The Beekeeper of Aleppo

by Christy Lefteri

  I ran through the memory three times in my mind, repeating it as if I was rewinding and replaying a videotape, until I slipped off to sleep.

  But I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming, and a whistling in the sky, a bomb tearing through the darkness. I sat upright, my body wet, my head pounding, the darkness around me pulsating. I saw the faint outline of a window through a bedsheet, the light of the moon streaming in. I saw Afra’s face fuzzy in the darkness and slowly remembered where I was. I reached out to hold her hand. There were no bombs. We were not in Aleppo. We were safe in Athens, in an old school. The heartbeat in my head subsided, but the screaming continued, and when it stopped abruptly a few moments later, there were other sounds, echoes from other rooms on other floors, desperate adult sobs, creaking floorboards, footsteps and whispers and laughter. The laughter seemed to be coming from outside, from the courtyard below – the laughter of a woman.

  I stepped out of the tent, out of the classroom and into the long corridor. At the far end, by the window, a woman was pacing up and down, her flip-flops slapping against the marble, her eyes to the floor. Her body paused, jerked, started up again, like a mechanical toy. I approached her, hesitant for a moment, and put my hand on her arm, hoping to calm her movements, to ask her if she needed any help, but when she glanced up at me I saw that she was asleep. She looked straight through me with wide fearful eyes, shimmering with tears. ‘When did you come back?’ she said.

  I didn’t answer. I knew that you should never wake a person who is sleepwalking, in case they should die from shock. I left her there to walk around in her nightmare.

  I heard the laughter again, shrill and abrupt, cutting through the sleep sounds. In one of the classrooms above, someone was snoring; in another a child was crying. I followed the laughter down the stairs and out into the courtyard, and was shocked to find so many people still awake. It must have been 2 o’clock in the morning. The first thing I saw was a huddle of boys and girls in a corner on wooden chairs beneath a climbing-wall. They were passing around a paper bag, inhaling some substance from it.

  One of the girls glanced at me, held my gaze for a moment. Something was wrong with her, her pupils dilated so that her eyes were almost black. Nearby, two men were sitting on the ground with their backs against the wall, smoking. On the platform, which must have once been used as a stage, two boys were kicking a ball beneath the only floodlight. At the entrance of the courtyard, three men were having a heated discussion; they were speaking a different type of Arabic and had much darker skin. One of them pushed the other’s shoulder, and another man came over and separated them, raised his voice and then slid the bolts of the entrance, pushing open the heavy door, and the three left.

  When the door was closed again – its metallic sound which reverberated around the courtyard had died – I was left facing a huge blue heart painted across the double panels, outlined on both sides with red wings. The top of the heart was flat, and there was an island and a palm tree and a yellow sun rising out of it. On the cool green background of the old school walls, the heart almost pulsated in the flickering floodlight.

  And from behind me, again, the sound of laughter. I turned away from the heart. At the far end of the courtyard, on the only deckchair, beneath a line of washing, was the laughing woman.

  She was a young black woman with cornrows gathered into a high ponytail. As I walked towards her I noticed that her breasts were leaking milk into her white top. She caught my eye and self-consciously folded her arms across her chest.

  ‘Is because they took her,’ she said in English.

  ‘They took who?’

  She didn’t answer at first. Her eyes darted around.

  ‘I no live here. I come here at night sometimes to be safe.’

  I sat down on the ground beside her. She turned to me and showed me her arm. There were dozens of tiny round wounds.

  ‘It’s my blood,’ she said. ‘They poisoned it.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘I was staying in a room, and then he try to kill me. He got my head and bash it on the floor. And I lost my breath. My breath it stop then, and I didn’t get it back. I have no breath in me now. I am dead.’

  And yet her eyes were full of life.

