The Beekeeper of Aleppo(19)

At night, we slept on the floor of the smuggler’s apartment. There were two rooms, one for the women and the other for the men. In my room, there was a picture on the wall of a family who had lived there before. The photograph was nearly white from the sun and I wondered who they were and where they had gone. The night was cold and a wind blew in from the seas. It whistled beneath the wooden door frames and windowsills and brought with it the howls of dogs and cars. It was so much warmer than the open land, and at least here there was a toilet and a roof over our heads.

Early in the morning, when the birds had started to sing, the people unfolded themselves from their sleeping positions and prayed. There was nothing to do but wait. Each day the smuggler returned from wherever he’d been hiding and informed us about the conditions of the weather and the sea. We couldn’t risk crossing while the wind was so strong. When he left, people talked for a while, telling stories of the ones who never made it across to Greece, of whole families, men and women and children, lost at sea. I didn’t join these conversations; I listened and waited for silence to return. Afra sat on a wicker chair by the window, her head twitching slightly to the left or to the right, listening to everything.

When I went over to her she said, ‘Nuri, I don’t want to go.’

‘We can’t stay here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if we do we’ll live in the camps forever. Is that what you want?’

‘I don’t want anything anymore.’

‘Our life will be stuck. How will I work?’

She didn’t reply.

‘We’ve started the journey – there’s no point giving up now.’

She grunted.

‘And Mustafa is waiting for us. Don’t you want to see Dahab? Don’t you want to be settled and safe? I’m tired of living like this.’

‘I’m scared of the water,’ she said finally.

‘You’re scared of everything.’

‘That’s not true.’

That’s when I noticed the little boy, about seven or eight, sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling a marble across the tiles. There was something odd about him, as if he was far away, lost in his own world. He seemed to be there alone.

Later, when I went outside to stand on the balcony, the boy followed me. He stood beside me for a while, shifting from foot to foot, picking his nose, wiping it on the back of his jeans.

‘Will we fall into the water?’ he said, and he looked up at me with wide eyes, just like Sami would have done.

‘No.’

‘Like the other people?’

‘No.’

‘Will the wind take the boat? Will the boat turn over into the water?’

‘No. But if it does we’ll have life jackets. We’ll be all right.’

‘And Allah – have mercy on us – will he help us?’

‘Yes. Allah will help us.’

‘My name is Mohammed,’ the boy said.

I held out my hand and he shook it like a little man.

‘Nice to meet you, Mohammed. I am Nuri.’

The boy looked up at me again, this time his eyes wider, full of fear. ‘But why didn’t he help the boys when they took off their heads?’

‘Who took their heads off?’

‘When they stood in a line and waited. They weren’t wearing black. That’s why. My dad said it was because they weren’t wearing black. I was wearing black. See?’

He tugged at his black, stained T-shirt.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Then my dad gave me a key and said go to a house, and he told me where it was, and he said to go inside and lock the door. But when I got there the house didn’t have a door.’ He took a key out of his back pocket and showed it to me, as if he was still expecting to find the door that the key would fit. Then he tucked it again into his pocket.

‘But Allah will help us in the water? Because in the water they can’t find us.’

‘Yes, he will help us cross the sea.’

Mohammed’s shoulders softened and he stayed beside me for a while with his black jeans and black top and black fingernails and black eyes. As the days passed I realised that nobody else spoke to Mohammed and after our conversation on the balcony, he always glanced over at me, constantly checking to see where I was. I think I made him feel safe.

On the third day, I went for a walk. There was a concrete pathway that led deep into a wood, and if you kept walking eventually the path opened out to the big buildings. There were not many clouds, the weather was very similar to Syria, maybe slightly cooler. The sky was full of fog from the pollution, especially in the morning, a thick grey mist that lurked above the water and above the streets and the mist was not clean like a winter frost, it was full of the smells of the city and its people.

On the fourth day, Elias decided to join me on my walk. He rarely spoke unless he was going to say something about the weather, which was more or less the same every day anyway, but he commented on the tiny changes, like, ‘The mist is thicker this morning,’ or, ‘There is a bitter wind this evening.’ He always said the most obvious things, but the weather became important to us as we waited and watched for signs that the sea would be calm, so that we could continue our journey.

As we walked, I became aware of other things too, like the cats, which reminded me of Aleppo; how they woke up from their sleepy state and waited all day in the shadows for food. And the street dogs too, unpredictable and unkempt, with their old scars and new wounds, from injuries or disease or accidents. They all looked similar with light or sometimes dark brown coats. They were everywhere: wandering into alleys and side streets behind the restaurants, waiting for food, or walking through traffic. In the night, the wild dogs of Istanbul would call to one another across the city. And in the morning they rested under chairs and tables in front of the coffee shops on Taksim Square. Often they just lay dozing, recovering from the night’s activities. Most people didn’t seem to notice them, but the dogs watched everyone, with half-moon eyes and heads resting on paws: they watched the children darting through traffic tapping on car windows, trying to sell bottles of water to passers-by.