The Beekeeper of Aleppo(23)

We have another meeting with Lucy Fisher later that afternoon, so find ourselves back where we were before, sitting opposite her at the kitchen table. Afra still won’t turn to face her, and clasps her hands on the table, looking like she’s staring out of the window.

Lucy Fisher seems happier today. She has brought with her the paperwork to prove that we are claiming asylum. She is very efficient – she ticks boxes and makes quick notes in a ring binder.

‘I’m glad we don’t need a translator for you,’ she says, preoccupied, glancing up at me quickly with her big blue eyes. Her hair is down today. She has very soft fine hair which reminds me of feathers, unlike Afra’s, which is thick and heavy and was once as black as tar.

There is a lightness about Lucy Fisher that I like. She is proud of herself for keeping things in order. And when things do not go as she wishes, her face fires up and she becomes beautiful. I wonder if she knows this. Right now though, she is calm and her face is ordinary. She reminds me of a newsreader. Her voice does too. Remembering her reaction the other day, I try to imagine how many people she has worked with, how many she has seen sent back, how many questions people have asked her, how everyone must hold on to her as if she is a lifeboat on a stormy sea.

‘Will you be sending the Moroccan man away?’ I say.

‘Which one?’ she says.

‘The old man.’

‘Hazim?’ she says.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid that’s confidential information. I’m not permitted to discuss any of the clients’ cases. And not yours either.’ She smiles at me again and closes the file before continuing. ‘So what you need to do is take this letter to the GP’s office, the address is on this piece of paper.’ She points at it. ‘You’ll have no problem,’ she says, ‘and when you’re there you can make an appointment for your wife, and also for yourself. It might be a good idea to have a quick check-up.’ She glances at Afra, and I can see that my wife is uncomfortable.

‘When will we have the interview?’ I say so that her eyes return to me.

‘I’ll be in contact again soon with a date for the asylum interview. I suggest you start preparing. Think about your story, how you got here, what happened along the way. They will ask you all sorts of questions and you need to be ready, because they will be emotionally difficult to answer.’

I don’t say anything.

‘Have you been thinking about it?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course. I think about it all the time.’ And again I see something more real in her than the straight-talking newsreader.

She rubs the back of her right hand over her eye, smudging the make-up a bit, in the way a young girl might. ‘It’s just they’ll pounce on anything,’ she says, ‘especially if your story’s a mess.’

I nod, feeling worried but she doesn’t seem to notice my concern. She glances at her watch to let me know that the meeting is over. Afra and I get up to leave.

Next to see her is Diomande. We swap places at the door and he goes in and sits down, with his folded-up wings poking under his T-shirt. He is much more talkative than I am. He greets her warmly in his broken English and starts immediately to talk about where he’s from, how he got here. Before she’s even asked him anything, he’s jabbering away. And I can still hear his voice even from the end of the corridor, a charging energetic ramble, and something about it reminds me of a galloping horse.

Afra tells me she is tired, so I take her to the bedroom and she sits on the edge of the bed, facing the window, just like she used to in our house in Aleppo. I watch her for a while, wanting to say something to her, but no words come to my mind, so I head downstairs.

The Moroccan man isn’t in the living room. I think he heads out during the day and wanders around the shops, speaking to people, picking up new words, observing and learning things along the way. There are a few others in here: the Afghan woman with the handwoven hijab. She is making something with some blue string. There is nothing much to do but sit in the living room and watch the TV. A politician with a face like a frog is speaking.

We literally have opened up the door unconditionally, without being able to secure-check anybody … the Dusseldorf bomb plot had been uncovered, all right – a very, very worrying plan for mass attacks along the style of Paris or Brussels. All of those people came into Germany last year posing as refugees.

My face heats up. I change the channel.

This guy’s admitted cheating six times! But it’s only on breaks! And you want him gone! Ashley’s on The Jeremy Kyle Show, ladies and gentlemen!

I turn off the TV and the room plunges into silence. Nobody seems to care.

I wander over to the computer desk and sit down. I think of the field in Aleppo before the fire, when the bees hovered above the land like clouds, humming their song. I can see Mustafa taking a comb out of a hive, inspecting it closely, dipping a finger into the honey, tasting it. That was our paradise, at the edge of the desert and the edge of the city.

I look at my face on the dark screen, thinking of what to write – Mustafa, I believe I am unwell. I have no dreams left.

The landlady comes in and begins to clean the living room with a bright yellow duster. She tries to reach the cobwebs in the corners, tiptoeing with her platform shoes and skinny elephant legs, and so I get up and offer to do it for her. I spend the afternoon dusting the walls and tables and cabinets in the living room and any of the rooms upstairs that have been left open. I get a glimpse into some of the other residents’ lives. Some have made their beds, while others have left their rooms in a mess. Some have trinkets on their bedside cabinets, precious things from a past life, photographs on the dresser. Propped up without frames. I don’t touch anything.