The Beekeeper of Aleppo(20)

There were whole families wandering through the streets, some barefoot, sometimes sitting by the sidewalk when they became tired of walking, and other refugees on the market stalls, trying to make enough money to move on from here, selling things that people couldn’t live without: phone chargers, life jackets, cigarettes.

Sometimes I forgot that I was one of these people. Like the dogs, I sat everyday on the same bench and watched the yellow cabs circling the red poppies on the roundabout. I took in the smells from the grill houses and kebab shops, with their spits and wood fires, and the wonderful smells of the dough rings, fresh from the ovens, or from the vendors who circled the square each day. There were raw burgers in glass display cases and in the storefront windows women in traditional dress made hand-rolled crêpes. I watched how the refugee children learnt to adjust, how they mastered the art of survival – these little entrepreneurs, the lucky ones. What would Sami have thought of these streets? Of the market stalls and restaurants and streetlights on Istiklal Avenue, just down the road from the slums and ghettos. He would have dragged me by the hand into the chocolatiers, and Afra would have loved the boutiques, bookstores and patisseries.

From the day we arrived at the smuggler’s apartment, Afra again refused to go outside. When I returned to her after walking the streets, I would tell her about the Ottoman buildings, about the cars and the noise and the chaos and the food and the dogs. If I had some change, I would buy her a dough ring with sesame seeds. She loved them, especially when they were still warm, and she would break it in half to share with me. Afra would never eat anything without sharing it – that was her way. I didn’t tell her about the children on the streets. I didn’t want her to see them in her mind’s eye, to become trapped with them in the inescapable tunnels of her mind.

In the night, when the street dogs woke up, Afra was restless. She slept in the adjoining bedroom with the other women. Every night she dabbed the rose perfume on the soft skin of her wrists and neck as if she was going somewhere in the dark. I had to share a room with ten other men. I missed Afra. It was the first time in years that I hadn’t slept beside her. I missed her silent breathing. I missed resting my hand on her chest to feel her heartbeat. I didn’t sleep much. I thought about my wife. I knew that there were times in the night when she would forget that she wasn’t in Aleppo. Her mind would play tricks on her, and she would walk out into the corridor. I would recognise the sound of her footsteps on the tiles and I’d get up to greet her in the high-ceilinged hallway with the long window.

‘Nuri, is that you? I can’t sleep. Are you awake?’

‘I am now.’

‘I can’t sleep. I want to go for a walk.’

‘It’s late. It’s not safe now. We’ll go tomorrow.’

‘I want to go to see Khamid with his big pants hanging on the washing line.’

Khamid was her great-uncle. He lived down the road opposite a dry field with a metal swing and slide. In the evenings Afra used to take Sami to the swing and they would laugh about Khamid’s giant pants.

I would hold her face in my palms, kiss one eyelid, then the other. Part of me wished I could kill her with those kisses, put her to sleep forever. Her mind terrified me. What she could see, what she could remember, locked up behind her eyes.

After a few days I tried to find some work. There were so many refugees selling life jackets and cigarettes on the streets, everyone working illegally because they had no permits to be there. It wasn’t too difficult to find a job washing cars. Elias joined me. We worked together, scrubbing away the soot and grit of the city. Sometimes we stole small things from the boot or the glove compartment, things that the customers were unlikely to notice or care too much about – packets of chewing gum, half-drunk bottles of water, some loose change. Elias took cigarette butts from the ashtrays. The boss was a sixty-year-old Turkish man who smoked sixty cigarettes a day and paid us very little, but it had already been three weeks since we arrived in Istanbul and the weather was still bad so a bit of extra money and something to pass the time did us both some good.

One afternoon, after finishing work at the car wash, I walked around Taksim Square until I found an Internet café. My phone wasn’t working and I wanted to see if Mustafa had tried to get hold of me. I knew that if he was alive and well he would have sent a message, and sure enough, when I logged into my account, there were three emails from him.

*

22/11/2015





My dear Nuri,

I hope you found the letter I left for you. I have been thinking of you and Afra every day. I am sorry that I had to leave without saying goodbye. If I stayed they would have found me and killed me. I hope you understand and can forgive me.

Each and every day I wonder how we got here, how life can be so cruel. Much of the time I can’t stand to be alive. The thoughts I have poison me and I am alone with them. I know that every other person here is trapped in their own hell – there is one man who holds his knees and rocks himself all through the night, and he sings, Nuri. He sings a lullaby that freezes my heart. I want to ask him who he once sang it to, or who it was that sang it to him. But I am afraid of his answer, and so I offer him cigarettes instead, it’s all I can do, because he stops singing for a few minutes while he smokes. I wish I could escape my mind, that I could be free of this world and everything I have known and seen in the last few years. And the children who have survived – what will become of them? How will they be able to live in this world?