The Beekeeper of Aleppo(10)

There was a huge crater in this room; the far wall and part of the ceiling were missing, leaving an open mouth into the garden and sky. The jasmine over the canopy caught the light and behind it the fig tree was black and hung low over the wooden swing, the one I’d made for Sami. The silence was hollow though; it lacked the echo of life. The war was always there. The houses were empty or home to the dead. Afra’s eyes shone in the dim light. I wanted to hold her, to kiss the soft skin of her breasts, to lose myself in her. For one minute, just one, I forgot. Then she turned to me like she could see me, and as if she knew what I was thinking she said, ‘You know, if we love something it will be taken away.’

We both lay down, and from beyond came the smell of fire and burnt things and ashes. Although she faced me, she wouldn’t touch me. We hadn’t made love since Sami died. But sometimes she let me hold her hand, and I circled my finger around her palm.

‘We have to go, Afra,’ I said.

‘I’ve already told you. No.’

‘If we stay—’

‘If we stay, we’ll die,’ she said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Exactly.’ Her eyes were open and blank now.

‘You’re waiting for a bomb to hit us. If you want it to happen, it will never happen.’

‘Then I’ll stop waiting. I won’t leave him.’

I was about to say, ‘But he’s already left. Sami’s gone. He’s not here. He’s not here in hell with us, he is somewhere else. And we’re no closer to him by staying here.’ And she would reply, ‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’

So I remained silent. I traced my finger around her palm, while she waited for a bomb to hit us. And when I woke in the night I reached out to touch her, to make sure that she was still there, that we were still alive. And in the darkness I remembered the dogs eating human corpses in the fields where the roses used to be, and somewhere else in the distance I heard a wild screech, metal on metal, like a creature being dragged towards death. And I put my hand on her chest, between her breasts, and felt her heart beat, and I slept again.

In the morning the muezzin called to empty houses to come and pray. I went out to try to find some flour and eggs before the bread ran out. I dragged my feet in the dust. It was so thick, like walking through snow. There were burnt cars, lines of filthy washing hanging from abandoned terraces, electric wires dangling low over the streets, bombed-out shops, blocks of flats with their roofs blown off, piles of trash on the pavements. It all stank of death and burnt rubber. In the distance smoke rose, curling into the sky. I felt my mouth dry, my hands clench and shake, trapped by these distorted streets. In the land beyond, the villages were burnt, people flooding out like a river to get away, the women in terror because paramilitaries were on the loose and they feared being raped. But there, beside me, was a damask rose bush in full bloom. When I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell, I could pretend for a moment that I hadn’t seen the things I’d seen.

When I looked up from the ground, I saw that I’d reached a checkpoint. Two soldiers stood in my path. They both held machine guns. One of them wore a checked keffiyeh. The other one took a gun from the back of a truck and pushed it against my chest.

‘Take it,’ the man said.

I tried to mimic my wife’s face. I didn’t want to show any emotion. They would eat me for it. The man pushed the gun harder into my chest, and I stumbled, falling back against the gravel.

He threw the gun on the ground and I looked up to see both men standing over me, and now the man with the keffiyeh was pointing his gun at my chest. I could no longer stay calm and I could hear myself begging for my life, grovelling with my knees in the dust.

‘Please,’ I was saying, ‘it’s not that I don’t want to. I’d be proud, I’d be the proudest man in the world to take that gun in your name, but my wife is very ill, gravely ill, and she needs me to look after her.’ Even while I was saying this I didn’t think that they would care. Why would they? Children were dying every minute. Why would they care about my sick wife?

‘I’m strong,’ I said, ‘and intelligent. I’ll work hard for you. I just need a few days. That’s all I’m asking for.’

The other man touched the man with the keffiyeh on the shoulder and he lowered his gun.

‘The next time we see you,’ the other man said, ‘either you take a gun and stand beside us, or you find someone to take your body.’

I decided to go straight home. I sensed a shadow behind me as I walked and I wasn’t sure if I was being followed or if it was my mind playing tricks on me: I kept imagining a cloaked figure, the type in childhood nightmares, hovering over the dust at my back. But when I turned around there was no one there.

I arrived home and Afra was sitting on the camp bed, her back against the wall, facing the window, holding the pomegranate in her hands, turning it around, feeling its flesh. Her ears pricked up when I entered the room, but before she could say anything I ran around the house, searching for a bag, cramming things into it.

‘What’s going on?’ Her eyes searched the blankness.

‘We’re going.’

‘No.’

‘They’ll kill me if we stay.’ I was in the kitchen, filling plastic water bottles from the tap. I packed an extra set of clothes for each of us. Then I searched under the bed for the passports and the stash of money. Afra didn’t know about it – it was the money Mustafa and I had managed to put aside before the business collapsed, and I also had some in a private account, which I hoped I could still access once we got out of here. She was saying something from the other room. Words of protest. I packed Sami’s passport too; I couldn’t leave it here. Then I returned to the living room with our bags.