The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Afra is Nuri’s wife. Afra and Nuri’s relationship is the backbone of the book, the constant that drives Nuri in his actions, along with his desire to be reunited with Mustafa. Afra is the mother of Sami, who dies in her arms in a bomb attack on their home. The devastating event and its aftermath form the interior journey of the couple, with Afra representing the grieving mother figure that is reflected in several other mothers in the book.

Afra is from the coast, while Nuri is from the desert of eastern Aleppo. Art, landscapes and color are vital parts of Afra’s life: “Afra’s soul was as wide as the fields and desert and sky and sea that she painted, and as mysterious” (21). As an artist, losing her sight is even more devastating. When she is blind, her life is without color or light, her mind and emotions shut down, and she becomes like a child, dependent on Nuri for everything, which strains their relationship. Nuri describes Afra’s love for him as, at its best, capable of great depth and intensity: “If I had been one of the dead men in the river, Afra would have climbed a mountain to find me. She would have swum to the bottom of that river, but that was before they blinded her” (20). Afra’s belief in love, so strong and dynamic before the war, becomes sorrowful and resigned to loss after Sami’s death. As the couple hide in their underground hideout in Aleppo, lying close but unable to really reach each other and provide the comfort they both need, Afra says: “You know, if we love something it will be taken away” (43).

The loss of their son in the most tragic way possible causes Afra to stop seeing, to stop being able to express herself and almost to stop living. She is locked inside her trauma and her wish to hold onto what remains of Sami. The marble that she refuses to let go of is the only physical remnant she has of him. Nuri describes Afra’s relationship with Sami as having been especially close, “as if there was always an invisible cord between them” (240), while recalling how motherhood even inspired her art: “Later when she took to the canvas again in the hours when Sami was asleep, these landscapes were the most beautiful, the most alive, with greater depth to the darkness and a luminous shimmer to the light” (240). When Afra describes the moment of Sami’s death, her words emphasize how traumatic the severing of that bond was for her: “I wonder what he felt. Was he in pain? What did he feel when he looked up at the sky? Did he know I was there?” (308).

During the journey through Turkey, the Greek islands and to Athens, Afra remains dependent on Nuri. Although determined to reach England, she is often fearful and withdrawn. Her only relief is in painting, which she is able to do despite being blind. She forms a friendship with Angeliki, the Somalian refugee who has also suffered the loss of a child. When they reach Athens, she is afraid or unwilling to go out and prefers to stay in the smuggler’s flat. However, safety is not to be found there either. She is raped and her trauma is exacerbated, sending her back into herself. In England, at first, she hardly goes out of the couple’s room.

However, with time and the sense of some kind of security in the B&B, she starts to come back to life, slowly. Nuri’s erratic behavior causes her to miss him and cry, which is the beginning of a change: “I haven’t seen or heard her cry since Aleppo” (56). She begins to dress herself again. She starts to mix with the other residents, and even to smile. At the doctor’s appointment, where she finds a sympathetic ear and is able to unburden herself, she shows her concern for Nuri’s health. She is steadfast in her love for him throughout their journey, despite him being at times cruel and thoughtless towards her. When the couple open up to each other about the past at the novel’s end, they become reconciled. They share happy memories of Sami, and Afra laughs again. The couple even talk of having another baby. When Mustafa arrives, Nuri says Afra exhales, “as if Mustafa’s presence has lifted a heaviness in her heart” (358). Just as there is hope for Nuri at the novel’s end, so too is there hope for Afra.

Mustafa is the original Beekeeper, whom Nuri follows into the same profession and whose shared love of bees, family, and life are an inspiration for Nuri both as a young man and during the perilous journey to England.

Mustafa is Nuri’s cousin, but they were estranged for fifteen years as children. When they meet again, Nuri is impressed by the energetic, fearless young man, who contrasts with his own nervous and over-sensitive nature: “He walked around in his shorts and flip-flops, unafraid of the bees […] he stood there, like a giant statue, with his hands shielding his eyes, smiling” (100). Mustafa’s confidence and reassurance inspire Nuri throughout his life and give him the impetus to keep striving to reach England despite all the dangers he faces. Mustafa’s emails are the nourishment in Nuri’s months of despair: “Even in the email I could hear the excitement in Mustafa’s voice again, that boyish innocence that had carried him and moved him through life” (287). Afra too appreciates Mustafa’s qualities and importance to Nuri. She keeps reminding him to check for emails from Mustafa and uses Mustafa as an example of the goodness that remains in the world: “But then there are people like Mustafa. There are people like him in the world and those people bring life rather than death” (236).

The supposed boyish innocence is not without its sad shadow, however. Mustafa lost his mother at the age of five, and Nuri says: “I think he lived forever on the edge of imminent catastrophe, and so he came to appreciate everything with the joy and terror of a child” (142). Probably for this reason, family ties, home and loyalty are of supreme importance to Mustafa as a man. He takes great pride in cooking and is at his most relaxed when preparing food for the two cousins’ families. Mustafa is the first to feel the danger of imminent war in Syria and sends his wife and daughter to England quickly. His teenaged son remains, who ends up killed and dumped in the river. Mustafa’s sorrow over his loss is strong: “Now I have a picture of my son lying on that table, and nothing can make it fade. I see him, every time I close my eyes” (36). Despite such tragedy, Mustafa remains determined to find another secure home in the world.

Beekeeping is essential to Mustafa. Nuri feels the bees replaced Mustafa’s lost family members throughout his youth: “no women to soften the place or bring light to it, no siblings to play with, so he found solace in the brilliant light and beautiful sounds of the apiaries. He got to know the bees like they were his siblings” (170). As soon as he reaches England, Mustafa seeks bees, and is ecstatic when he finds some: “This is like a treasure! […] Because it rains so much it is full of flowers. And so much green. More than you could ever imagine. Where there are bees there are flowers and where there are flowers there is new life and hope” (233). Mustafa’s optimism and determination to rebuild lend a thread of hopefulness to the novel: There is a chance for a new home and a new life in England, even after tragedy.

