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

by Christy Lefteri

  ‘Please, get in,’ the man said. ‘Go ahead with these nice people and I will see you on the other side.’

  ‘But why won’t you come with me?’ she said.

  ‘I promise I will see you on the other side. Please stop crying. They will hear us.’ But the girl wouldn’t listen. So he pushed her in and slapped her hard around the face. She sat back shocked, her hand on her cheek, the men pulling at the cable as she floated away. When she was out of sight completely, the man sat on the ground, like there was no life left in him, and he began to sob. I knew he wouldn’t see her again. And that’s when I looked back. I shouldn’t have, but I turned away from the crowd of people and looked back into the darkness at the land I was leaving. I saw the opening between the trees, the path that could take me back the way I came.

  4

  THERE IS A NEW RESIDENT at the B&B. His shoulders are so sharp and his back so bent that when he sits in the chair, hunched over, it looks like he has wings under his T-shirt. He is talking to the Moroccan man and they are both trying to communicate in a language they don’t know very well. The Moroccan man seems to like this young man. His name is Diomande and he is from the Ivory Coast. He glances at me from time to time while he is speaking, but I don’t show him that I am paying any attention.

  The bee is still alive. I located her in the garden perched on the same flower where I left her. Once again, I coaxed her onto my hand and brought her into the sitting room with me and now she is crawling up my arm. Most of the time my eyes are fixed on the patio doors. I focus on Diomande’s reflection and on the dappled shadows of the trees behind it.

  ‘I was working in Gabon,’ Diomande is saying, ‘and I heard I should go to Libya, that there are many opportunities there. My friend say there was war there but now it is safe, so I decide to go and get a good job. I pay fifteen thousand CFA francs to drive eight days through the desert but I was captured and put in prison.’ He has his elbows on his knees as he talks, and as he moves his shoulder blades rise up, and I think maybe his wings will open. He is very tall and very lanky, his knees coming up high so that he is folded over himself.

  ‘We would go three days no food,’ he continues, ‘just maybe some bread and water, many of us to share. They beat us, they beat us all the time. I don’t know who they were, but then they want two hundred thousand CFA for my freedom. I called my family but money never came.’

  He adjusts his position now and places long brown fingers over his knees. I turn away from his reflection and take a good look at him, at the way his knuckles bulge and his eyes pop. There is no meat on this boy. It’s like birds have eaten him. He’s like a corpse or a bombed-out building. He catches my eye, holds my gaze for a moment and then looks up to the ceiling at the naked light bulb.

  ‘So, how did you get out, geezer?’ the Moroccan man says, impatient to hear the rest.

  ‘After three month rival militia broke into the prison and release all the hostages. I was free. I walk to Tripoli, where I find my friend and get job.’

  ‘I am pleased for you!’ the Moroccan man says.

  ‘But new employer no pay me and when I demand money he say he will kill me. I want to go back to Gabon but there is no way back, so I board smuggler boat to cross the Mediterranean.’

  The Moroccan man leans back in the armchair now and follows the boy’s gaze to the light bulb on the ceiling.

  ‘You made it here. How?’

  ‘This is long story,’ Diomande says. But he doesn’t say more. He seems tired now and, probably noticing this, the Moroccan man taps the young man’s knee and changes the subject, telling him about the strange customs of the people here.

  ‘They wear trainers with suits. Who wears this together? And they wear sleeping clothes outdoors! Why?’

  ‘This is tracksuit,’ Diomande says, pointing at his own.

  The old man is usually in his pyjamas at this time of night, but during the day he dresses in an old grey-blue suit with a tie.

  I wait until they have gone to bed and step out into the garden where I put the bee back onto the flower. The sound of traffic is soft and a breeze blows, moving the leaves. The sensor hasn’t caught me and the darkness is soothing, the moon is full and high up in the sky, and that’s when I sense someone standing behind me. When I turn, Mohammed is sitting on the ground playing with the marble, rolling it in the cracks of the concrete. Beside him there is a worm slithering into a puddle. He glances up at me.

  ‘Uncle Nuri,’ he says, ‘I’m winning against the worm! His name is Habib. Do you want to say hello to Habib?’

  He picks up the worm and holds it high for me to see.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I say.

  ‘I came looking for the key because I want to get out.’

  ‘What key?’ I say.

  ‘I think it’s in that tree. It’s hanging there but I didn’t know which one.’

  I turn and see that there are more than a hundred golden keys hanging from the tree. They twirl in the breeze and sparkle in the light of the moon.

  ‘Will you get it for me, Uncle Nuri?’ he says. ‘Because I can’t reach and Habib is getting tired.’

  I look at Habib, dangling from his fingers.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘But how do I know which key you want?’

  ‘Just get all of them and then we will try until we find one that fits.’

  I go into the kitchen and find a mixing bowl. Mohammed sits patiently waiting for me to return and then I start picking the keys off the tree – there is a stepladder in the garden and I use this to get to the ones on the higher branches. Soon the bowl is nearly full and I check and double-check to make sure there are no keys left. When I turn, holding the bowl, Mohammed is no longer there. The worm is making its way into the puddle.

