The Last Beekeeper

by Siya Turabi

  The beekeeper looked into the distance. ‘And yes, there were other things. I wanted to see the mountains in the north, to see the wild cats of the deserts and the dolphins in the rivers and sea.’

  ‘You sound like my father.’

  The beekeeper got on his hands and knees and started to pick up the dead leaves around them. ‘Good for fuel,’ he said. The beekeeper looked up at the nest. ‘The bees are busy. Go to your mother. She’s happy you’re back.’

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘I see.’ The beekeeper’s eyebrows joined together at the centre just like Mir Saab’s.

  ‘I’m going to London,’ Hassan said. ‘I’ll serve when I come back.’

  ‘It’s your life. Your will.’ The beekeeper’s face grew stern now. ‘Being with the bees is a responsibility,’ he said. ‘You have to make your decision.’

  ‘What if it’s the wrong decision?’ Hassan asked.

  ‘Each of us has the possibility of choice,’ replied the beekeeper, standing up with his hands full of leaves, ‘and if we make those choices in line with life, with nature, then we move with life. We understand it. I think you know this.’

  ‘I’m beginning to learn this from the bees.’

  ‘Yes,’ the beekeeper said. There was a twinge in his lips. ‘It’s not always easy.’

  ‘But why me?’ Hassan asked.

  ‘Sometimes all we can do is accept how things are.’

  ‘And how we are,’ Hassan said. ‘I felt her presence up there. I could feel that the new queen had been born. They’ve allowed me so far. I’ll just keep going whenever I’m back.’

  The beekeeper started to gather up the dates from under a date palm nearby. He held one out in his palm and a crow swooped down and took it with its long, hard beak. The beekeeper did the same with another date. This time the crow flew to the ground with its date.

  ‘Crows are my friends too,’ Hassan said.

  ‘We beekeepers have an affinity with them,’ the beekeeper said.

  The forest was quiet, a rare moment in between animal and bird sounds. He would miss this jungle.

  He went to his mother’s house that night. She was on the roof, lying on the bed, nearly asleep.

  ‘I feel like I’m in the middle of everything here,’ she said.

  It was true. Even though the house was at the end of the village in its own corner near the boundary wall, they could see everything from the roof. He brought up the bed from his old room and stayed there with his mother.

  The night was much cooler than the day but still warm enough and Hassan drifted in and out of sleep. He tried to keep his eyes open to look at the stars, and squinted to make his vision blurry but he didn’t see the animals without Maryam. There would be snow in England. It would be like these stars in space, only the snow would fall from a blue sky. And he would write a poem about the snow and send it to his father.

  Baba would come to the forest soon and Hassan would tell him that there was no more danger. The sounds of Harikaya at night time seemed louder – strays, crickets, footsteps of drunken wanderers. He was wide awake now. He would leave all this for Maryam, for a love between humans. But not before he got the black honey. He had to get it before he left. He heard his mother stirring from her bed, muttering in her sleep. She wouldn’t be alone when Baba came back.

  Tomorrow, he’d tell his mother that he was going. He’d call her from London all the time. He pictured her walking to the village telephone in the square waiting for the call that he would have arranged with her. He closed his eyes and his body grew still. The sound of crickets carried him inwards. Baba would come home one day. There was something growing in Hassan, a feeling of sureness. Baba was on his way. He wasn’t far away now and he’d be here before Hassan had to leave. Yes, that was the truth – he felt it.

  In the early hours of the morning, droplets of warm rain woke him up. His mother was still sleeping and he stayed on his bed, letting them fall on his face and outstretched arms. Small droplets turned into big ones.

  ‘Who’s there?’ His mother sat up and put her hand out to feel the drops.

  ‘It’s me, Amma. Only me.’

  ‘Beta, I forgot you were here. My eyes are worse in the dark. But I see you now.’ She touched his face and they sat on her bed together with the rain falling on them – a shower that lasted but a few minutes.