  ‘I want to go to Germany mostly. Or to Denmark,’ she went on. ‘I need to leave here. Is not easy because Macedonia has shut border. Athens is the heart. Everyone comes here on the way to wherever. Peoples are get stuck here.’ She seemed more troubled now, a deep frown between her brows. ‘This the place where people die slowly, inside. One by one, people die.’

  I was beginning to feel nauseated. I wished I had never approached this woman with the leaking breasts and poisoned blood.

  The boys who were playing football had gone now so the place was quieter and the floodlight shone down onto an empty stage. The two men were still smoking, but the kids on the chairs had dispersed. There were only two boys left and they were both looking at their phones, their faces lit up.

  ‘They tell me I need to drink a lot of water, for my blood, but I’m a dead.’ She pinched her skin now. ‘I am like meat. You know, raw meat? Like a dead meat. I am being eaten.’ She pinched her arm and showed me the scars again. I had no idea what to say to any of this. I was glad that her laughter had stopped, for a while at least. But soon the silence was worse.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I said.

  ‘At the park. But sometimes I come here, safer here, and there is less wind, because at the park we are high up, next to the gods.’

  ‘How come you know English so well?’

  ‘My mother taught me.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  Instead of answering, she got up suddenly, saying, ‘Is time to go. I need to go now,’ and I watched her as she unbolted the door and pushed it open, breaking the blue heart. And when the door closed, there was so much quiet. The two boys had gone now and only the two men remained, leaning against the wall, still smoking, and through the classroom windows I could hear the sounds of children crying: a baby and an older child.

  I made my way back up the stairs and along the corridor, the sleepwalking woman had gone, and there was a stillness to the whole place now that was soothing to my mind.

  I woke up to glowing white sheets and the confused sounds of engines and people shouting in Arabic or Greek or Farsi, or all three in one sentence. Afra was still asleep.

  When I went downstairs the courtyard was full of crates of almost black bananas and boxes of nappies. Two men were holding sacks of potatoes, and another three carried in boxes labelled razors, toothbrushes, notepads, pens. Beyond the broken heart of the open door there were a couple of white vans with charity logos on their sides. I made my way inside to the children’s area, where a woman was putting out toys and board games, notepads and colouring pencils.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the woman said. She spoke English with a different accent.

  ‘Do you have any paper and colouring pencils?’

  ‘They’re really for the children,’ she said.

  ‘My son is upstairs. He’s not well – I thought he might like to draw.’

  The woman dug through a bag and produced a notepad and a box of pencils. She handed them to me, reluctantly, but with a smile.

  ‘I hope he can join us when he’s better,’ she said.

  Afra was still asleep, but I slipped them under her hand so that she would feel them there when she woke up. Then I sat for a long time beside her, staring into the whiteness of the sun-filled sheet of the tent, and for a while my mind was blank. Then images began to emerge. There, to my left, was the Queiq River; to my right a grey street with a narenj tree; ahead the famous Baron Hotel; over there was the Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo in the Al-Jalloum district of the ancient city, with the sun setting, painting the domes orange; over that way were the walls of the citadel, and here were crumbling buildings; and there was a broken archway in the al-Madina Souq, and over ther
e a street in the western neighbourhood, the Baby al-Faraj Clock Tower, the abandoned terraces and balconies, the minarets. Then the wind blew through the window and the bedsheet moved and the images faded away. I rubbed my eyes, turned to Afra. She seemed frightened in her sleep – she was restless, her breathing was fast and she was saying something, but I couldn’t make out the words. I put my hand on her head, stroked her hair, and slowly her breathing calmed and the muttering stopped.

  She woke up an hour later, but her eyes stayed shut. She was moving; her fingers running over the notepad and then over the pencils.

  ‘Nuri?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get these for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a tiny smile on her face.

  She sat up and put them on her lap and ran her hands through her hair with her eyes still closed. Her skin was so clear, and when she opened her eyes they were a metallic grey, her irises so small, as if they were trying to keep out the light.

  ‘What shall I draw?’ she said.

  ‘Anything you like.’

