The Beekeeper of Aleppo(11)

‘I was stopped by the army. They held a gun to my chest,’ I said.

‘You’re lying. Why has this never happened before?’

‘Maybe before there were still younger men around. They didn’t notice me. Had no reason to. We’re the only stupid people left.’

‘I won’t go.’

‘They’ll kill me.’

‘So be it.’

‘I told them that I needed a few days to take care of you. They agreed to give me just a few days. If they see me again, and I don’t join them, they’ll kill me. They said I should find someone to take my body.’

At these last words, her eyes widened and there was sudden fear on her face, real fear. At the thought of losing me, maybe at the thought of my dead body, she came alive and stood up. She felt her way along the hallway and I followed, breathless, and then she lay on the bed and closed her eyes. I tried to reason with her, but she lay there like a dead cat, with her black abaya and her black hijab and that stone face that I now despised.

I sat on Sami’s bed and stared out of the window and watched the grey sky, a metallic grey, and there were no birds. I sat there all day and all evening until the darkness swallowed me up. I remembered how the worker bees would travel to find new flowers and nectar and then come back to tell the other bees. The bee would shake her body – the angle of her dance across the comb told the other bees the direction of the flowers in relation to the sun. I wished that there was someone to guide me, to tell me what to do and which way to go, but I felt completely alone.

Just before midnight I lay down beside Afra. She hadn’t moved an inch. I had the photograph and the letter beneath my pillow. And this time when I woke up in the middle of the night I saw that she was facing me and whispering my name.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Listen.’

From the front of the house, footsteps and men’s voices and then a laugh, a deep-throated laugh.

‘What are they doing?’ she said.

I climbed out of bed and walked quietly over to her side and took her hand, helping her up, leading her to the back door and out into the garden. She followed without question, without hesitation. I tapped my foot on the ground to find the metal roof, then slid it aside and helped her sit beside the hole with her legs over the edge so that I could climb in first and lower her in. Then I pulled the roof over us.

Our feet sank into inches of water, full of the lizards and insects that had made this space their home. I’d dug this hideout last year. Afra wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in the crook of my neck. We sat like this in the darkness, both blind now, in this grave made for two. In the deep quiet her breathing was the only sound left on earth. And maybe she was right. Maybe we should have died like this and nobody would need to take our bodies; and then some creature moved about, close to my left ear, and above us and outside things moved and broke and cracked. The men must have entered the house now. I could feel her shaking against me.

‘Do you know what, Afra?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I need to fart.’

There was a second of silence and then she began to laugh. She laughed and laughed into my neck. It was a quiet laugh, but her whole body shook with it, and I tightened my grip around her, thinking that her laugh was the most beautiful thing left on earth. But for a while I couldn’t actually tell if she was still laughing or if she’d started to cry, until I felt my neck wet with tears. And then her breathing was soft and she was asleep – as if this black hole was the only place she felt safe. Where inner darkness met outer darkness.

For a while I knew what it meant to be blind. And then memories blossomed, like dreams, so rich in colour. Life before war. Afra in a green dress, holding Sami by the hand; he’d just started to walk and was waddling along beside her, pointing up as a plane crossed the cool blue sky. We were going somewhere. It was summer and she was walking in front with her sisters. Ola was wearing yellow. Zeinah, pink. Zeinah was flapping her arms around as she talked, in her usual way. The other two said, ‘No!’ in unison at something she said. There was a man beside me, my uncle. I could see his cane, hear its tap-tap-tap on concrete. He was telling me about work: he owned a café in Old Damascus, and he wanted to retire now, but his son didn’t want to take over the business, the lazy, ungrateful boy; he married the monkey for its money, and the money went and the monkey stayed a monkey …’ And in that moment Afra lifted Sami onto her hip and then turned back and smiled and her eyes caught the light and turned to water. And then it all faded. Where were these people now?

I blinked in the darkness. It was impenetrable. In her sleep, Afra sighed. I asked myself if I should break her neck, put her out of her misery, give her the peace she wanted. Sami’s grave was in this garden. She would be close to him. She wouldn’t need to leave him. All her self-torture would be over.

‘Nuri,’ she said.

‘Hmmm?’

‘I love you.’

I didn’t reply and her words became part of the darkness, I let them sink into the soil, into the waterlogged earth.

‘Will they kill us?’ she asked, a slight tremor in her voice.

‘You’re scared.’

‘No. We’re so close to it now.’

Then there were footsteps close by and the voices became louder. ‘I told you,’ a man said. ‘I told you not to let him go.’