The Beekeeper of Aleppo

by Christy Lefteri

I AM SCARED OF MY WIFE’S eyes. She can’t see out and no one can see in.

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.

Name – My beautiful boy. Cause of death – This broken world.

Where there are bees there are flowers, and where there are flowers there is new life and hope.

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.

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