The Beekeeper of Aleppo(7)

The Moroccan man slurps the tea like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He smacks his lips together after each gulp. He checks his phone occasionally, then closes his book and tap-taps it with his palm like it’s the head of a child.

‘What’s that on your palm?’ he says.

I hold out my hand so that he can see the bee. ‘She has no wings,’ I say. ‘I suspect that she has the deformed wing virus.’

‘You know,’ he says, ‘in Morocco there is a honey road. People come from all over the world to taste our honey. In Agadir there are waterfalls and mountains and plenty of flowers that attract people and bees. I wonder what these British bees are like.’ He leans in closer to take a better look, lifts his hand as if he is about to pet her with his finger like she’s a tiny dog, but changes his mind. ‘Does she sting?’ he says.

‘She can.’

He moves his hand to the safety of his lap. ‘What will you do with her?’

‘There’s not much I can do. I’ll take her back outside. She won’t live very long like this – she’s been banished from her colony because she has no wings.’

He looks out through the glass doors into the courtyard. It is a small concrete square with flagstones and one cherry tree in the middle.

I get up and press my face against the glass. It is nine o’clock and the sun is just setting. The cherry tree is tall and black against the glowing sky.

‘Now it’s sunny,’ I say, ‘but in three minutes it will rain. Bees don’t come out in rain. They will never come out in rain, and here it rains seventy per cent of the time.’

‘I think English bees are different,’ he says. When I turn to face him he is smiling again. I don’t like it that he finds me amusing.

There is a bathroom downstairs and one of the men has gone to use the toilet. His stream in the toilet bowl sounds like a waterfall.

‘Bloody foreigner,’ says the Moroccan man, getting up to go to bed. ‘Nobody stands up to urinate. Sit down!’

I go out into the courtyard and place the bee on the flower of a heather plant by the fence.

In the corner of the room there is a computer with Internet access. I sit down at the desk to see if Mustafa has sent me another message. He left Syria before me and we have been emailing each other throughout our journeys. He is waiting for me in the north of England in Yorkshire. I remember how his words kept me moving. Where there are bees there are flowers, and where there are flowers there is new life and hope. Mustafa is the reason I came here. He is the reason that Afra and I kept going until we got to the United Kingdom. But now all I can do is stare at the reflection of my face on the screen. I do not want Mustafa to know what has become of me. We are finally in the same country, but if we meet he will see a broken man. I do not believe he will recognise me. I turn away from the screen.

I wait there until the room empties out, until all the residents with their foreign tongues and foreign manners have left and the only sound is the traffic in the distance. I imagine a beehive swarming with yellow bees, and that when they exit they head right up into the sky and away to find flowers. I try to picture the land beyond, the highways and the streetlights and the sea.

The sensor light suddenly comes on in the garden. From where I’m sitting in the armchair facing the doors, I can see a shadow, something small and dark dashing quickly across the patio. It seems to be a fox. I get up to take a look, and the light goes off. I press my face against the glass, but the thing is larger than a fox and standing upright. It moves and the light flashes on again. It is a young boy with his back to me. He is looking through a gap in the fence, into the other garden. I knock hard on the glass but he doesn’t turn. I search for the key and find it hanging on a nail behind the curtain. When I approach him, the boy turns to face me, as if he has been waiting for me, looking at me with those black eyes asking for the answers to all the questions in the world.

‘Mohammed,’ I say softly, in case I scare him away.

‘Uncle Nuri,’ he says, ‘See that garden – there’s so much green in there!’

He steps aside so I can take a look. It’s so dark that I can’t see any green. Only the soft shadows of bushes and trees.

‘How did you find me?’ I say, but he doesn’t answer. I feel that I need to be cautious. ‘Would you like to come in?’ But he sits down on the concrete, legs crossed, and peeks through the hole in the fence again. I sit down beside him.

‘There is a seaside here,’ he says.

‘I know.’

‘I don’t like the sea,’ he says.

‘I know. I remember.’ He is holding something in his hand. It’s white and I can smell lemons, though there are no lemons here.

‘What is that?’ I say.

‘A flower.’

‘Where did you get it?’ I open my palm and he places it there. He tells me that he picked it off the lemon tree in





was all dust. Afra wouldn’t leave. Everyone else had gone. Even Mustafa was desperate to go now. But not Afra. Mustafa’s house was on the road that led to the river and I would walk down the hill to visit him. It wasn’t a long walk but there were snipers and I had to be careful. The birds were usually singing. The sound of birdsong never changes. Mustafa told me this many years ago. And whenever the bombs were silent, the birds came out to sing. They perched on the skeletons of trees and on craters and wires and broken walls, and they sang. They flew high above, in the untouched sky, and sang.