The Beekeeper of Aleppo(38)

I made my way to the old asylum. A teenage boy was sitting on the steps with headphones on, his head against the wall, eyes closed. I nudged him awake to ask him if he’d seen anyone who could be Mohammed. But the boy’s head rocked on his shoulders, and his eyes opened only ever so slightly. I could hear children playing on one of the upper floors, faint echoes of laughter, and I followed the laughter through the corridors to the fourth-floor camps, looking into each room; inside there were blankets hanging as partitions, shoes in neat rows, here and there I glimpsed someone’s hair, or a leg or an arm. I called out, ‘Mohammed!’ and an old man with a gruff voice replied, ‘Yes!’ and then, ‘What do you want? I am here! Have you come to take me?’

I could still hear him as I made my way down the corridor. The children were in the last room, which was full of toys and board games and balloons. A few NGO workers were kneeling next to the younger ones. One of them held a baby in her arms. She caught my eye and came to greet me.

‘This is the children’s centre,’ she said, pronouncing the words very slowly.

‘Clearly,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for my son.’

‘Name?’

‘Mohammed.’

‘How old?’

‘Seven.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘He has black hair and black eyes. Not brown. Black like the sky at night.’

I could see that she was searching her mind for a moment, but then she shook her head. ‘Try not to worry – he’ll turn up, they always do, and when he does you can give him these.’ With her free hand she rummaged through a plastic container and retrieved a box of coloured pencils attached to a notepad. I thanked her and left, and this time as I headed back down the corridor and down the stairs, I could almost see the ghosts of those people, not so long ago, gagged and chained to their beds. I heard echoes now, not of the children’s laughter, but other sounds, at the edges of the imagination, where humans cease to be human.

I made my way out of there quickly, down the stairs and out into the silver light and down to the port. The café was full of people, and I sat for a while to charge my phone and have a coffee, watching the two women, who I realised were mother and daughter, bringing out glasses of water and tea and coffee, interacting with the refugees, trying to communicate as best they could in the little Arabic or Farsi they had picked up. On this day, the father and son were also there, the son a smaller version of his dad, minus the moustache. I allowed myself to relax a bit, and lean back in the chair and close my eyes, listening to the conversations going on around me and to the distant thunder over the sea.

I waited there until the afternoon, but there was no sign of Mohammed. At four o’clock I went to the registration centre to find out if the authorities had checked the papers and granted clearance. There were hundreds of people gathered around a flustered man who was standing on a stool, holding up cards and calling out names. He didn’t call ours, but I was pleased because I didn’t want to leave without Mohammed.

The next day passed in a similar way – the sun dried up the rain and the wind was much warmer. It was as if the darkness had been washed away, and even though there were more people streaming onto the island, tossed in by the waves, and fewer people leaving, the place somehow seemed more peaceful. Maybe there was just so much noise that it all blended together and became like the drumming of rain or the sound of waves or the buzzing of the flies around the octopus, and away from the campsite the soil smelt fresh and sweet, and the trees were beginning to blossom and bear fruit.

And there was still no sign of Mohammed.

By the evening of the next day I started to lose hope. I took the coloured pencils out of their packaging.

‘What is that?’ Afra said, her ear tuned into the sound. ‘What are you opening?’

‘Pencils.’

‘Coloured ones?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there paper?’

‘Yes, a notepad.’

‘Can I have it?’

I placed all the pencils in front of her in a row and led her hand to them. I opened the notepad and placed it on her lap.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

I lay back and stared up at the ceiling of the cabin, at the spiders and insects and cobwebs that had gathered in the corners. I listened to the soft conversations through the sheets and out in the alleys, and the pencils swishing over paper.

Hours later, when it was almost dark, Afra finally spoke. ‘I made this for you,’ she said.

The picture she had drawn was so different from her usual artwork – a flower-filled field overlooked by a single tree.

‘But how did you draw this?’ I said.

‘I can feel the pencil marks on the paper.’

I looked at the picture again. The colours were wild – the tree blue, the sky red. The lines were broken, leaves and flowers out of place, and yet it held a beauty that was mesmerising and indescribable, like an image in a dream, like a picture of a world that is beyond our imagination.

The following afternoon my name was called out at the registration centre. I was given the cards and permission to leave the island for Athens: Nuri Ibrahim, Afra Ibrahim, and Sami Ibrahim. My stomach turned when I looked at Sami’s name, printed so clearly on the piece of paper in my hand. Sami. Sami Ibrahim. As if he was still among us.