  ‘This is good luck,’ she said. ‘The rains will be here in a day or two.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The next morning, Hassan returned to the fort. Mir Saab was alone, staring ahead, with a plate of food in front of him. Hassan felt like a silent predator. A jungle cat waiting for its chance to ask a question. Any question, to get Mir Saab to talk. Just as he was about to pounce, Mir Saab spoke.

  ‘What about the black honey?’

  ‘I climbed their tree.’

  A light shot through Mir Saab’s eyes. ‘And the bees, how are they?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re about to swarm.’ Hassan felt his own heart leap. ‘Come with me. It’s a different world there.’

  ‘You know I’d like to one day,’ Mir Saab said.

  ‘I’ll be gone then,’ Hassan said.

  ‘Yes, when you come back for school holidays.’

  ‘No. Maryam has asked me to go back to London with her. She says her mother can arrange a student visa for me.’

  Mir Saab was quiet for a few moments. ‘She might well be able to.’ He picked up his fork and stabbed at a piece of meat.

  ‘I haven’t completely decided.’

  ‘There’s a lot to think about, isn’t there? What about your father?’

  ‘He’ll come back.’

  The sound of the metal cutlery hurt Hassan’s ears.

  ‘The bees have allowed you much further into their world than they allowed me. I could never be part of both worlds. Perhaps it’s different for you.’

  Hassan came to sit next to Mir Saab at the table. ‘I don’t know what to do. I keep swinging from one decision to another.’

  ‘What would the bees do?’ Mir Saab said.

  Hassan closed his eyes. That was the problem. He didn’t know. When he opened them, Mir Saab was sinking again into his own world. The fan above their heads was working hard but the room was still hot.

  ‘And they warm up by shivering,’ Hassan said. ‘I’ve seen it.’

  He was in the courtyard with Maryam, Zain, and Amina. They sat on chairs under the shade of the tree.

  ‘What?’ Amina said.

  ‘By shivering,’ Hassan repeated.

  ‘That means it’s time to go,’ Mir Saab said, coming in. ‘A cloud of bees leaves the old hive with the new queen in the middle of them.’

  Hassan got up to give Mir Saab his chair but he refused.

  ‘The cloud then hangs onto a branch like a beard for a few hours or even a few days,’ Mir Saab said. Hassan remembered the way the cloud had hung from another part of the wall in the masjid. ‘They cool down when they hang and become very still,’ Mir Saab said.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Amina asked.

  ‘They’re talking to each other before the messengers go off to look for a new home,’ Mir Saab said.

  ‘And then they come back and the hanging beard has to agree,’ Amina said.

  ‘A conference of bees,’ Maryam said, ‘and their language is dance.’ She stood up. ‘I’m a messenger bee. The nest is too crowded,’ she said, wiggling her body and her head and spinning round. ‘New nests sighted. Come and check.’

  ‘That’s exactly right,’ Mir Saab said. ‘And when they’ve decided, they shiver to warm up again. By then, the new queen has grown and the cloud moves together in an exodus to a new home.’

  ‘In a swarm, like this.’ Maryam demonstrated, then bowed and they all clapped.

  It was the first time Mir Saab had laughed in weeks.

  ‘The plane leaves in two days,’ Maryam said as he was about to leave for the forest.

  ‘If they haven’t swarmed by then, i
t won’t be long. I’ll follow you – by train,’ Hassan said.

  ‘That’ll take ages.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Hassan could see she was trying to smile.

  ‘My mother said she’s got some woolly jumpers for you.’

  ‘Woolly jumpers?’

  ‘Get used to it. It’ll be cold.’ She laughed.

  Hassan walked down the hill and made his way back to the jungle. He ran for the last two or three kilometres of the journey, stopping for short breaks to pant. Eventually, he arrived at the tree. If he went to London, he would see the different people, Maryam’s home, be with her.

  The beekeeper wasn’t there. Neither was there any sign of a swarm.

  Hassan squatted on the ground under the shade of the tree opposite the one with the nest. There was no beard, no conference, nothing. There was no point in waiting.

