The Beekeeper of Aleppo: A Moving Testament to the Human Spirit

by Christy Lefteri

‘That’s a very sad story.’

  ‘Yes, it is a sad story.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘It’s always true, don’t you think?’

  ‘Like back home?’

  ‘Yes, just like home.’

  Mohammed lay back and turned towards the glowing fire and closed his eyes.

  Seeing the smoke rising into the morning sky, I remembered Mustafa smoking the colonies during harvesting season; we used the smoke to protect ourselves while we harvested the honey. That way the bees would not smell each other’s pheromones and would be less likely to sting in self-defence.

  We filled a can with wood chips and shavings and started a fire, and once we got the fire going a bit, we snuffed out the open flame and stuffed more fuel on top of it. You don’t want an open flame, because if it hits the bellows they can become like a flamethrower and burn the wings of the bees.

  When we had so many colonies we couldn’t manage them on our own we hired workers who would help us build new hives, raise queen bees, check the colonies for infestations and also collect the honey. In the field where Mustafa stood, our employees were also smoking the colonies, and puffs of smoke rose from their cans and into the blue sky where the sun blazed down upon us all. Mustafa prepared lunch for everyone – usually lentils or bulgur with salad or pasta and egg stew, followed by baladi soft cheese with honey. We had a small hut with a kitchen and outside a canopy with fans to provide some relief from the heat. We sat together to eat, Mustafa at the head of the wooden table, stuffing food into his mouth after the morning’s hard work, dipping bread into the tomato sauce. He would be so proud, proud and grateful for what we had achieved together, but a part of me always wondered if this gratitude also came from fear, a fear of the unknown, of some future disaster.

  Mustafa lost his mother when he was five years old. She and his unborn brother died during labour, and I think he lived forever on the edge of imminent catastrophe, and so he came to appreciate everything with the joy and terror of a child. ‘Nuri,’ he would say as he wiped the sauce from his chin, ‘look what we have created! Isn’t it marvellous? Isn’t it just so marvellous?’ But there in his eyes was a glint of something else, a darkness I had come to recognise as belonging to his childhood heart.

  7

  IN THE MORNING, WHEN I get up to use the bathroom, I see that Diomande’s door is wide open and he is collecting scattered sheets of paper from the floor. The Qur’an is open on his unmade bed. He puts the pile of paper in a drawer, opens the curtains so that the sunlight floods into the room and sits down on the edge of the bed. He is wearing only tracksuit bottoms, his body is hunched over and he is holding a T-shirt in his hands.

  He hasn’t noticed me standing in the doorway. His mind is elsewhere, and he turns slightly towards the window so that I see a strange deformity jutting out of the skin of his back where his shoulder blades should be. As if he’s just hatched out of an egg, there are small white wings, tight and muscular, like scrunched-up fists. It takes a moment for my mind to catch up with my eyes. He quickly pulls the T-shirt over his head. I shift my feet and he turns to face me.

  ‘Nuri – this is your name?’ The sudden sound of his voice startles me. ‘I met Lucy Fisher,’ he says. ‘She is very nice lady. I think maybe she is worried for me. I tell her not to worry, Mrs Fisher, don’t worry! There are opportunities in this country. I will find job! My friend told me if I want to be safe and if I want to stay living I should come to UK. But she look more worry than before and now I am worrying too.’

  I stand there staring at him. I can’t find my voice to reply.

  ‘When my dad died, we had very difficult time, there was no work, money was very little, and not much food for two sisters, and my mother she told me, “Diomande, I will find some money and you will go, you will go from here and find a way to help us!”’

  He hunches over further now so that the bulges rise up, and he puts his long fingers on his knees and pushes himself to stand.

  ‘On the night before I left, she make me best food in the world: kedjenou!’ He licks his fingers and rolls his eyes. ‘I no have kedjenou for many months, but on this night she make special for me.’

  I watch his back, the movement of the wings beneath his T-shirt as he leans down to line up a pair of sandals, which he slips on over his socks. He seems to be in pain.

