The Beekeeper of Aleppo

by Christy Lefteri

  I hold out my hand so that he can see the bee. ‘She has no wings,’ I say. ‘I suspect that she has the deformed wing virus.’

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘in Morocco there is a honey road. People come from all over the world to taste our honey. In Agadir there are waterfalls and mountains and plenty of flowers that attract people and bees. I wonder what these British bees are like.’ He leans in closer to take a better look, lifts his hand as if he is about to pet her with his finger like she’s a tiny dog, but changes his mind. ‘Does she sting?’ he says.

  ‘She can.’

  He moves his hand to the safety of his lap. ‘What will you do with her?’

  ‘There’s not much I can do. I’ll take her back outside. She won’t live very long like this – she’s been banished from her colony because she has no wings.’

  He looks out through the glass doors into the courtyard. It is a small concrete square with flagstones and one cherry tree in the middle.

  I get up and press my face against the glass. It is nine o’clock and the sun is just setting. The cherry tree is tall and black against the glowing sky.

  ‘Now it’s sunny,’ I say, ‘but in three minutes it will rain. Bees don’t come out in rain. They will never come out in rain, and here it rains seventy per cent of the time.’

  ‘I think English bees are different,’ he says. When I turn to face him he is smiling again. I don’t like it that he finds me amusing.

  There is a bathroom downstairs and one of the men has gone to use the toilet. His stream in the toilet bowl sounds like a waterfall.

  ‘Bloody foreigner,’ says the Moroccan man, getting up to go to bed. ‘Nobody stands up to urinate. Sit down!’

  I go out into the courtyard and place the bee on the flower of a heather plant by the fence.

  In the corner of the room there is a computer with Internet access. I sit down at the desk to see if Mustafa has sent me another message. He left Syria before me and we have been emailing each other throughout our journeys. He is waiting for me in the north of England in Yorkshire. I remember how his words kept me moving. Where there are bees there are flowers, and where there are flowers there is new life and hope. Mustafa is the reason I came here. He is the reason that Afra and I kept going until we got to the United Kingdom. But now all I can do is stare at the reflection of my face on the screen. I do not want Mustafa to know what has become of me. We are finally in the same country, but if we meet he will see a broken man. I do not believe he will recognise me. I turn away from the screen.

  I wait there until the room empties out, until all the residents with their foreign tongues and foreign manners have left and the only sound is the traffic in the distance. I imagine a beehive swarming with yellow bees, and that when they exit they head right up into the sky and away to find flowers. I try to picture the land beyond, the highways and the streetlights and the sea.

  The sensor light suddenly comes on in the garden. From where I’m sitting in the armchair facing the doors, I can see a shadow, something small and dark dashing quickly across the patio. It seems to be a fox. I get up to take a look, and the light goes off. I press my face against the glass, but the thing is larger than a fox and standing upright. It moves and the light flashes on again. It is a young boy with his back to me. He is looking through a gap in the fence, into the other garden. I knock hard on the glass but he doesn’t turn. I search for the key and find it hanging on a nail behind the curtain. When I approach him, the boy turns to face me, as if he has been waiting for me, looking at me with those black eyes asking for the answers to all the questions in the world.

  ‘Mohammed,’ I say softly, in case I scare him away.

  ‘Uncle Nuri,’ he says, ‘See that garden – there’s so much green in there!’

  He steps aside so I can take a look. It’s so dark that I can’t see any green. Only the soft shadows of bushes and trees.

  ‘How did you find me?’ I say, but he doesn’t answer. I feel that I need to be cautious. ‘Would you like to come in?’ But he sits down on the concrete, legs crossed, and peeks through the hole in the fence again. I sit down beside him.

  ‘There is a seaside here,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t like the sea,’ he says.

  ‘I know. I remember.’ He is holding something in his hand. It’s white and I can smell lemons, though there are no lemons here.

  ‘What is that?’ I say.