  I take the bowl inside and upstairs into the bedroom, where I put it on the bedside cabinet on Afra’s side, next to the marble. I am very careful not to wake her. I lie down beside her. She is facing me with her eyes closed and both hands tucked under her cheek and I can tell she is fast asleep because her breathing is slow and deep. I turn the other way and stare into the darkness because I can’t close my eyes. I think back to our time in

  was where I met Mohammed.

  On the other side of the Asi River there was a barbed-wire fence with a hole about two metres in diameter, like an open mouth. People threw their belongings over the fence and passed infants through the hole. It was still dark and we were told by the smugglers to lie on our bellies and crawl on our hands and knees across the flat land of dusty soil and bracken.

  Once in Turkey, we walked for what felt like a hundred miles, through fields of wheat and barley. It was quiet. Afra was holding onto my arm and she was shivering because the cold was unbearable. We were about half an hour into our journey when in the distance we saw a child run into the road, a silhouette against the sun. He was waving at someone and then he sprinted off in the direction of some houses.

  We approached a village, small bungalows with terraces and open shutters, people looking through windows, others coming out of their homes, standing at the side of the road, their eyes wide with wonder as if they were seeing a travelling circus. There was a long table with plastic cups and jugs of water. We stopped and drank and women from the village brought out blankets. They gave us bread and cherries and small bags of nuts, then they stood back and watched us leave. I realised afterwards that the look I had mistaken for wonder was actually fear, and I imagined swapping places with them, seeing hundreds of people battered by war heading to an unknown future.

  We walked for another hour at least, and the wind became stronger, pushing us back. Then there was the sudden smell of sewage and we were in an open field. There were tents everywhere and people sleeping on blankets amid rubbish.

  I found a space beneath some trees. There was a sense of quiet here that was unfamiliar to me; in Syria, silence held danger, it could be shattered at any moment by a shell bomb or the sound of gunfire or the heavy footsteps of the
soldiers. Somewhere in the distance, towards Syria, the earth rumbled.

  The wind blew down from the mountains, bringing the smell of snow. I had an image in my mind – the white glow of Jabal al-Shaykh, the first snow I had ever seen, many years ago, Syria to the left and Lebanon to the right, the borders defined by the ridge, and the sea far below. We had placed a melon in the river and it had cracked from the cold. My mother was biting into the iced green fruit. What were we doing there at the top of the world?

  A man next to me said, ‘When you belong to someone and they are gone, who are you?’ The man looked haggard, dirty face, dishevelled hair. He had stains on his trousers and reeked of urine. There were sounds in the darkness, like the cries of animals, and I thought I could smell the rot of death. This man gave us a bottle of water and told me to sit on it for a while to warm it up before we drank it. The night came and went and the sun came up. There was food on the ground and a new blanket. Someone had brought hard bread and bananas and cheese. Afra ate and then fell asleep again with her head on my shoulder.

  ‘Where are you from?’ the man said.

  ‘Aleppo. And you?’

  ‘Northern Syria.’ But he didn’t say where.

  He took the last cigarette out of a box and lit it. He smoked it slowly, looking out across the arid land. He might have been a strong man once, but there was no flesh on him now.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘I lost my daughter and my wife,’ he said, letting the stub of his cigarette drop to the ground. And that was all he said about it, in a flat toneless voice. But then he seemed to be thinking about something. ‘Some people …’ he said, finally, after a long pause, ‘some people have already been here a month. It would be best to bypass the authorities and find a smuggler. I have some money.’ He glanced at me, hopeful, to see what I would say.

  ‘Do you know how?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve spoken to a few people, and there is a bus that can take us to the next town, and from there we can find a smuggler. I’ve seen people go and not return. I didn’t want to try alone.’

  When I agreed to go with him he told me his name was Elias.

  For the rest of that day, Elias was on a mission; he spoke to a few people, making calls from my phone, which had just a tiny bit of battery left. By the afternoon he had arranged for the three of us to meet a smuggler in the nearby town and from there we would go to Istanbul. It was strange to think how easy it had been to set up, that there existed an organised system for those of us who were lucky enough to be able to afford it.

  The next day we walked to the bus station and took the bus to the nearest town, and there we met the smuggler, a short asthmatic man with eyes that buzzed around like flies. He drove us to Istanbul in his car. When we arrived, Elias was never far behind me. The buildings in the city were tall and bright, old and new, gathered around the Bosporus, where the Sea of Marmara meets the Black Sea. I had forgotten that buildings could still stand, that there was a whole world out there that was not destroyed like Aleppo.

