The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Nuri and Afra arrived at Piraeus, Athens at sunrise. They were taken to a camp in an old school and to the family section. The NGO worker that took them there had assumed they had a son. Explaining that they had lost him was hard for Nuri. When he was going to sleep, he recalled how he had been reunited with Mustafa, his cousin whom he hadn’t seen for fifteen years, when Mustafa had come down from the mountains to the city with some honey to sell. Waking in the night, Nuri feared bombs were falling until he awoke properly. He went for a walk around the camp and found children sniffing something like glue, men almost fighting and a young woman with leaking breasts who talked of her baby having been taken. She showed some unstable behavior and ran away when Nuri asked where she was from. The next day Nuri found some more drawing materials for Afra, and she produced a city, colorful on one side but without color on the other. She said the picture was finished.

Waking up in the B&B, Nuri is alone in bed and the Moroccan man is helping him. Downstairs Afra is playing dominoes with the other refugees and laughing: “the first time there has been light and laughter in her voice for months” (213). That night, Nuri makes sure to go to bed with Afra, but he hears a child’s voice—Mohammed’s—in the courtyard, singing a lullaby. Nuri recognizes the song, and it reminds him of Sami.

Nuri recalls the song of crickets as he and Afra were taken to an unofficial refugee camp in the woods in a public park in Athens by Neil, the NGO worker. The place was dirty, smelly and threatening. There were gangs of men hanging around and drug users, but also children playing. The couple had only a large umbrella for protection and some blankets, but no tent. Afra was shaking with cold. Eventually she fell asleep, and as she slept, Nuri met the young Black woman, Angeliki, who had lost her baby, again. She warned him that “They steal children here. They snatch them […] to sell their organs. Or for sex” (222). Nuri felt despair and wondered if that was what had happened to Mohammed.

In the morning, NGO workers handed out food to the camp residents. An old woman tried to help a young woman feed her emaciated baby. Nuri noticed a thin young man playing music and learnt his name was Nadim, from Afghanistan. The two men got on well. Afra woke and fearfully sought Nuri, which pleased him. Listening to Nadim playing his “rebab”, Nuri managed to relax for a while. He saw the young mother crying and realized Afra had never cried for Sami, but “Instead her face had turned to stone” (229). Nuri learned Nadim’s story and contemplated the “raw bloody wounds” (230), on the young man’s forearm. Nadim let Nuri use his phone to check his emails. Nuri found two from Mustafa, explaining how he had been offered some bees to work with. Mustafa was full of hope, waiting for Nuri to join him in England. As the men sat in the park, Nuri noticed a gesture between Nadim and one of the men hanging around on a bench. The man disappeared and Nadim approached two twin boys who were playing. He offered them about forty euros each. Then, Nuri was distracted by Afra asking for him. He told her he did not like it there and that something was wrong. Her voice calmed him, and he told her he loved her.

That night, Nuri had lain awake thinking of when he had told his father he would not take over the fabric business but become a beekeeper instead. His father had taken the news badly, blaming it on the “wild” Mustafa. His last words on the subject were: “So the shop will die with me” (238). Realizing that he had sacrificed his father’s happiness to become a beekeeper, Nuri vowed to make it to England and join Mustafa and the bees.

During the nights in the camp, Nuri heard babies crying in the woods, and saw the predators appear from behind the trees. He felt the place was wrong and very unsafe. Angeliki slept near Nuri and Afra, seeming to feel safer there. Each night the twin boys went into the woods, reappearing in the morning, tired, but happy with their new shoes and mobile phones.

Some people left the camp, and others arrived, but there was no priority or order, unlike in the camp on Leros.

Nuri and Afra go to the GP for her appointment. The Arabic-speaking doctor examines Afra’s eyes and asks her lots of questions. He asks her how she became blind. Afra explains that she had let Sami play outside, despite the recent bombings, as “he was a boy, Dr Faruk, a boy who wanted to play” (245). She had heard the whistle of a bomb and gone outside, but a bomb fell in the garden at that moment. The next thing she knew was she was holding her son in her arms, and although she could hear her husband, she could not see him. The last thing she had seen was “Sami’s eyes. They were looking up at the sky” (245). Afra cries like Nuri has never seen her cry before.

The doctor comforts Afra as Nuri feels extremely upset. The doctor explains that in fact, Afra’s eyes are working perfectly, but that she has suffered a severe trauma that may have caused something in her to shut down. Nuri notices the doctor glancing at a photo of a young woman on his cabinet. The doctor asks Nuri how he is, to which Nuri responds that he is fine, but Afra denies this. She explains that Nuri is not himself, that he falls asleep in strange places and talks to himself. Nuri laughs it off and says he is just sleep-deprived. The doctor asks Nuri if he has flashbacks or emotional numbness. Nuri insists he is fine. The doctor prescribes him sleeping tablets. Back in their bedroom, Nuri and Afra sit on the bed. They do not eat that night. Nuri goes to sit on the armchair and wait for morning.

