The rocks of the UK's Jurassic Coast are 185 million years old.
James Osmond/Alami
Whisper of Doom
Anjana Khatwa, The Bridge Street Press (UK); Basic Books (USA, due November 4)
It's easy to take stones for granted. How often do we think about the materials used to make the sidewalks we walk on, or the origin of the pebbles we pick up while sitting on the beach?
And how often do we realize the importance geology when it comes to nature writing and tough conversations about our warming world? Any action concerning climate change and the future of our planet must take into account how we interact with the components that make up our world.
How fortunate that we can gain such insight from earthly scientist Anjana Hatwa and her new book: Whispers of Doom: Tales from Earth. Called “a stirring journey into deep times,” this love letter is written with such passion that you can't help but be moved. Hatva has dedicated much of her life to spreading the gospel of geology, and here she offers clinical and scientific material that confirms her extraordinary depth of feeling.
Throughout the book, she methodically explains topics such as the formation of mountains, craters, and shale, and weaves in fascinating detail. We learn that the Taj Mahal in India, an iconic symbol of love, was built from ivory-colored Makrana marble, whose origins go back to the time when several primitive landmass collided almost 2 billion years ago. A recipe involving tectonic movements, cyanobacteria, photosynthesis and calcium carbonate led to the creation of the stone used in this unusual monument – a much more complex process than it might seem at first glance.
With a scientific foundation laid, Hatva tells stories stones and minerals to life – and does it in a much more sensual way than any high school geology lesson I can remember. In Petra, Jordan, she encourages the reader to notice the negative space where rocks have been carved to form buildings, and the beauty that can emerge in unexpected places. Among the sandstone and quartz, the rocks whisper: “These patterns you see are the traces of ancient rivers,” she writes. These are friends of Hatva, and soon these “keepers of the history of time” will become ours.
“
A recipe involving tectonic collisions, photosynthesis and more led to the creation of the marble used in the Taj Mahal.
“
Hatwa's love of rocks began as a child, walking along lava flows in southeastern Kenya. In her book, she takes us around the world and across millennia, all the way to her home of 20 years in Dorset, UK, where Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and its 185-million-year geological history are its neighbors.
On this journey we will discover how the stones shaped her world and ours. We'll visit the massive sarsen stones of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in the UK, uncover the science and mythology of the green pounamu stones of New Zealand, and trace the racial and political history of the Black Belt, a region of dark, fertile soil in the southern US dominated by cotton plantations after the forced removal of indigenous peoples.
But what really makes this book stand out is Hatwa's personal touch. She offers us vulnerability by sharing her own experiences of motherhood and faith, without shying away from the fact that the environmental sector in which she works is one of least diverse fields in the UK.
She describes how she found that “the whiteness of the environment in which I worked turned her into a different person,” and her cultural and spiritual identity took a backseat to her academic self-esteem. This book is a must read for anyone trying to balance this duality, as well as for those who want to understand it. We cheer on Hatwa as she holds tight to her stones and navigates spaces of belonging and not belonging.
Whisper of Doom so packed with information that each chapter requires you to stand back and digest it. Hatva is also deliberately provocative, acknowledging from the very beginning of the book that her alliance science and spirituality may cause discomfort and fright in some readers because it is not at all what people are used to. But this potentially divisive approach is the catalyst for a truly thought-provoking odyssey.
Dhruti Shah is a freelance journalist based in London.
Topics:
