The Beekeeper of Aleppo

by Christy Lefteri

  About a week later the passports arrived. Our new names were Gloria and Bruno Baresi.

  ‘You’re Italian,’ Mr Fotakis said.

  ‘What if they ask us questions? We don’t know any Italian.’

  ‘I’m hopeful that won’t happen. You will be going from here to Madrid, then from Madrid to the UK. No one will know that you don’t speak Italian. Just don’t speak Arabic! Keep your mouths shut as much as you can!’

  So the date was set and the tickets were booked. Mr Fotakis bought Afra a red dress made of the finest material and a grey scarf that had been hand-woven with tiny red flowers the same colour as the dress. It was beautiful but casual. He also gave her a jean jacket, a handbag and a new pair of shoes. I got a pair of jeans, a leather belt, a new white shirt and a brown jumper. He wanted us to put the clothes on to make sure that we looked authentic.

  ‘You are a beautiful couple,’ he said smiling. ‘You look like you have stepped out of a magazine.’

  ‘What do I look like?’ Afra said to me later as I was getting ready to make my deliveries.

  ‘You don’t look like you.’

  ‘Do I look horrible?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not. You are always beautiful.’

  ‘Nuri, now all the world can see my hair.’

  ‘Really they can’t,’ I say, ‘because it is a different colour.’

  ‘And they can see my legs.’

  ‘But they are the legs of Gloria Baresi, not yours.’

  Her lips smiled, but her eyes didn’t.

  We were due to leave the next day, and that night there were more packages than usual. I locked Afra in the room and I put the key down on the coffee table for a second to count the boxes and tick them off the list. At that moment Mr Fotakis came in to tell me about the travel arrangements to the airport. He then helped me to carry the boxes downstairs to the van. It wasn’t until I was halfway across Athens that I realised that I’d forgotten the key. I couldn’t turn back to get it – I had ten people to meet and they all had their designated time slots; if I was late for one, I’d be late for all of them. So I kept going and I tried not to think about Afra; I remembered her again only when I was heading back into the city in the early hours of the morning.

  When I got to the apartment I rushed up the winding staircase and into the living area, but the key was not on the coffee table where I’d left it and the door was locked. I knocked and there was no answer.

  ‘Afra,’ I whispered, ‘are you asleep? Can you open the door for me?’ I waited like that with my ear to the door, but I could hear nothing, no answer and no movement, so I resigned myself to catching a few hours’ sleep on the sofa. I was just lying down when I heard the key in the lock and the door open. Afra stood there. I looked at my wife’s face and I immediately knew something was wrong. The morning light that reflected so coldly off the walls of the other buildings revealed a scratch on her face, red and raw, running from her left eye to her jawbone. Her blonde hair was a tangled mess around her face. In this moment, she was not my wife. I could not recognise her. I could not find her. Before I could say anything, she turned away and went back into the bedroom. I sprang up and quickly followed her, closing the door firmily behind me.

  ‘Afra, what happened?’ I asked. She was curled up on the bed with her back to me.

  ‘Won’t you tell me what happened?’ I put my hand on her back and she flinched, so I lay beside her without touching her or asking any more questions. It was early afternoon by the time she spoke again. I hadn’t slept at all.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because I’m not sure you really want to know.’

  ‘Of course I want to know.’

  There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘He came in here – Mr Fotakis. I thought it was you because you’d locked the door. I didn’t know he had the key. He came in here and he lay down beside me, just where you are lying now. I realised it wasn’t you because of the smell of his skin when he came closer to me, and I called out and he put his hand over my mouth and his ring scratched the side of my face, and he told me I should be quiet or you would come back and find me dead.’

  She didn’t need to say any more.

  13

  THE SKY IS BIG AND blue and full of seagulls. They sweep across and dip down into the sea, and up again, up and up and up, into the heavens. There is a cluster of multicoloured balloons above me, rising and becoming smaller until they fade into the distance. There are voices around me and then someone has my wrist in his hand. He is checking my heartbeat.

  ‘Strong heart,’ the man says.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ A woman is standing in the sunlight.

  ‘Maybe homeless.’

  ‘But why is he in the water?’

  Neither of them asks me, but I don’t think I could speak anyway. The man lets go of my wrist and drags me by the arms so that I am on the dry sand. Then he heads off somewhere. The woman stands there still, looking down at me as if I’m a seal. She takes her coat off and lays it over me, tucking it in around my chin. I try to smile at her but I can’t move my face.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says. There is a catch in her voice, a shimmer in her eyes, as she looks at me upside down, and I think maybe she is crying.

  The man returns shortly with some blankets. He takes off my wet jumper and wraps the dry blankets around me. After a little while I see blue flashing lights and people are lifting me onto a stretcher and then I am inside and warm and we are moving fast through the streets, the siren screaming. My eyes close as the paramedic beside me begins to check my blood pressure.

  When I wake up I am in a hospital bed, wired to a heart monitor. The bed next to mine is empty. A doctor comes to see me because she would like to know who I am and what I was doing sleeping on the beach with my body in the water. She tells me that when they brought me in I was suffering from hypothermia.