  ‘A flower.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ I open my palm and he places it there. He tells me that he picked it off the lemon tree in

  was all dust. Afra wouldn’t leave. Everyone else had gone. Even Mustafa was desperate to go now. But not Afra. Mustafa’s house was on the road that led to the river and I would walk down the hill to visit him. It wasn’t a long walk but there were snipers and I had to be careful. The birds were usually singing. The sound of birdsong never changes. Mustafa told me this many years ago. And whenever the bombs were silent, the birds came out to sing. They perched on the skeletons of trees and on craters and wires and broken walls, and they sang. They flew high above, in the untouched sky, and sang.

  As I approached Mustafa’s house I could hear, even from a distance, the faint sound of music. I always found him sitting on the bed in his half-bombed room, vinyl playing on an old record player, biting and sucking at the end of his cigarette, the smoke rising in clouds above him, on the bed beside him a purring cat. But on this day when I arrived, Mustafa was not there. The cat was asleep in the spot where he used to sit, its tail curled around its body. On the bedside cabinet, I found a photograph of the two of us that was taken the year we opened the business together. We were both squinting into the sun, Mustafa at least a foot taller than I was, the apiaries behind us. I knew we were surrounded by bees, though they weren’t visible in the picture. Beneath the photograph was a letter.

  Dear Nuri,

  Sometimes I think that if I keep walking, I will find some light, but I know that I can walk to the other side of the world and there will still be darkness. It’s not like the darkness of the night, which also has white light from the stars, from the moon. This darkness is inside me and has nothing to do with the outside world.

  Now I have a picture of my son lying on that table, and nothing can make it fade. I see him, every time I close my eyes.

  Thank you for coming with me every day to the garden. If only we had some flowers to put on his grave. Sometimes in my mind he is sitting at the table and he is eating lakhma. With the other hand he picks his nose and then he wipes it on his shorts and I tell him to stop being like his father, and he says, ‘But you are my father!’ and he laughs. That laughter. I can hear it. It flies above the land and disappears into the distance with the birds. I think this is his soul, it is free now. O Allah keep me alive as long as is good for me, and when death is better for me, take me.

  Yesterday I went for a walk to the river, and I watched as four soldiers lined up a group of boys. They blindfolded them and shot them, one by one, and they threw their bodies in the river. I stood back and watched all this and I imagined Firas standing there among them, the fear in his heart, knowing that he would die, the fact that he could not see what was happening and could only hear the gunshots. I hope he was the first in line to die. I never thought I would ever have such a wish. I shut my eyes too and listened, and in between the gunshots and the thuds of falling bodies, I heard a boy crying. He was calling for his father. The other boys were silent, too afraid to make a sound. There is always one person in a group who has more courage than the rest. It takes bravery to cry out, to release what is in your heart. Then he was silenced. I had a rifle in my hand. I found it last week on the side of the street, loaded with three bullets. So I had three shots and there were four men. I waited until their guard was down, till they sat on the bank of the river smoking cigarettes and put their feet in the water where they had thrown the bodies.

  My aim was good. I got one in the head, one in the
stomach, the third in the heart. The fourth man stood and held his hands up and when he realised I had no shots left, he fumbled for his gun and I ran. He saw my face and they will find me. I have to leave tonight. I must get to Dahab and Aya. I should not have waited this long to leave, but I didn’t want to go without you and abandon you here in hell.

  I cannot wait here to say goodbye. You must convince Afra to leave. You are too soft, too sensitive. This is an admirable quality when it comes to working with bees, but not now. I will be making my way to England, to find my wife and daughter. Leave this place, Nuri, it is no longer home. Aleppo is now like the dead body of a loved one, it has no life, no soul, it is full of rotting blood.

  I have a memory of the first time you came to my father’s apiaries in the mountains and you were standing there surrounded by bees, without protective gear, your hands shielding your eyes, and you said to me, ‘Mustafa, this is where I want to be,’ even though you knew your father wouldn’t be happy. Remember that, Nuri. Remember the strength you had then. Take Afra and come and find me.