  ‘Tell me. I want it to be for you.’

  ‘The view from our house.’

  I watched her as she sketched, her fingers tracing the pencil marks, following each line as if it were a path. Her eyes flickered onto the paper and away again, blinking a lot now, as if there was a light flashing too close.

  ‘Can you see anything, Afra?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Be quiet. I’m thinking.’

  I watched the picture take shape, I saw the domes emerge and the flat rooftops. In the foreground of the sketch she began to add the leaves and flowers that spiralled the railing of the balcony. Then she shaded in the sky with purple and brown and green – she had no idea what colours she was using, she just seemed to know that she wanted three for the sky. I watched her following the lines of the landscape with the tips of her fingers so that the colour didn’t bleed into the buildings.

  ‘How do you do that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her eyes smiling for a moment. ‘Is it nice?’

  ‘It’s so beautiful.’

  For some reason, when I said this she stopped drawing, so that the right side of the picture was left without colour. Strangely this reminded me of the white crumbling streets once the war came. The way the colour was washed out of everything. The way the flowers died. She handed it to me.

  ‘It’s not finished,’ I said.

  ‘It is.’ She pushed it towards me. Then she lay back down and, resting her head on her hands, she remained silent. I didn’t move for a long time. I just lay there looking at the picture, until Neil popped his head around the door to tell us that we had to leave.

  9

  I AM SURROUNDED BY MATERIAL, WHAT seem to be coats, and there are shoes on the floor and a vacuum cleaner squashed up in the corner. It is warm in here and there is a boiler above me. To my left, at the end of the corridor, the Moroccan man is standing, staring at me. He walks towards me and silently offers me his hand. He doesn’t say anything, but there is a sombre look on his face, and he leads me into my bedroom. Afra is not there, the bed has been made and her abaya is not on the hanger. But on the cabinet, on my side of the bed, there is a beautiful sketch of the apiaries – the field stretching far and wide, the beehives dotted around, the sun rising. She has even drawn in the kitchen and the tent where we would all sit to have lunch. The colours are wrong, the lines rough and broken, but the picture moves. It breathes: I can almost hear the buzzing of the bees. There are black roses in the field beyond, their colour leaking into the sky.

  The Moroccan man sits me down on the bed, unties my laces, takes off my shoes, and lifts up my legs. I hold the picture to my chest.

  ‘Where is Afra?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s OK, she’s downstairs. Farida is keeping her company.’

  ‘Who is Farida?’ I say.

  ‘The woman from Afghanistan.’

  He is gone for a while, and he returns with a glass of water. He holds it to my mouth and I drink it all. Then he adjusts the pillows behind my head, closes the curtains and tells me to get some rest. He shuts the door and leaves me here in the dark.

  I remember the alleyways and the sound of running and Mohammed’s red T-shirt, but my body is heavy, my legs and arms like rocks, and I feel burning in my eyes and I close them.

  It’s even darker when I wake up. I can hear the sound of laughter – it spreads out across the darkness like the ringing of bells. I head downstairs to the living room, where some of the residents are playing dominoes. Afra is among them and she is leaning over the dining table, there are six dominoes balanced in front of her in a row, and with steady fingers and a look of pure concentration she is trying to place the seventh one next to them. Everyone around the table is holding their breath and watching. She stops and shakes her hands and laughs again. ‘OK, I do it! I do it! You see!’

  It is the first time I’ve heard her speak to anyone in weeks, the first time there has been light and laughter in her voice for months.

  The Moroccan man spots me standing in the doorway.

  ‘Geezer!’ he says in English, his eyes alight. ‘Come sit, play. I make you tea.’ He pulls up a chair for me and leads me to it with his hand on my shoulder, and then he goes off into the kitchen.

  The other residents glance up at me for a second and nod or say hello, but their attention is back on Afra and the domino. She is sitting up straighter, her hands shaking a little bit now, and I see that she has turned her head slightly towards me. She places the domino too close to the previous one and they all tumble down.

