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

by Christy Lefteri

  ‘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.

  Ahead, the glass city shimmers in the sunlight. It looks like a city in a drawing that a child has made, a sketch, pencil outlines of mosques and apartments. He puts his hand in the river, scoops out a stone.

  ‘Will we fall in the water?’ he says, and he looks up at me with wide eyes. He was asking me this for months before he died.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Like the other people?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But my friend said that to leave here we have to cross other rivers and seas, and if we cross those rivers and seas we might fall into the water, like other people did. I know stories about them. 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.’

  These were Sami’s words. My Sami. He looks at me again, his eyes wider, full of fear. ‘But why didn’t he help the boys when they took their heads off?’

  ‘Who took their heads off?’

  ‘When they stood in a line and waited. They weren’t wearing black. That’s why. You said it was because they weren’t wearing black. I was wearing black. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘The day we went for a walk?’ I say. ‘The day we saw the boys by the river?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I thought you didn’t remember. But you said if I held the key and wore black I would be invisible, and if I was invisible I could find the secret house.’

  I have an image of walking with him by the river and how we had seen the boys lined up along its bank.

  ‘I remember,’ I say.

  He is silent now. His face sad, as if he is about to cry.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I say.

  ‘Before we leave I would like to play with my friends in the garden one last time. Is that OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘of course it is. And then we will go

  to the moon, away to another place, another time, another world, anywhere but here. But we cannot escape this world. We are bound to it, even in death. Afra stood still by the window while I dressed her. She was like a doll. Her face had lost all expression now. Only her fingers trembled, ever so slightly, and I could see her eyelids twitching. But she said nothing as I put her in the red dress, as I tied the scarf around her neck and slipped on her shoes, and then she stood there like a different woman.

  If I had seen her in the street I might have walked right past her without knowing who she was. Inside the person you know there is a person you do not know. But Afra was entirely changed, inside and out. I avoided touching her skin, and as soon as I had finished dressing her I stepped away from her and she dabbed her wrists and her neck with the rose perfume and the familiarity of it made me feel sick. This time we were really going somewhere, we were going away. Away from the war, far from Greece and further away from Sami.

  Mr Fotakis had arranged for someone to take us to the airport. This man wasn’t just a driver – he would be escorting us in and introducing us to the man who would give us the tickets and passports. While we waited, Mr Fotakis made us Greek coffee in tiny cups, as if nothing had happened. I watched him as he heated it on the stove, and it took everything I had not to open one of the kitchen drawers and take out a knife. I wanted to kill him very slowly. I wanted him to feel every inch of the knife entering his flesh. But, if I took this revenge Afra and I would never be able to leave. If I let him live, we would still have this chance to escape, even though something of me would always be left behind, trapped within the dank walls of this apartment. I’d helped to kill a man before, and I knew I would be able to do it again. I stared at the drawer, I imagined opening it and taking a knife. It would be easy.

  ‘So you ended up being a hard worker. Very obedient.’

  My eyes moved up to his hand and I watched as he stirred the coffee. He smiled as he poured it into three cups.

  ‘And I guess now you have your dream. Amazing what determination and a strong will can do.’ He handed me one of the coffees and took the other two into the living room, placing them on the low table. His eyes rested on Afra. She was sitting on the sofa and I wished she would do something, scratch her arms, or pick up the cup, or even cry, but she just sat there as if she had died inside and only her body was alive. I felt as if her soul had left her.

  There was a buzz at the door and Mr Fotakis helped us to take our hand luggage downstairs, then he placed the bags in the boot of a silver Mercedes. The driver, a tall, muscular Greek man in his forties, introduced himself as Marcos. He leant on the bonnet and smoked a cigarette.

  It was a beautiful day, the rising sun illuminating the buildings. Behind was the misty shadow of the inland mountains, a wispy halo of clouds above them. There was a slight chill in the air, but the flowers in the courtyards of the apartment blocks were blooming.

  ‘I’m going to miss having you around.’ Mr Fotakis chuckled.

  We would leave. He would live.

  We got into the back of the car and set off and I watched Mr Fotakis from the back window of the car, standing there watching us leave. I turned towards the front and tried to block his face out of my mind. We drove through the streets of Athens and it was strange to see the city in the sun – for weeks I had known it mostly at night, or in the early hours just as the sun was melting the darkness. Now I could see some of its normality, the cars, the traffic, the people going about their daily lives. Marcos was playing Greek music on the radio; when the news started at 9 a.m. he turned the volume up and shook his head or nodded as he listened. He had his window rolled down, his elbow resting out of it, his fingers touching the steering wheel, and I was amazed at how relaxed he seemed, but when the news finished he glanced at me in the rear-view mirror with anxious eyes.