  Mustafa

  I sat down on the bed and cried, sobbed like a child, and from that day I kept the photograph and letter in my pocket, but Afra wouldn’t leave, so I would go out every day and forage in the ruins for food and return with a gift for her. I’d find so many odd bits, broken or unbroken pieces of people’s lives: a child’s shoe, a dog’s collar, a mobile phone, a glove, a key. Interesting to find a key when there are no doors to open. Come to think of it, even stranger to find a shoe or a glove when there is no longer a hand or a foot to fit it.

  These were sad gifts. Nonetheless I’d offer them to her, place them on her lap, and wait for a reaction that never came. But I would keep trying. It was a good distraction. Every day I went out and found a new thing. One day, I found the best gift of all: a pomegranate.

  ‘What did you see?’ she said to me as I stood by the door.

  She was sitting on the camp bed, where Sami used to sleep, facing the window, with her back against the wall. She reminded me of a cat, in her black hijab, with that white stone face and large grey eyes. No expression at all. I could only understand how she was feeling from her voice, or when she picked at her skin so hard she made it bleed.

  The room smelled of warm bread, of normal life. I began to speak but stopped, and she turned her ear to me, a slight twitch of her head.

  I saw that she’d made bread again. ‘You made khubz?’ I said.

  ‘I made it for Sami,’ she said. ‘Not for you. But what did you see?’

  ‘Afra …’

  ‘I’m not an idiot, you know. I haven’t lost my mind. I just wanted to make him some bread. Is that OK with you? My mind’s sharper than yours, don’t forget that. What did you see?’

  ‘Do we have to do this every time?’

  I watched her. She locked her fingers together.

  ‘So … the houses,’ I began, ‘they’re like carcasses, Afra. Carcasses. If you could see them you would cry.’

  ‘You told me that yesterday.’

  ‘And the grocery store, it’s empty now. But there’s fruit still in the crates where Adnan left them – pomegranates, and figs, and bananas, and apples. And they’re all rotten now, and the flies, thousands of them swarming in the heat. But I rummaged through and I found a good one. And I brought it for you.’ I walked towards her and placed the pomegranate on her lap. She took it, feeling its flesh with her fingers, turning it around, pressing it against her palms.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. But there was no expression at all. I’d hoped the pomegranate would reach her. Before she’d spend hours peeling and deseeding them. She’d cut one in half, push out the centre a bit, then start whacking it with a wooden spoon, and when she’d filled the glass bowl to the top, she would smile and say she had a thousand jewels. I wished she would smile. But that was a stupid wish, and a selfish one. She had nothing to smile about. It would have been better to wish for this war to end. But I needed something to hold on to, and if she smiled, if by some miracle she smiled, it would have felt like finding water in the desert.

  ‘Please tell me.’ She wouldn’t give up. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘No. You told me what you saw yesterday. Not what you saw today. And today you saw someone die.’

  ‘Your mind’s playing tricks on you. It’s all that darkness.’ I shouldn’t have said that. I apologised, once, twice, three times, but her face didn’t change.

  ‘I know from the way you were breathing when you came in,’ she said.

  ‘And how was I breathing?’

  ‘Like a dog.’

  ‘I was perfectly calm.’

  ‘As calm as a storm.’

  ‘OK, so when I left the grocer’s,’ I said, ‘I took a bit of a detour. I wanted to see if Akram was still here, and I was on the long road that leads to Damascus, just past the bank, by that bend where that red loading van used to stop on Mondays?’

  She nodded. She could see it now, in her mind. She needed all the details. I’d come to realise this; she needed the small details so that she could see it all, so that she could pretend that it was her eyes that saw it all. She nodded again, urging me on.

  ‘So, I came up behind two armed men and overheard them taking bets on something. They were planning to use something for target practice. When they agreed the bets I realised they were talking about an eight-year-old boy who was playing alone on the road. I don’t know what he was doing there to be honest. Why his mother would let him—’

  ‘What was he wearing?’ she said. ‘The eight-year-old boy. What was he wearing?’

  ‘A red jumper and a pair of blue shorts. They were jean shorts.’

  ‘And what colour were his eyes?’

  ‘I didn’t see his eyes. I suppose they were brown.’

  ‘Was it a boy I would know?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise him.’

