“I am scared of my wife’s eyes. She can’t see out and no one can see in. Look, they are like stones, gray stones, sea stones. Look at her. Look how she is sitting on the edge of the bed, her nightgown on the floor, rolling Mohammed’s marble around in her fingers and waiting for me to dress her. I am taking my time putting on my shirt and trousers, because I am so tired of dressing her.”
Those are the opening lines to Christy Lefteri’s novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo. The speaker Nuri, and his friend Mustafa, were beekeepers in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo. Nuri’s wife, Afra was a painter. They loved their life in Aleppo until all the hives are destroyed and their young son is killed in the war. The trauma of the loss causes Afra to go blind, and Nuri realizes that they must escape their homeland and start over. Mustafa has already fled to Britain with his family where he is raising bees again. He encourages Nuri to join him.
The majority of the book is about what it takes Nuri and Afra to be smuggled from one country to another until they finally reach Britain, all the paperwork that is involved, and the mental toll it takes on both of them. This is such an important book for the times in which we now live. Most immigrants who enter our country are not criminals, they are simply people forced to give up their homeland in order that their families have a safe place to live. The author worked as a volunteer at a UNCIEF-supported refugee center in Athens.
If you want a glimpse into what it means to start over in a strange land, then you must read The Beekeeper of Aleppo.