  ‘My name is Nuri Ibrahim,’ I say. ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Three days,’ she says.

  ‘Three days!’ I bolt upright. ‘Afra will be worried to death!’

  ‘Who is Afra?’

  ‘My wife,’ I say. I try to search my pockets but I’m no longer wearing trousers.

  ‘Please can you tell me where I can find my phone?’

  ‘We didn’t find a phone,’ she says.

  ‘I need to contact my wife.’

  ‘I can contact her for you, if you give me the details.’

  I tell her the address of the B&B and the landlady’s name, but I don’t know the number. The doctor asks me a lot of questions: Do you have thoughts of killing yourself, Mr Ibrahim? How is your memory? Do you find that you are forgetting important events? Do you forget little everyday things? Do you feel confused or disorientated? I try to answer as best I can. No. My memory is good. No. No. No.

  I have a brain scan. Then they bring me some lunch, which is peas and mushy potatoes and a bit of dry grilled chicken. I eat all of it as I’m starving by now and then I sit up in bed and hum a song that my mother used to sing to me. I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t remember the words but the melody is a lullaby. Some of the other patients look at me as they pass my bed. There is an old lady with a Zimmer frame who keeps going up and down. I think she has started to hum the song too. I fall asleep and when I wake up there is a woman in the next bed; she is pregnant and is resting her hand on her bulging belly. She is singing the song too and she knows the words.

  ‘How do you know the lyrics?’ I say.

  She turns her face towards me; it is dark and clear and shiny under the halogen lights.

  ‘I knew it when I was a child,’ she says.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I say.

  She doesn’t reply. She is lying on her back and moving her hand in circular motions over her belly, singing the song as a whisper to her unborn child.

  ‘I claimed asylum,’ she said, ‘and they denied me. I’m ap
pealing. I’ve been in this country seven years.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ I say again, but my mind blurs and I hear only the faint sound of her voice and see the gentle flicker of the light above me fading into black.

  The following morning it is quiet on the ward and the bed next to mine is empty. A nurse approaches and tells me I have a visitor, and I see the Moroccan man walking towards me.

  He sits down in a chair by my bed and puts his hand on my arm. ‘Geezer,’ he says, ‘we’ve been so worried about you.’

  ‘Where is Afra?’

  ‘She is at the B&B.’

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘Why don’t you just get some rest? We’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘I want to know how she is.’

  ‘How do you think she is? She thought you were dead.’

  Neither of us says anything for a long time. The Moroccan man doesn’t leave anytime soon; he stays there by my side with his hand on my arm. He doesn’t ask me where I went or why I slept on the beach, and I don’t tell him that I walked into the sea at night. He doesn’t ask me anything, but he doesn’t leave either, which annoys me at first because all I want to do is hum the lullaby, but after a while his presence soothes me. There is something about his solidity and silence that brings some peace to my mind.

  He takes his book out of his pocket and begins to read, chuckling to himself now and then. He stays there until the very last visitor leaves and then he returns again the next morning to pick me up. He comes with a bag of clothes. I take off the hospital gown and put on the things he has brought me.

  ‘They are pyjamas,’ he says. ‘Diomande calls them tracksuit. He said you will be comfortable in these. I don’t understand it. You will have to walk in the streets now in nightwear.’

  Just before we leave the hospital the doctor comes to see me again. I am perched on the edge of the bed and she sits opposite me on the visitor’s chair with a clipboard in her hands. The Moroccan man is by the window, looking down at the car park.

  ‘Mr Ibrahim,’ she says, hesitating, tucking her brown hair behind her ear, ‘the good news is that your brain scan was clear, but from what happened and from the information that I have from you, I believe you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I advise you strongly to seek some counselling from your GP.’ She says all this slowly and clearly, looking at me straight in the eyes, and then she glances at her clipboard and I hear a small sigh before she checks her watch. ‘Can you reassure me that you will do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Because I wouldn’t want you to put yourself in danger again.’ There is real concern in her eyes now.

  ‘Yes, Doctor, I promise that I will take your advice.’

  * * *

  We get the bus back to the B&B. It is mid-morning by the time we arrive and the landlady is dusting the living room. She clomps across the wooden planks in her platform shoes to greet us. She is wearing bright yellow rubber gloves.

  ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea, Mr Ibrahim?’ She almost sings these words, and I don’t reply because I am distracted by something in the courtyard. Afra and the Afghan woman are sitting on deckchairs beneath the cherry tree, by the bee. When Farida sees me she says something to Afra, then gets up to let me sit down.

  Afra is silent for a very long time. She has her face tilted towards the sun. ‘I can see shadows and light,’ she says. ‘When there’s a lot of light I can see the shadow of the tree. Look!’ she says. ‘Give me your hand!’

  I put my hand in hers and she sits forward into the light and positions my hand across her eyes. Then she tells me to move it from left to right, making a shadow sweep across her face.

  ‘Now it’s light,’ she says, smiling, ‘now it’s dark.’

  I want to show her that what she is saying is making me happy, but I can’t.

  ‘And I can see some colour!’ she says. ‘Over there.’ She points at a red bucket in the corner of the garden. ‘What is that? A rose bush?’