  He decided to walk around, going beyond this grouping of trees into a denser part of the forest. There were more nests in these parts, with quieter, milder bees of a different species. He walked on; the trees provided a perfect balance here between light and dark. The birds sang warnings to each other as he went deeper. Flowers grew in abundance on the forest floor, whites and yellows.

  Suddenly he stopped. Something was on the ground a few feet away from him. A man, his face partially covered with leaves. But Hassan already knew who it was. And he was still. He had to be asleep. He ran towards him. ‘You came back!’ Hassan shouted. ‘I knew you would come back.’ Weeds and flowers framed his father as he lay on the ground. His eyes were closed.

  ‘Baba,’ he said, shaking his shoulder.

  There was no movement, no flickering eyelids. Baba was a light sleeper. Even on the ground, when Hassan shook his body – gentle shakes at first then getting more and more frantic – his father wouldn’t wake up. His face was too pale, the colour of sand.

  ‘Baba, I’m here.’ The voice that came out of him was sharp like metal, aimed at his father’s ears.

  Squirrels and porcupines watched as he took his father into his arms.

  There was no breath. His spirit had left.

  Hassan looked up. He could see another nest at the top of a tree, writhing with Baba’s beloved black honeybees. He had gone for them. There was a basket lying on the ground near his feet. Tears dropped onto the drying skin of Baba’s face.

  ‘Baba, I’m here. It’s Hassan. I’m here.’

  He saw nothing anymore as he rocked with Baba’s head buried under his neck, and Baba’s shoulders in his lap. There was a hint of movement, the flap of wings.

  Hassan looked around; a smoker and a small pocket knife lay on the ground beside him. Baba had fallen from the tree.

  ‘Why did you allow me and not him?’ he shouted up at them. But he knew the answer to that. A cloud of bees left the nest in a cluster.

  Baba had not stopped when they wanted him to. They hadn’t wanted to hurt him like this. He had gone too far, taken too much.

  Baba wasn’t getting warmer in his arms, no matter how much Hassan tried. He rubbed his chest, his shoulders; he stroked his hair. His body was cold but not too cold. He couldn’t have been here long.

  Hassan’s body began to shake. There was a scream rising from deep within him; it cut inside him like a sword. That scream became a crack that was heard in the void of distant space. It caused a cosmic seizure, a spasmodic scream of birth that bounced back something that caught him by surprise – hope. A simple hope that he needed now to give him the infinite focus of a dream cradled in a nest of starlight that emitted a sound. It was that sound that brought on life.

  ‘Baba, wake up.’

  He held his father tighter in case his own warmth poured into the cold body.

  ‘Baba, I heard that sound that you talked about. I heard it in their nest. They let me in.’

  Hassan rocked his father.

  ‘Baba, you knew where it came from. That sound that is carried on their hum. That’s why you couldn’t stay away from them, isn’t it Baba? You wanted to be with them, in their space, to listen to the universe’s drum. That was where your poetry came from, wasn’t it? From a place before and after time.’

  The creatures of the forest gathered to accompany this grief. The steady hum of the bees became a distant, deep drone, a call from the furthest star, and Hassan let out that scream through the invisible crack it had made in his body. It rang out into the universe. A scream of a pain without hope.

  He heard footsteps behind him but he didn’t turn his head. He sensed the beekeeper.

  Everything was clear. There was no need for words.

  The beekeeper carried the body back to the house and started to dig. Hassan watched for a few minutes before he too started with a great old spade to bury his father.

  ‘Do you want to stay with him longer?’ the beekeeper asked him.

  Hassan shook his head. Before they lowered the body into the grave, Hassan checked his father’s pockets. There was a folded sheet of paper in one of them; opening it, he saw his father’s handwriting. A poem. He took it and placed it in his own trouser pocket.

  They went back to the clearing together.

  ‘Have they moved?’ the beekeeper asked under the tree.