  At night, we slept on the floor of the smuggler’s apartment. There were two rooms, one for the women and the other for the men. In my room, there was a picture on the wall of a family who had lived there before. The photograph was nearly white from the sun and I wondered who they were and where they had gone. The night was cold and a wind blew in from the seas. It whistled beneath the wooden door frames and windowsills and brought with it the howls of dogs and cars. It was so much warmer than the open land, and at least here there was a toilet and a roof over our heads.

  Early in the morning, when the birds had started to sing, the people unfolded themselves from their sleeping positions and prayed. There was nothing to do but wait. Each day the smuggler returned from wherever he’d been hiding and informed us about the conditions of the weather and the sea. We couldn’t risk crossing while the wind was so strong. When he left, people talked for a while, telling stories of the ones who never made it across to Greece, of whole families, men and women and children, lost at sea. I didn’t join these conversations; I listened and waited for silence to return. Afra sat on a wicker chair by the window, her head twitching slightly to the left or to the right, listening to everything.

  When I went over to her she said, ‘Nuri, I don’t want to go.’

  ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if we do we’ll live in the camps forever. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I don’t want anything anymore.’

  ‘Our life will be stuck. How will I work?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘We’ve started the journey – there’s no point giving up now.’

  She grunted.

  ‘And Mustafa is waiting for us. Don’t you want to see Dahab? Don’t you want to be settled and safe? I’m tired of living like this.’

  ‘I’m scared of the water,’ she said finally.

  ‘You’re scared of everything.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  That’s when I noticed the little boy, about seven or eight, sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling a marble across the tiles. There was something odd about him, as if he was far away, lost in his own world. He seemed to be there alone.

  Later, when I went outside to stand on the balcony, the boy followed me. He stood beside me for a while, shifting from foot to foot, picking his nose, wiping it on the back of his jeans.

  ‘Will we fall into the water?’ he said, and he looked up at me with wide eyes, just like Sami would have done.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Like the other people?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will the wind take the boat? Will the boat turn over into the water?’

  ‘No. But if it does we’ll have life jackets. We’ll be all right.’

  ‘And Allah – have mercy on us – will he help us?’

  ‘Yes. Allah will help us.’

  ‘My name is Mohammed,’ the boy said.

  I held out my hand and he shook it like a little man.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Mohammed. I am Nuri.’

  The boy looked up at me again, this time his eyes wider, full of fear. ‘But why didn’t he help the boys when they took off their heads?’

  ‘Who took their heads off?’

  ‘When they stood in a line and waited. They weren’t wearing black. That’s why. My dad said it was because they weren’t wearing black. I was wearing black. See?’

  He tugged at his black, stained T-shirt.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Then my dad gave me a key and said go to a house, and he told me where it was, and he said to go inside and lock the door. But when I got there the house didn’t have a door.’ He took a key out of his back pocket and showed it to me, as if he was still expecting to find the door that the key would fit. Then he tucked it again into his pocket.

  ‘But Allah will help us in the water? Because in the water they can’t find us.’

  ‘Yes, he will help us cross the sea.’

  Mohammed’s shoulders softened and he stayed beside me for a while with his black jeans and black top and black fingernails and black eyes. As the days passed I realised that nobody else spoke to Mohammed and after our conversation on the balcony, he always glanced over at me, constantly checking to see where I was. I think I made him feel safe.

  On the third day, I went for a walk. There was a concrete pathway that led deep into a wood, and if you kept walking eventually the path opened out to the big buildings. There were not many clouds, the weather was very similar to Syria, maybe slightly cooler. The sky was full of fog from the pollution, especially in the morning, a thick grey mist that lurked above the water and above the streets and the mist was not clean like a winter frost, it was full of the smells of the city and its people.

  On the fourth day, Elias decided to join me on my walk. He rarely spoke unless he was going to say something about the weather, which was more or less the same every day anyway, bu
t he commented on the tiny changes, like, ‘The mist is thicker this morning,’ or, ‘There is a bitter wind this evening.’ He always said the most obvious things, but the weather became important to us as we waited and watched for signs that the sea would be calm, so that we could continue our journey.

  As we walked, I became aware of other things too, like the cats, which reminded me of Aleppo; how they woke up from their sleepy state and waited all day in the shadows for food. And the street dogs too, unpredictable and unkempt, with their old scars and new wounds, from injuries or disease or accidents. They all looked similar with light or sometimes dark brown coats. They were everywhere: wandering into alleys and side streets behind the restaurants, waiting for food, or walking through traffic. In the night, the wild dogs of Istanbul would call to one another across the city. And in the morning they rested under chairs and tables in front of the coffee shops on Taksim Square. Often they just lay dozing, recovering from the night’s activities. Most people didn’t seem to notice them, but the dogs watched everyone, with half-moon eyes and heads resting on paws: they watched the children darting through traffic tapping on car windows, trying to sell bottles of water to passers-by.

  There were whole families wandering through the streets, some barefoot, sometimes sitting by the sidewalk when they became tired of walking, and other refugees on the market stalls, trying to make enough money to move on from here, selling things that people couldn’t live without: phone chargers, life jackets, cigarettes.