  ‘What is wrong with your back?’ I say.

  ‘I have bent spine from when I was a baby,’ he says.

  I must be staring at him in an odd way because he pauses for a moment and looks at me. He’s so tall that even when he’s standing he is hunched over, and when he meets my gaze I notice that he has the eyes of an old man.

  ‘Will you be coming to have the tea with milk?’ he says. ‘I like it very much.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and my voice comes out in a rasp. ‘I will see you downstairs soon.’

  I lock the door of the bathroom so that the Moroccan man will not come in again. I wash my face and hands as far as the elbows and wipe my head and my feet to the ankles. I am sweating and I can’t draw my mind away from the wings to think about the words of the prayer. As I stand on the mat to say ‘Allahu abkar’ I catch sight of my face in the mirror above the sink and I pause with my hands by my ears. I look so different now, but I can’t quite put my finger on how. Yes, there are deep lines that were not there before, and even my eyes seem to have changed – they are darker and wider, always on the alert, like Mohammed’s eyes, but it’s not that; something else has changed, something unfathomable.

  The door handle rattles. ‘Geezer!’

  I don’t reply but let the water run so that the bathroom steams up, hoping to see Mohammed, but he is not here.

  I take my time dressing Afra. I’m not sure why she won’t do it herself, but she stands there, sometimes with her eyes closed, as I pull her dress down over her body, as I wrap her hijab around her head. This time she does not guide my fingers when I put in the hairpins, she just stays silent, and I can see in the mirror that her eyes are still closed, and I wonder why they are shut, if she can’t see anyway. But I don’t ask her. She is holding the marble so tightly that her knuckles are white. Then she lies down on the bed, reaching for the sketch-pad on the bedside cabinet, and she places it on her chest and stays there in silence, in her own world, breathing slowly.

  When we go downstairs, the Moroccan man and Diomande are not there. The landlady tells me they have gone out to get some sun. She is cleaning again. She is wearing a lot of make-up, long black lashes that look too big to be real and bright red lipstick the colour of new blood. But no matter how much of that sheen she sprays and no matter how much she scrubs, she can’t get rid of the dampness and the mould and the smell of terrible journeys filled with fear. I wonder how she came to be in this country. I guess that she was born here because of her excellent British accent, and I know she has a lot of family members because in the evenings I can hear so much noise from her place next door, children and other relatives coming and going. And she always smells of spices and bleach, as if she is always either cleaning or cooking.

  I contact Lucy Fisher and tell her about the problem at the GP surgery and she apologises and says that she will bring the new documents tomorrow. She is calm and businesslike, and I like that Lucy Fisher is looking out for us. But her error, however small, reminds me that she is human, that she has limitations and this makes me afraid.

  Afra is sitting on the sofa listening to the TV. Apart from meetings with Lucy Fisher, this is the first time that she has agreed to venture out of our bedroom, to allow herself in some small way to be part of the world. I sit with her for a while, but eventually I drift outside into the concrete courtyard and look through the fence at the landlady’s garden. Mohammed was right! It is so green, full of shrubs and trees and flowers, with a hanging basket and a bird feeder and some children’s toys – a small blue bicycle and a sandpit. There is also a pond with a water feature of a boy angel holding a conch, but no water is coming out of
it. The courtyard is bare and grey compared to the landlady’s garden, but the bee is nestled on one of the flowers, sleeping. The wooden tray suddenly reminds me of the apiaries and how the hives were like the nests of wild bees. I remember removing the individual trays to inspect the honeycomb. It was my job to ensure that the honeybee populations coincided with the nectar flows. I had to know where they occurred, where the crops were located, and then make plans so that I could manage the colonies and achieve my objectives, because it wasn’t just honey we were producing, but pollen and propolis and royal jelly.

  ‘You should bring your bed out here.’ I turn and the Moroccan man is standing there with a huge smile on his face. ‘What a beautiful day,’ he says looking up at the sky, ‘and they say this country is all rain.’

