The Beekeeper of Aleppo(37)

Then I went outside to cook the octopus. I put the twigs and branches in a pile on the ground; I held the octopus on a branch above the fire. It took a lot longer than I thought, even though the octopus was already slightly cooked from hanging in the sun.

When it was soft enough and cool enough, I tore it into pieces and took it in to Afra. She devoured it, licking her fingers, thanking me for making it, asking me where I found such a thing.

‘Did you get it from the sea yourself?’

‘No!’ I laughed.

‘But you couldn’t have bought it – it’s far too expensive!’

‘I found it,’ I said.

‘What, you were walking along, minding your own business, and you just found an octopus?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and she laughed from her stomach, her eyes laughing too.

I looked through the doorway, anxious, waiting for Mohammed.

Afra lay her head on some of the blankets and closed her eyes without saying another word. I lay down beside her, and after a while I heard gates opening and closing, distant doors locking. On the other side of the partition the child was crying, her father muttering words of reassurance. ‘No, the men with the guns won’t kill us. Don’t worry at all! No, they won’t. I promise.’

‘But they might shoot us.’

The man laughed now. ‘No. They’re here to help us. Just close your eyes now. Close your eyes and think of all the things you love.’

‘Like my bicycle at home?’

‘Yes, that’s good. Keep thinking about your bicycle.’

There was silence for a long time and after a while I heard the girl speak again, but this time her voice was softer, calmer.

‘Daddy,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘I felt it.’

‘What did you feel?’

‘I felt Mummy stroking my hair.’

And then neither of them spoke again, but I could almost feel this man’s heart drop in the silence. Further away there was banter, people talking and laughing. There was no shouting tonight.

I looked at the octopus and the Nutella and the bread, all placed on the floor in case Mohammed came back in the night – he would see the food and know it was for him. But the camp was closed now. I was locked in and Mohammed locked out. I got up and made my way through the grid of boxes in the dark, to the edge of the camp until I found the entrance. There were two soldiers standing at the gate, holding guns.

‘Can I help you?’ one said.

‘I need to go out.’

‘It’s too late now. You can go in the morning.’

‘So I’m locked in? Like a prisoner?’

The man said nothing in response and didn’t avert his eyes either.

‘I need to find my son!’

‘You can find him in the morning.’

‘But I have no idea where he is.’

‘How far do you think he went? This is an island!’

‘But he might be alone and scared.’

The soldiers were having none of it. They sent me away and I tried to go back to the cabin, but it was difficult in the dark, every corner was the same, and I hadn’t counted the grids so that I could find my way. Maybe this was what happened to Mohammed? Maybe he ventured out without counting and couldn’t find his way back? Maybe another family had taken him in? I decided to lie down on the ground, by the doorway of another cabin, so that I was close to the warmth of their gas fire.

I woke up in the morning to the sound of rain on the metal roofs of the cabins. I was drenched and I got up and somehow managed to find my way back to Afra. I recognised a pink bedsheet hanging out on one of the lines. The rain was pounding down. Flies had gotten in and were all over the octopus.

Afra was already awake. She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling as if she was looking at the stars, and twirling the marble in her fingers, just as Mohammed had done.

‘Where did you go?’ she said.

‘I went out and got lost.’

‘I didn’t sleep last night. The rain started, and all I could hear and see in my head was rain.’

I swept my hand over the octopus and the flies dispersed, buzzing around our section of the cabin, making rings around one another and then returning to the octopus like magnets.

‘Are you hungry?’ I said.

‘You want me to share the octopus with the flies?’

‘No,’ I laughed. ‘We have bread and chocolate spread.’

I took the bread out of the paper bag and tore it into pieces, leaving some for Mohammed. Then I opened the Nutella, considering how I would spread it onto the bread without a knife. Afra said we could dip the bread into the chocolate.

Later that morning, when the rain finally stopped, I headed out again to look for Mohammed. At first I wandered around the enclosure, making my way through the people-containers, the rows and rows of the compound, the walkways, beneath the hanging clothes, calling out Mohammed’s name. The ground was saturated with water – even the shoes outside the doorways were full of water. The white gravel had been able to soak up only a certain amount. But this rain felt like it was coming out of the sea. The wire mesh, and everything now, was covered in a sheen of silver, like shining liquid metal, making the place seem even more like a prison than before, and now that the sun had come out, there were reflections and splashes of light.