  ‘Please, I’m running out of time. Please help me.’ Hassan had had enough. He lowered his head onto his knees.

  Sounds without words joined together around him, like a string on an instrument playing by itself. The beekeeper was singing to them. It was a language of the stars, for bees had to be from the stars. Baba had known that. When the beekeeper stopped, the bees were floating around the nest. Some of them moved downwards and circled the beekeeper. The beekeeper sang again, this time with his lips moving faster making the sounds vibrate more. The bees drew nearer to Hassan and began to circle him too.

  ‘What was the song?’ Hassan asked.

  ‘I told them that you’re a friend but they already knew this. And I told them that if they choose the log hive, it will be taken to your mother who lives not too far away.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They asked if you would be there too. I said no.’

  ‘Did they agree?’

  ‘They’re still deciding.’

  The beekeeper had told them all of this through song.

  ‘All we can do is wait.’

  It was a conference, just as Maryam had said; a conference of bees. The humming was loud now as the bees discussed the plans and, in his mind, Hassan travelled to the inner chamber of their nest to join them. The dance hall, the welcoming platform, the place where the speeches were being made. A conference had certainly been called. There were a few bees in a circle, like the poets at the shrine. He was aware of the queen’s presence in the background, as she listened to vibrations of love, and the bees took turns to dance in the centre of the platform.

  Hassan waited but there was no decision.

  There were other messages – strong ones. They were clear in what they said. They were speaking about him. The image faded and he opened his eyes just as the beekeeper was opening his.

  ‘They want me to stay,’ Hassan said. They had given him no other option.

  The beekeeper nodded.

  ‘I will go to my mother now,’ he sighed.

  The people in the tent were standing. The claps of skin on chest, slow at first, gradually became a steady beat, gathering pace, a thousand hands playing a rhythm for the song being sung. In a simple chair, on a raised platform, the priest told the stories that had lived through generations.

  The song finished. The priest waved the people down and he began again. They were surprised but they listened.

  ‘Mir Saab needs your help,’ the priest said, ‘to help you, the people.’

  Some of them stood up. ‘What is it he needs?’ a few asked.

  ‘We must act as one community. We must forget our differences.’

  The call was spoken with a soft voice.

  ‘We will march next week,’ one man said
.

  Hassan felt his father’s spirit. He felt his love, clearer than it had been over these weeks.

  Hassan left the tent with Maryam, Zain, and Amina. They followed Mir Saab, Begum Saab, and Ali Noor to a bonfire some distance away from the tent. People were gathering around but none of the villagers approached him now that he was with the family. Perhaps it was better that way. Maryam’s glasses reflected the flames. He nodded to her and left the group to go to his mother’s house.

  Stray cats and dogs and a few people shuffled through the streets. Hassan kept his head low. He entered the main square and breathed in the smell of jasmine.

  ‘Hassan!’ a voice shot out from the edges. ‘Is it you?’

  He turned around to see his old friend heading towards him.

  ‘Ansari Saab!’ Hassan rushed to hug him.

  ‘How have you been?’ the poet asked him, holding him tightly. ‘Your mother told me what happened.’ The poet looked down at Hassan’s clothes. ‘A bit muddy, but good quality. Tell me everything.’

  They walked around the square and Hassan told him about his plans.

  ‘So, you’re leaving the country now too. Just like I did.’ Ansari Saab held his hands together as if he was praying. ‘You’ll come back and visit me, so I won’t stop you. But I need to tell you something.’

  ‘What is it?’ Hassan asked.

  ‘Your father’s been seen again.’

  Hassan took a deep breath. ‘I found his body.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The two of them stood facing each other, man and boy, one straight and the other beginning to double over like the crescent moon in the sky.

  ‘No,’ Ansari Saab’s voice was muffled by a sob that turned to great hard ones that shook his whole chest.

  Time vanished as they stood together, in an embrace.

  ‘A poet has gone to the stars,’ Ansari Saab said. ‘A strong man who loved you so much.’

  Baba was everywhere now.