  In the living room, in the evening, the Moroccan man and Diomande play hangman using English words. It’s a total disaster, but I don’t say anything, and I don’t correct their spellings, and soon the other residents have joined in. The Afghan woman is very competitive and claps loudly when she wins. The man she always speaks to, who I understand now to be her brother, is a bit younger than she is and wears a lot of gel in his hair and has a wonky goatee. They are both very intelligent. In the nights when I’ve sat here listening to them talk, I’ve heard them speak Arabic, Farsi, English and even a bit of Greek.

  I watch Diomande’s back, the wings that I mistook for shoulder blades, the way they move beneath his T-shirt, the way he brings his hand to his spine now and then, a habit he has probably had all his life. He is always in pain, this boy. But his smile and his laugh are full of light. He is arguing with the Moroccan man about how to spell ‘mouse’. The Moroccan man thinks there is a ‘w’ in it. Diomande is whacking his hand on his forehead.

  My eyes close and the voices begin to merge together and when I open them again I can hear the bees, thousands of them working like they used to. The noise is coming from outside. The room is quiet now, apart from the sound of the marble rolling on the floorboards. Mohammed is sitting on the floor.

  ‘Uncle Nuri!’ he says when he hears me moving. ‘You’ve been sleeping for such a long time.’

  The clock on the wall says 3 a.m.

  ‘Did you find the key?’ he says.

  ‘There was no key. They were flowers.’

  ‘You went to the wrong place,’ he says. ‘It’s not that tree – it’s in the other garden. The green garden. It’s one of the small trees. The key is on there. I can see it through the hole.’

  ‘What do you need the key for?’ I say.

  ‘I need to get out,’ is all he says. ‘Will you fetch it for me?’

  I unlock the patio doors, and the sound of the bees hits me. The air is thick and full, but I see not even one bee. The darkness is empty. Mohammed follows me out into the courtyard.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ I say. ‘Where is it coming from?’

  ‘Just look in the other garden, Uncle Nuri, and you will find the key.’

  I look through the hole, but it’s so dark that I can barely see the trees, let alone a key.

  ‘You have to go over the fence,’ he says above the noise, this constant buzzing coming from the deepest place of the atmosphere, like waves or memory. I get the stepladder and climb over into the landlady’s garden. I am suddenly surrounded by the softness of the black trees and flowers, blurred shapes rustling in the breeze. The small bicycle is leaning against the wall, and I recognise the outline of the sandpit and walk around it. I can hear Mohammed guiding me now, he is telling me to turn left, and eventually I see what he is talking about, a small shrub, and this time there is one key hanging from a branch. It catches the light of the moon. I have to pull hard to take it off, it’s tangled in the foliage, and then I put the bicycle next to the fence so that I can step on it to climb back over.

  When I’m back in the courtyard, Mohammed has gone. I close the patio doors against the noise and head upstairs and climb into bed. Afra is asleep with both hands resting beneath her cheek. She is breathing slowly and deeply. I lie on my back this time and hold the key close to my chest. The buzzing is distant now. I think I can hear

  of the Aegean were calm in the late afternoon. The fire had been extinguished, and we were aboard a marine vessel heading to the island of Leros.

  ‘This is the second time I have been on a boat,’ Mohammed said. ‘The first time was a bit scary, don’t you think?’

  ‘Just a bit.’ I immediately thought of Sami. Sami had been on a boat once when we’d taken him to visit his grandparents on the Syrian coast, a small town in the shadow of the Lebanon mountains. He was afraid of the water – he cried and I held him in my arms and soothed him by pointing out the fish in the water. Then he stared at the streaks of silver fish beneath the surface with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face. He was always afraid of water; even when we washed his hair, he didn’t want it in his ears or in his eyes. He was a boy of the desert. He only knew the water in the evaporating streams and irrigation ponds. He and Mohammed were the same age – if he was here they would have been friends. Mohammed would have looked after Sami because Sami was a more sensitive, more fearful boy, and Sami would have told Mohammed stories. How he loved to tell stories!

