to the moment when one realizes that "love's river" has ground to a halt.
This issue of The Dial is dedicated to stories of rivers that have been disrupted, diverted, and threatened all over the world. Rivers respect no borders or barriers; their transformation can be at once beautiful and cataclysmic. The Ukrainian journalist Kristina Berdynskykh writes of the destruction of her hometown of Kherson, where residents are struggling to survive and recover from the explosion of the Khakova Dam. The Chinese novelist Xiaolu Guo recounts her experience filmmaking along the banks of the Thames and the Yangtze, and watching both ships and people move between them. From Italy, Kenneth R. Rosen writes of the cascading effects of the drought in the Po Valley, which is threatening Europe's breadbasket.
Ifeosa Anwulika Nkem-Onyekpe writes from Nigeria, where a devastating flood obliterated the livelihoods of thousands of people, and where no amount of aid can address the need. The Nairobi-based photojournalist K.C. Cheng brings us portraits of everyday life among the pastoral communities of Kenya’s Lake Turkana, which is drying up, starving the animals and people who rely on it. From Sulaymaniyah, Winthrop Rodgers hikes with the environmental activists trying to save the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from destruction. For Simen Saetre, a change of farm-fishing has transformed Norwegian literature. He reads us a few surprising fictions of salmon-farming. And from Paris, Dial Editor-in-Chief Madeleine Schwartz writes about how the city is bracing itself for the Seine’s inevitable and almost certainly catastrophic overflow.
— The Editors