  ‘When we get to the airport,’ he said, ‘I will open the boot and you take your bags. Then I would like you to follow me, but make sure you stay about ten metres away at all times. Don’t get too close and don’t lose me. This is very important. I will lead you to the men’s toilets. Afra will wait outside. There will be someone else waiting for you there. I want you to wait in the toilets. When they are empty, and only then, knock on a door three times.’

  I nodded. He didn’t see as he was checking the mirror to change lanes.

  ‘Do you understand? Or would you like me to go through that again?’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Now if you make it to Heathrow, throw your passports and boarding passes in the nearest bin. Wait three hours, and then hand yourselves in to the authorities. Understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You must not forget to throw them away. And you must wait three hours, maybe more, but not less. Do not tell them which flight you were on.’

  He took a packet of chewing gum from the glove compartment and offered me a piece. I refused.

  ‘Your wife?’ he said. But Afra was sitting very quietly, with her hands in her lap, a bit like Angeliki, her lips tight, and if you didn’t know she was blind you would think that she was looking at the streets through the window.

  ‘You’re lucky you’re rich,’ he said. His eyes in the mirror were smiling now. ‘Most people have to make a terrible journey through the whole of Europe to reach England. Money gets you everyw
here. This is what I always say. Without it you live your entire life travelling, trying to get to where you think you need to go.’

  I was about to tell him that I didn’t agree, that we had already made a terrible journey, much worse than he could have even imagined, and that our journey had stolen Afra’s soul. But in some ways he was right. Without that money we would have had a much longer road ahead of us.

  ‘You are right, Marcos,’ I said, and he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and inhaled the air as we edged past the sea.

  At the airport we did as Marcos said. We walked through crowds of people; all the while I kept my eye on Marcos’s grey suit. Then I saw him from a distance, standing outside the men’s toilets. He stayed there until he was sure that I had seen him, and then he walked away. I went into the toilets. There was a man pissing, and I saw that one of the cubicles was occupied. I waited for the man to finish – he took his time washing his hands, checking his face in the mirror. Then another man came in with his young son. They took a while and I thought for a moment that there would be a constant stream of people and that I’d be stuck in there for hours. But soon enough the toilet was empty. I knocked on the door three times, as instructed, and a man came out of the cubicle. I hardly got a chance to see him.

  ‘Nuri Ibrahim?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I confirmed.

  Then he handed me the boarding passes and the passports and that was it, he was gone.

  We were on our own after that.

  We didn’t speak to each other at all as we made our way through the airport, first to check-in, then to security. We passed through the metal detector and put our luggage on the conveyor belt so that it could be screened. I was frightened at this point and I became self-conscious, too aware of the expression on my face. I didn’t want to seem afraid, I didn’t want to look at any of the security guards, in case they picked up on something, but I think this made me look guilty. Afra slipped her hand in mine, but the feel of her skin, and the fact that she was standing so close to me, made me uncomfortable, so I took a step away.

  Soon we had our bags and we made our way to duty free, and there we had an hour’s wait and another half-hour delay. I bought us each a coffee and we strolled around, as casually as we could, pretending to window-shop until we were called to gate 27.

  At the gate we took a seat next to a couple with two children who were playing games on their phones. For a moment I let my shoulders relax and I thought everything would work out OK. I watched the little boy so engrossed in his game; he was a bit younger than Sami would have been, wearing a colourful rucksack which he didn’t take off even though he was sitting down.

  Afra was so still and so quiet I almost forgot that she was there. There was a part of me that wished she would just disappear, that the seat next to me was empty. The boy’s game ended and he threw his arms up in the air and that’s when I noticed a disturbance by the gate entrance. There were five police officers talking to a flight attendant, who was looking more and more distressed. I saw that one of the officers was scanning the area. I looked down. I whispered to Afra to act normal. Then I glanced up, unintentionally, and for a second the officer caught my eye and I thought that was it. We had been found out. We would be going back. But back where? Back to what?

  The officers came through the entrance into the waiting lounge and I held my breath and prayed as they walked towards us and then past us, to the last seats by the windows, where a group of four young men and women suddenly stood up, startled, afraid, grabbing their bags, looking as if they wanted to make a run for it, but there was nowhere to go. We all tried not to stare as the four were escorted out, and I noticed as they walked past me that one young man was crying, wiping his face with the backs of his hands, so many tears that he could barely see where he was going. He stumbled over my bag and paused to look at me. The police officer pulled him on. I will never forget the look of pain and fear in his eyes.

  Afra and I showed our boarding passes and passports at the gate exit. The woman checked them, glanced at us both in turn and wished us a safe and pleasant journey.

  So we boarded the plane and took our seats and I sat there with my eyes closed, hearing the noises and conversations of the people around me, listening to the safety instructions and waiting for the sound of the engine. Afra grabbed my hand and held it tightly.

  ‘We’re going,’ I heard her whisper. ‘Nuri, we’re going to Mustafa and we will be safe.’ And before I knew it we were off, up into the big, blue sky. We were finally going. Going away.