On the morning of the fifteenth day in the camp, Nuri saw the young mother’s happiness as she was finally able to breastfeed her baby. This gave him hope that things could change and that he and Afra would be able to leave soon. Later, Nuri talked to the twin boys. They explained how they had fled Afghanistan and their father’s murderers, alone. They revealed that Nadim had lent them money which they were then paying back in instalments. Nuri witnessed their fear and shame at what they had to do to get money. Nadim came and sat near them, playing his rebab again. Later, Nuri followed him and saw him cut his own forearms with a knife.

At ten o’clock at night, Nadim took the boys into the woods and Nuri followed them surreptitiously, reaching an area full of the debris of drug use. There, the boys were given money and taken off by different men into the woods. Nuri returned to the campsite and then Nadim came and tricked him into holding out his hand to receive something. Nadim slashed Nuri’s wrist with his knife. The wound was deep, and Angeliki wrapped it in her headscarf. Nuri felt hopeless and adrift, but then recalled a beautiful day when he and Mustafa had provided a meal for their employees in a hotel in Aleppo. Mustafa’s father had even come down from the mountains to enjoy it with them.

The next day, an NGO medic finally came to treat the wound and told Nuri that he could ask for help in Victoria Square, in central Athens. She also told him that they could go to the Greek villages.

That night Nuri had a nightmare about Mohammed. He woke to find men beating Nadim with baseball bats. At first reluctant to join in, Nuri thought of the innocent twins, who had not returned from the woods, and he beat Nadim’s head, killing him.

Afterwards, Nuri was tormented by thoughts of Nadim, his evil, and his own role as his murderer. He wished Afra could comfort him, as she used to be able to do. He picked up Nadim’s rebab, but although the music was still beautiful, it upset him further.

Afra and Nuri go to their asylum interviews in London. There is one male and one female immigration officer. The man asks Nuri many questions in order to establish that he is really Syrian and from Aleppo, that he is not linked to Daesh (the militant Islamic group) and that he had really had a son. Then he asks him to describe his journey to the UK, which Nuri finds difficult. He does not tell the officer about Nadim nor about what happened to Afra just before they arrived in England. After the interview, Nuri feels he has been “robbed, somehow, of life” (278). Lucy Fisher tells him not to give up hope.

The Hope Centre, for refugees, was in Hope Street in Athens. Nuri went there but was turned away as it was only for women and children. He returned with Afra and while she was showering, he checked his emails. Mustafa had written saying all was going well with the bees. Nuri replied saying he would find a way to reach Mustafa. Then Nuri met a Kurdish refugee who had arranged to meet a young couple and take them somewhere. Back at the camp, Angeliki finally told Nuri her story: She was Somalian and had fled the country, via Kenya. Her baby had been taken from her while she slept in the park.

Nuri and Afra went back to the Hope Centre and Nuri found the Kurdish man, Baram, again. He asked him about finding a smuggler and Baram told him to meet him the next day with their passports. Returning to the camp, Nuri felt it was becoming more welcoming for the latest arrivals, but for him it was suffocating.

The next day the couple met Baram and the smuggler—an arrogant Arabic-speaking man—in a café. He told them the price for getting to England was seven thousand euros, but that Nuri could do some delivery work for him to lower the price to five thousand. Meanwhile, Nuri and Afra would have to live with him, and he said: “I’ll know you won’t run off because I’ll have Afra” (302). In the camp, Afra gave Angeliki a picture she had drawn for her and the two women slept close together.

The morning after the interview, Diomande, the Moroccan and Nuri talk about how it went for each of them. The three men decide to go to the fairground, which they can hear from the B&B. Before leaving, Nuri finds Afra crying over Sami’s last moments, which makes him feel terrible, but he leaves with the men. At the fair, they each describe the beauty of their countries over a drink. Back at the B&B, Afra asks Nuri if he has heard from Mustafa, and he replies angrily. She tells Nuri he got lost in the darkness. Nuri reads an email from Mustafa and finally tells him that they are in England, but he is scared they will have to leave. Mustafa is ecstatic and asks for their address. Nuri falls asleep in the armchair and wakes up to find Mohammed, who leads him to the front door. The scene beyond is that of Aleppo at war. They walk together to the river and Mohammed tells Nuri that all the children who died are in there. Mohammed walks into the water and Nuri tries to stop him. Nuri wades in and then sees and picks up a glimmering, floating key.

In Athens, Nuri had received the key to the bedroom allocated to him and Afra in the smuggler Constantinos’ flat. Nuri was charged with making deliveries of unnamed goods around the city during the night. He worked for a month like this, locking Afra in the bedroom every night. Constantinos was friendly but something about him made Nuri uneasy. They waited for their travel arrangements to be made, until finally their passport photos were taken for their new identities as an Italian couple, Afra’s hair now dyed blond. On their last night in the flat, Nuri went out, forgetting the key. When he returned, he found Afra troubled and with scratches to her face. He realized that Constantinos had raped her.