  Everyone laughs and cheers and groans and the Afghan woman collects the dominoes and pulls them towards her. She is good at this game. By the time the Moroccan man comes back with the tea she already has fifteen tiles in a row, she is numbering for Afra, who is sitting right beside her.

  I drink my tea, which is too sweet, and then I call the GP surgery to inform them that I have the correct information now and want to make an appointment for Afra about her vision.

  When night comes I make sure to go to bed with Afra. I follow her up the stairs, trying not to look at the door at the end of the corridor. Diomande’s bedroom door is open again and he is standing with his back to us, looking out of his window, the shape of the wings visible through his T-shirt. As if he can tell that I am looking, he turns to face me.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he says, and smiles, and I see that he is holding a photograph in his hands. He brings it over to show me. ‘This my mum, these my sisters.’ They are all smiling women with big teeth.

  In the bedroom I help Afra to get undressed and I lie down beside her.

  ‘Did you have a nice day?’ I say.

  ‘It would have been nicer with you.’

  ‘I know.’

  I can hear a boy’s voice calling something in Arabic. It seems to be coming from one of the other bedrooms, but I know there are no children here, unless new people arrived today. But the voice seems to be coming from the garden below.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Afra says. I am standing by the window now, looking down into the dark courtyard.

  ‘Did you not hear that?’ I say.

  ‘It’s just the TV,’ she says, ‘downstairs. Someone is watching TV.’

  ‘Not that. Someone was calling in Arabic.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Over here! Over here!’

  I press my face on the window. From what I can see, the courtyard is empty; apart from the cherry tree and the rubbish bins and the stepladder, there is no one and nothing there.

  ‘Just come and lie down,’ Afra says. ‘Lie down and close your eyes and try not to think about anything.’

  So I do as she says. I lie down beside her and feel the warmth of her body and I can smell the roses. I shut my eyes against her and the darkness but I hear it again, a child’s voice, it is Mohammed’s voice, I know it, he begins to sing a lullaby, I recognise i
t, it reminds me of Sami. I put my hands over my ears, but it doesn’t block out

  of the crickets greeted us as we arrived at Pedion tou Areos. Wrought-iron railings stretched along the length of the high street that led to downtown Athens.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Mohammed. I thought I could hear him calling me, but I realised it was just the sounds of the city. Neil was leading the way. He’d insisted, maybe out of guilt, on holding all the bags, so he had my rucksack on one shoulder and Afra’s on the other. Before we left the school, Neil had thrown away all our old bags and given us new rucksacks and thermal blankets.

  ‘They built this place to celebrate the revolt against Ottoman rule in 1821!’ Neil called back to us. We passed some open wooden boxes on the pathway, but he continued deeper into the woods. Then, beneath the ferns and palm trees we saw a small village of tents and people sprawled on blankets. The place was dirty, even in the open air there were horrible smells: rot and urine. But Neil walked on. As we made our way deeper into the park, gaping potholes scarred the footpaths and the weeds grew wild and brittle. A few people walked their dogs, pensioners sat talking on the benches and, deeper still, drug addicts prepared their fixes.

  Eventually we came to another area of tents and Neil found us some space on a couple of blankets between two palm trees. Opposite was a statue of an ancient warrior, and on the step of this statue sat an emaciated man. His eyes reminded me of the kids at the school the previous night.

  It was much later, after Neil had left and the darkness had closed in around us, that I began to notice what was wrong with this place. First, men gathered in gangs like wolves; Bulgarians and Greeks and Albanians. They were watching and waiting for something; I could see it in their eyes. They were the eyes of intelligent predators.

  The night was cold. Afra was shivering and saying nothing. She was frightened here. I wrapped as many blankets around her as I could. We did not have a tent, just a large umbrella that blocked the wind from the north. A campfire close by gave out a little warmth, but not enough to be comfortable.