The Beekeeper of Aleppo

by Christy Lefteri

The billboard just outside says that there are too many of us, that this island will break under our weight. I’m glad she’s blind. I know what that sounds like! If I could give her a key that opened a door into another world, then I would wish for her to see again. But it would have to be a world very different from this one.

‘I can’t just abandon the bees, Nuri,’ he’d said one night, his large hand coming down over his face and his beard, as if he was trying to wipe off the sombre expression he always wore now.

A middle-aged woman knelt on the floor next to another bucket, full of water. She was going to clean the faces of the dead men, she said, so that the women who loved them would recognise them when they came searching.

But when she was sad my world was dark. I didn’t have a choice about this. She was more powerful than I. She cried like a child, laughed like bells ringing, and her smile was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. She could argue for hours without ever pausing. Afra loved, she hated, and she inhaled the world like it was a rose. All this was why I loved her more than life.

But in Syria there is a saying: inside the person you know, there is a person you do not know.

But what I loved most was her laugh. She laughed like we would never die.

O Allah keep me alive as long as is good for me, and when death is better for me, take me.

Aleppo is now like the dead body of a loved one, it has no life, no soul, it is full of rotting blood.

I look at my face on the dark screen, thinking of what to write – Mustafa, I believe I am unwell. I have no dreams left.

Yuanfen was a mysterious force that causes two lives to cross paths in a meaningful way.

Sometimes we create such powerful illusions, so that we do not get lost in the darkness.