Although the refugees are not the main characters in the book, the descriptions of each one’s personality and story emphasizes that every migrant, every refugee, is an individual and not just part of a mass of nameless bodies. As Nuri points out in a queue in Leros: “They wanted their papers so they could exist in the eyes of the European Union” (156), and “We were being transformed into verifiable, printable identities” (157). The varied treatments and attitudes experienced by refugees are described both through Nuri’s narration and through the refugees’ own stories. Their varied origins and reasons for migration serve to illustrate the many perilous and traumatizing situations there are in the world today.

Hazim is the first resident of the B&B that Nuri mentions, but not by name. Even after learning his name, Nuri continues to call him “the Moroccan.” He is a constant presence in the lodgings, friendly and helpful, and adds some lightheartedness to the book with his complaints about men standing up to urinate and the casual way people dress. He takes Afra under his wing and comforts her when Nuri is absent. He also finds Nuri in the garden every morning and takes him back to Afra, and when Nuri is in hospital after almost drowning, he visits him.

Hazim is reticent about his past. He talks with love about his country and the bees there, but it is not until later in the book that he partially reveals his story to Nuri. He left Morocco in a boat with his family, for his children to be able to follow their dreams: “As soon as I was on that boat to Spain I knew I had sold my life, whatever life I have left” (114). He describes how his son and daughter were taken to a different hostel, and then he starts to cry as he remembers his daughter. It seems he paid all his life savings for the crossing to Spain. Nuri sees Hazim’s family photos, one with a woman standing on the shore in front of the sea. The inscription says: “Dad, my favorite place. I love you x” (111). The implication is that Hazim’s family drowned in the treacherous sea crossing. The social worker seems to think his asylum claim has little chance of success, further deepening the tragedy of all that Hazim has risked and lost.

Diomande is a young refugee from the Ivory Coast. His father died when he was young and he and his mother and two sisters were hungry, so his mother said she would pay for him to go somewhere and find help. He remembers with joy his last meal at home. He is tall and often hunches over, and Nuri has noticed deformities on his back, which remind him of angels’ wings. Diomande explains that he has had a bent spine since he was born. In the B&B, he is talkative, full of energy and optimism, as he tells the social worker: “There are opportunities in this country! I will find job!” (146). He prepares diligently for his interview, full of facts and history about the Ivory Coast, once a prosperous and stable nation. Then he talks about Gabon, where he went to work after leaving home. From there, he paid a great deal of money to be driven to Libya, but there he was imprisoned, along with many others, and they were fed only a little every three days. They were beaten, and ransoms demanded for their release. After three months, a rival militia broke in and freed them. He walked to Tripoli and found a job with an unscrupulous employer. Eventually he managed to cross the Mediterranean on a smuggler boat. When Nuri meets him, Diomande is still extremely thin.

Angeliki is a young Black woman from Somalia, whose baby daughter was taken from her at some point in Greece. She appears somewhat disturbed at first, and says her baby was stolen when they poisoned her blood. The fact that she is a mother is verified by her leaking breasts, but the source of the wound marks on her arms is less easy to identify. She suffers a similar trauma to Afra, that of a grieving mother: “I have no breath in me now. I am dead” (206), yet Nuri says, “her eyes were full of life” (206). She is reluctant to tell her tale to Nuri: “I don’t like to talk about it because it hurt my heart” (291), but eventually does. The severe famine in Somalia drove her to Kenya, to the Dadaab refugee camp. This camp was going to close because it was suspected that Al Shabaab fighters from Somalia were using it to smuggle weapons. She made it to Greece, where her baby daughter was stolen from her at night in the park in Athens, the scene for the drug and child abuse Nuri later witnesses. She reminisces about the natural beauty of her country but says there is no going back. She believes that in Greece she has a chance of going forward. She is a complex character, full of folk knowledge and stories, at times seeming unstable, at other times sensible. She becomes a companion for Afra.

Nadim first appears as a sensitive young musician, and Nuri takes to him immediately: “There was something warm in this man’s face, inviting, even in its silence” (226). The two men laugh together, and Nadim’s music has the power to take Nuri away from his troubles. Nadim explains that he left Kabul because the Taliban did not allow music and that he was in the Ministry of Defense. The Taliban expected him to kill people, but Nadim says he could not even kill an ant. He had learned to play from his father who was a famous tabla (drum) player. Nuri has a slight inkling that Nadim is not being completely truthful, but the man’s charm and music dispel this quickly. He lends Nuri his phone to check his email. Then Nuri discovers Nadim’s brutal self-harming and the vile behavior that he carries out: procuring young boys for sexual abuse by older men. The charm that worked on Nuri works on his victims too. Eventually, Nuri participates in Nadim’s murder. Although Nadim’s crimes are clear, it is never explicitly revealed if he was lying all along about his past.

These twin boys, aged about fifteen, are the unfortunate victims of the evil Nadim and his colleagues. They are alone in the Athens park and Nuri watches their childlike play: “together they were like puppies” (254). Eventually trusting Nuri but wary of the men in the woods, they tell him their story: they had fled Afghanistan and their father’s murderers. Their mother encouraged them to leave when they themselves become targets of the Taliban and they travelled alone through Turkey and Greece, ending up completely unsupported in the park. They have no choice but to accept the coercion of Nadim, whom they know as Ahmed, for money to survive. After Nuri discovers their fate, and Nadim attacks him, the twins are never seen again.