The Beekeeper of Aleppo

by Christy Lefteri

I would go out every day and forage in the ruins for food and return with a gift for her. I’d find so many odd bits, broken or unbroken pieces of people’s lives: a child’s shoe, a dog’s collar, a mobile phone, a glove, a key. Interesting to find a key when there are no doors to open. Come to think of it, even stranger to find a shoe or a glove when there is no longer a hand or a foot to fit it.

Where inner darkness met outer darkness.

This is what Aleppo is!

It’s amazing, the way we love people from the day we are born, the way we hold on, as if we are holding on to life itself.

‘I think the bees are like us,’ she said. ‘They are vulnerable like us. But then there are people like Mustafa. There are people like him in the world and those people bring life rather than death.’

Where was home now? And what was it? In my mind it had become a picture infused with golden light, a paradise never to be reached.

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.

This time we were really going somewhere, we were going away. Away from the war, far from Greece and further away from Sami.

sadness and memories, love and loss, blooming from her eyes.

Bees are a symbol of vulnerability and life and hope. My protagonist, Nuri, was once a proud father and a beekeeper. Now, he is trying to connect with his shattered wife, Afra, seeking her in the dark tunnels of her grief, but she will not leave Aleppo, she is frozen in her grief. Nuri knows that they must leave in order to survive. It is only when they allow themselves to see, to feel the presence and love of one another, that they can start to make the journey towards survival and renewal.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo is about profound loss, but it is also about love and finding light.