  ‘I wish my mum was here,’ Mohammed said, and I placed a hand on his shoulder and watched him as his eyes flickered, following the fish in the sea. Afra was sitting behind us on one of the chairs; an NGO worker had given her a white stick to hold, but she didn’t like it and so left it on the floor beside her.

  When we disembarked, volunteers were already waiting. There was structure here, I could tell. Many people had passed through already, and the NGOs were well prepared. We were led away from the port, up a small hill, to the registration centre for new arrivals: a large tent. The place was brimming with refugees and soldiers and police officers who were wearing blue-mirrored sunglasses. From what I could see, there were people from Syria, Afghanistan, other Arab countries and parts of Africa. Men in uniform and straight faces divided us into groups: single females, unaccompanied minors, single men with passports, single men without passports, families. Luckily the three of us got to stay together. We were shown to one of the long queues and given some bread rolls with cheese. People were restless as they waited to be identified. They wanted their papers so that they could exist in the eyes of the European Union. And the ones who were the wrong nationality would get no papers – except for a ticket back to wherever.

  Finally, after hours of standing in line, we reached the front of the queue. Mohammed had fallen asleep on one of the benches on the far side of the tent and Afra and I took a seat facing a man who was leafing through some notes on the desk. Afra was still holding the bread roll in her hand. The man looked at her and leant back in his chair, his stomach big enough to balance a plate on. Although it was cold in the tent, he had beads of sweat on his forehead and there were shadows under his eyes as wide as smiles. The man lowered the sunglasses from his head onto his nose.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he said.

  ‘Syria,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have passports?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I took all three passports out of my rucksack and placed them open on the table. He lifted his glasses, scanning them.

  ‘What part of Syria?’

  ‘Aleppo.’

  ‘Is this your son?’ He pointed at the picture of Sami.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Asleep on the bench. He’s very tired after the long journey.’

  The man nodded and stood up, and for a moment I thought that he would go and find Mohammed to check his face against the picture, but he walked across the tent to a row of photocopiers, then he returned, stinking of cigarettes, puffed out his cheeks and asked for our fingerprints. We were being transformed into verifiable, printable entities.

  ‘Do you need Sami’s fingerprints?’ I asked.

 
; ‘No, not if he’s under ten. Can I see your phone?’

  I got my phone out of my bag. The battery was dead.

  ‘What’s your PIN?’ the man said. I wrote it down and he went away, again in the direction of the photocopiers.

  ‘Why did you tell him we have a son?’ Afra said.

  ‘It’s easier that way. They won’t ask so many questions.’

  She didn’t say anything, but I could see from the way she was scratching her skin, pressing so hard that there were red streaks on her wrists, that she was uncomfortable. After a long time the man returned, out of breath, stinking of more cigarettes and coffee.

  ‘What was your occupation in Syria?’ he said, sitting down again, his stomach bulging over his trousers.

  ‘I was a beekeeper.’

  ‘And you, Mrs Ibrahim?’ He looked at Afra now.

  ‘I was an artist,’ she said.

  ‘The pictures on the phone, are they your paintings?’

  Afra nodded.

  The man leant back in his chair again. With his glasses on it was difficult to know what he was looking at, but he seemed to be staring at Afra. I could see a reflection of her in each lens. Although there was so much noise in the tent, the place seemed to fall into silence.

  ‘They are very special, your paintings,’ the man said. Then he leant forward, his huge stomach pressing against the table – pushing it slightly towards us.

  ‘What happened to her?’ he said to me, and there was an unmistakable note of curiosity in his voice. I could suddenly imagine him collecting horror stories – real-life tales of loss and destruction. His glasses were fixed on me now.

  ‘A bomb,’ I said.

  The man’s glasses moved back to focus on Afra.

  ‘Where do you hope to get to?’

  ‘The United Kingdom,’ she said.

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘We have friends there,’ I said, trying to ignore his mocking laugh.

  ‘Most people are more realistic,’ the man said, handing me the passports and my phone, explaining that we would have to wait on the island until the authorities gave us clearance to leave for Athens.