  ‘And what was he playing?’

  ‘He had a toy truck.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Yellow.’

  She was postponing the inevitable, holding on to the living boy for as long as possible, keeping him alive. I let her sit in silence for a few moments, while she turned it around in her mind. Perhaps she was memorising the colours, the boy’s movements. She would keep them.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘I realised too late,’ I said. ‘One of them had taken the bet and shot him in the head. Everyone else ran and the street was deserted.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I couldn’t move. The child was lying on the street. I couldn’t move.’

  ‘You could have been shot.’

  ‘It wasn’t a clean shot and he didn’t die right away. His mother was inside the house on the same street and she was screaming. She wanted to go to him, but the men kept firing into the street, shouting. They were shouting, “You can’t get to your child. You can’t get to your child.”’

  I cried into my palms. I pressed my palms against my eyes. I wished I could take it away, what I saw. I wanted to take it all away.

  Then I felt arms around me, and the smell of bread around me.

  * * *

  A bomb dropped in the darkness and the sky flashed and I helped Afra to get ready for bed. She knew her way around the house by now, feeling the walls with her hands, palms open, feet shuffling, and she could make bread, but at night she wanted me to undress her. She wanted me to fold her clothes, to place them on the chair by the bed where she used to put them. I took off her abaya as she lifted her arms over her head like a child. I removed her hijab and her hair fell onto her shoulders. Then she sat on the bed and waited for me while I got ready. It was quiet that night, no more bombs, and the room was full of peace and full of moonlight.

  There was a huge crater in this room; the far wall and part of the ceiling were missing, leaving an open mouth into the garden and sky. The jasmine over the canopy caught the light and behind it th
e fig tree was black and hung low over the wooden swing, the one I’d made for Sami. The silence was hollow though; it lacked the echo of life. The war was always there. The houses were empty or home to the dead. Afra’s eyes shone in the dim light. I wanted to hold her, to kiss the soft skin of her breasts, to lose myself in her. For one minute, just one, I forgot. Then she turned to me like she could see me, and as if she knew what I was thinking she said, ‘You know, if we love something it will be taken away.’

  We both lay down, and from beyond came the smell of fire and burnt things and ashes. Although she faced me, she wouldn’t touch me. We hadn’t made love since Sami died. But sometimes she let me hold her hand, and I circled my finger around her palm.

  ‘We have to go, Afra,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve already told you. No.’

  ‘If we stay—’

  ‘If we stay, we’ll die,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Her eyes were open and blank now.

  ‘You’re waiting for a bomb to hit us. If you want it to happen, it will never happen.’

  ‘Then I’ll stop waiting. I won’t leave him.’

  I was about to say, ‘But he’s already left. Sami’s gone. He’s not here. He’s not here in hell with us, he is somewhere else. And we’re no closer to him by staying here.’ And she would reply, ‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’

  So I remained silent. I traced my finger around her palm, while she waited for a bomb to hit us. And when I woke in the night I reached out to touch her, to make sure that she was still there, that we were still alive. And in the darkness I remembered the dogs eating human corpses in the fields where the roses used to be, and somewhere else in the distance I heard a wild screech, metal on metal, like a creature being dragged towards death. And I put my hand on her chest, between her breasts, and felt her heart beat, and I slept again.

  In the morning the muezzin called to empty houses to come and pray. I went out to try to find some flour and eggs before the bread ran out. I dragged my feet in the dust. It was so thick, like walking through snow. There were burnt cars, lines of filthy washing hanging from abandoned terraces, electric wires dangling low over the streets, bombed-out shops, blocks of flats with their roofs blown off, piles of trash on the pavements. It all stank of death and burnt rubber. In the distance smoke rose, curling into the sky. I felt my mouth dry, my hands clench and shake, trapped by these distorted streets. In the land beyond, the villages were burnt, people flooding out like a river to get away, the women in terror because paramilitaries were on the loose and they feared being raped. But there, beside me, was a damask rose bush in full bloom. When I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell, I could pretend for a moment that I hadn’t seen the things I’d seen.