  ‘It’s a bucket,’ I say.

  She lets go of my hand and her face drops. I see that she is rolling that marble in her fingers, running it along her palm and wrist. The red blade in the middle catches the light and becomes translucent. There is a gentle buzzing in the distance that gradually becomes louder, as if a swarm of bees is making its way to this concrete courtyard.

  ‘I missed you,’ I hear her say. ‘I was so scared.’ And the wind blows and shakes the blossoms and sends them swirling around her. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ Her voice is full of sadness. I watch the marble.

  ‘You have forgotten Mustafa,’ she says.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Have you forgotten about the bees and the flowers? I think you’ve forgotten about all that. Mustafa is waiting for us and you haven’t even mentioned him. You’re lost in a different world. You’re not here at all. I don’t know you anymore.’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ she says.

  So I close my eyes.

  ‘Can you see the bees, Nuri? Try to see them in your mind. Hundreds and thousands of them in the sunlight, on the flowers, the hives and the honeycomb. Can you see it?’

  In my mind I picture first the fields in Aleppo and the golden yellow bees in the apiaries, and then I see the fields of heather and lavender, the black bees that Mustafa described.

  ‘Can you see it?’ she says.

  I don’t reply.

  ‘You think it’s me who can’t see,’ she says.

  We sit in silence for a long time.

  ‘Won’t you tell me?’ she says. ‘Won’t you describe to me what’s wrong?’

  ‘Why do you have Mohammed’s marble?’ I say.

  Her hands become suddenly still.

  ‘Mohammed’s?’ she says.

  ‘Yes. The little boy we met in Istanbul.’

  She leans forward as if she is in pain and exhales.

  ‘This marble was Sami’s,’ she says.

  ‘Sami’s?’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Mohammed was playing with it.’

  I’m not looking at her now but I hear her exhale again.

  ‘I don’t know who Mohammed is,’ she says. She hands me the marble.

  ‘The boy who fell off the boat. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘A boy did not fall off the boat. There was a girl who kept crying and when her dad went into the water she went in after him and they had to pull her out and wrap her in the women’s scarves. I remember it very well. Her mother told me all of it later when we were on the island by the fire.’ She pushes the marble towards me, urging me to accept it.

  I take it, reluctantly.

  ‘The boy who came with us from Istanbul to Greece,’ I say, ‘Mohammed. The boy who fell off the boat!’

  She ignores what I am saying, just gives me that look. She has already answered these questions.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ I say.

  ‘Because I thought you needed him,’ she says. ‘This marble, I took it from the floor of our house the day before we left, the day when the men broke everything and threw all his toys on the floor. Do you remember?’

  I remember her last words as I make my way through the dark living room and up the stairs, along the corridor to our bedroom. I remember her words as I look at her from the window, sitting there beneath the blossoms of the tree with the sun on her face.

  ‘Do you remember?’

  I don’t know what I remember anymore. I shut the curtains. I lie down on the bed. I close my eyes and hear the sound of the bees deep in the sky.

  When I open my eyes and sit up in bed, I see that there is a gold key on the rug. I pick it up and head to the door at the end of the corridor, put the key in the lock and open it. I am high up on the hill again. The noise is louder now; it fills my mind completely. I am on the hill with my house behind me and there is Aleppo stretched vast and wide below, the wall around the city is made of golden
jasper while the city is pure glass, the buildings shimmering outlines, every single one of them – the mosques, the markets, the rooftops, the citadel in the distance. It is a ghost of a city in the setting sun. To the left there is a flash – a child running down the hill to the river’s edge. I can see him on the path in his blue shorts and red T-shirt.

  ‘Mohammed!’ I call. ‘Stop running from me!’

  I follow him all the way down to the river, and on as he zigzags through the lanes, round the bends and through the arches and beneath the vines, and then I lose him for a while, but I keep walking until I see him sitting beneath a narenj tree by the water. The tree is alive and laden with fruit. He has his back to me. I approach him and sit down beside him at the river’s edge.

  I put my hand on his shoulder and he turns now to face me and his eyes, those black eyes, begin to change, becoming lighter, turning grey, and transparent, so that there is a soul in them now, and his features soften and morph like a swarm of bees, then settle, until I can see his expression and his face and his eyes more clearly. The boy sitting next to me, looking at me fearfully, is not Mohammed.

  ‘Sami,’ I say.

  I want to hold him, but I know that he will disappear, like paint in water, so I sit as still as I can. I realise now that these were the clothes he was wearing the day he died, his red T-shirt and blue shorts. He is holding the marble in his hand and he turns now to face the city of glass. He takes something out of his pocket and hands it to me: a key.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I say.

  ‘It’s the key you gave me. You told me it opened a secret house that didn’t break.’

  I see that in front of him are pieces of Lego.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I say.

  ‘I’m building a house!’ he says. ‘When we go to England we will live in this house. This house won’t break like these do.’

  I remember now. I remember him lying in bed, afraid of the bombs, and how I had given him an old bronze key that once opened a shed at the apiaries. I had tucked it beneath his pillow so that he could feel that somewhere in all the ruins there was a place where he could be safe.