  14

  WHEN I WAKE UP IT is night-time and I am in the storage cupboard, my head pressed up against the vacuum cleaner, coats above me, shoes and boots digging into my back. I stand up and head along the corridor. I can hear the sleep sounds of the other residents. The Moroccan man is snoring loudly, and as I walk past his room I see that the bronze pocket watch is hanging from the door handle. I take a closer look at the etchings of flowers on the casing and the mother-of-pearl face, the initials engraved on its underside: AL. The time is stuck at four o’clock. Diomande’s door is wide open. He is sleeping on his side, the covers draped loosely over him. I walk quietly into the darkness of his room and place my hand on his back, expecting to feel the wings, those tightly scrunched-up balls curling out of his dark skin. But instead I feel ridges of distorted skin, large protruding scars running along the blades like burn marks. My eyes fill up with tears and I swallow them. I think about him, so full of dreams.

  He sighs and turns on his side. ‘Maman,’ he says, half opening his eyes.

  ‘It’s Nuri,’ I whisper. ‘Your door was open and the covers were off. I thought you might be cold.’

  I pull the covers over him, tuck him in as if he is a child. He mumbles something and falls back asleep.

  I head downstairs and I unlock the glass door and stand outside in the moonlit courtyard. The sensor catches me and the light comes on. The bee is sleeping on one of the dandelions. I stroke her fur, very gently so that I will not disturb her. I am amazed that she has survived in this little garden she has made into a home. I watch her resting among the flowers with her saucer of sugar water by her side; she has learnt to live without her wings.

  I now know that Mohammed will not be coming – I understand that I created him, but the wind picks up and the leaves rustle and there is a chill in the air that gets beneath my skin, and I imagine his tiny figure in the shadows of the garden. The memory of him lives on, as if somehow, in some dark corner of my heart, he had had a life of his own. When I come to this realisation it is Sami who fills my mind. I remember tucking him into bed, in the room with the blue tiles, and sitting beside him to read the children’s book I had found at the market. His eyes lit up, full of anticipation. I translated as I read, from English to Arabic.

  ‘Who would ever build a house made of straw?’ he had said, laughing. ‘I would have used metal, the hardest metal in the world, like the type they use for spaceships!’

  How he loved to look up at the stars and make up stories. The sensor light goes off and I sit for a while in the darkness and look into the dark sky. I have only memories now. The wind blows and I can smell the sea. The leaves on the trees move and I can see him again, in my mind, Sami, playing beneath the tree in the garden in Aleppo, in our house on the hill, putting worms into the back of a toy truck so that he could take them for a drive.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I’d said to him. ‘Where are you taking them?’

  ‘They have no legs so I’m helping them. I’m going to drive them to the moon!’

  There was a full moon in a blue sky that night.

  I go to our room. Afra is asleep with her hands tucked beneath her cheek. On the bedside table there is another picture. I pick it up and for a moment I cannot breathe. She has drawn the cherry tree in the concrete garden, with its crooked branches and soft pink petals. This time the colours are correct, the lines and shading less distorted. The sky is bright and blue with wisps of clouds and w
hite birds. But beneath the tree, a grey sketch, almost invisible: the gentle outline of a boy, the pencil marks soft and swift, making him appear as though he has been captured in movement. He is part of this world and yet not quite in it. There is a slight shimmer of red on his T-shirt where Afra has started to colour him in and stopped. Although he is a half-ghost, he is clear enough for me to see that his face is tilted toward the sky.

  I climb in next to her and look at the gentle curve of her body and remember the shimmering outline of the buildings.

  I reach out and touch her for the first time, run my hand along the length of her arm, then down over her hips. I touch her as if she is made of the finest film of glass, as if she might easily break under my fingertips, but she sighs and edges closer to me, though she is asleep. I realise how afraid I have been of touching her.

  The sun is rising and her face in the dawn light is beautiful, those fine lines around her eyes, the curve of her chin, the dark hairs on the sides of her face, the slope of her neck, soft skin down to her breasts. But then I imagine him on her, forcing her, the look in her eyes, the fear, the scream locked inside her, the hand over her mouth. I remember the key that I forgot on the coffee table of the smuggler’s apartment, I remember driving through the streets of Athens and not turning back. I am shaking now. I fight it, push the thought out. I realise I have forgotten to love her. Here is her body, here are the lines on her face, here is the feel of her skin, here is the wound across her cheek that leads into her, like a road, all the way to her heart. These are the roads we take.

  ‘Afra,’ I say.

  She sighs and opens her eyes ever so slightly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m sorry I forgot the key.’

  She doesn’t say anything but she wraps her arms around me so that I can smell the roses, and then I can feel her crying on my chest.

  I move back so that I can look at her – sadness and memories, love and loss, blooming from her eyes. I kiss her tears, I taste them, I swallow them. I take in everything that she can see.