The Beekeeper of Aleppo(40)

There is something desperate in her voice, questions that she is not asking, and I can’t bear the smell of the rose perfume on her body.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ I say, and I remove her hand from my chest, allowing the flower to drop onto the bed.

Later, after I have prayed and dressed Afra, Lucy Fisher arrives. She is in a hurry today, holding two rucksacks as if she is going away somewhere. This time there is another woman with her who I think is a translator; she is dark-skinned and round and holds an old-fashioned handbag.

We sit in the kitchen for just ten minutes. She gives me the new letter with the B&B address printed clearly on it and tells me the date and time of the asylum interview.

‘You have five days,’ she says, ‘to prepare.’

‘As if I am taking an exam,’ I say, and smile. But her face is very serious. She explains that Afra and Diomande will each have their own translators, and there will be one on hand for me too.

‘Diomande’s interview is on the same day?’ I say.

‘Yes, you can travel there together. It’s in South London.’ She continues to talk, opening a map, pointing out the location, opening another train map, explaining things to me, but I’m not really listening. I want to tell her about Diomande’s wings. I want to tell her about Mohammed and the keys, but I’m afraid of her reaction. And then, from the window, something catches my eye. White planes searing through the sky. Too many to count. I hear a whistle followed by a rumbling, as though the world has ripped open. I rush to the window: bombs are falling, planes are circling. The light is too strong, I shield my eyes. The sound is too loud, I cover my ears.

I feel a hand on my shoulder.

‘Mr Ibrahim?’ I hear.

I turn and Lucy Fisher is standing behind me.

‘Are you OK?’

‘The planes,’ I say.

‘The planes?’

I point at the white planes in the sky.

There is a pause and I hear Lucy Fisher exhale. ‘Look,’ she says, very gently. ‘Look, Mr Ibrahim. Look carefully. They are birds.’

I look again and I see seagulls. Lucy Fisher is right. There are no planes circling, only a passenger plane far away, appearing through a wisp of clouds, and above us only seagulls.

‘You see?’ she says.

I nod and she leads me back to my chair.

Lucy Fisher is a very practical woman and gets back to what she was saying almost immediately, after only a slight hesitation and a sip of water. She wants to make sure that everything is in place. And as she runs the tip of a pencil along one of the train lines, I feel grounded, calmer. She says names of places that I’ve never heard of before, and she consults the other map and I imagine the roads and the houses and the side streets and the parks and the people. I imagine what it will feel like to go deeper into the country, away from the sea.

*

In the evening we sit in the living room. The Moroccan man is helping Diomande prepare for the asylum interview. They are sitting opposite each other at the dining table, and Diomande has a piece of paper and a pen in front of him so that he can make notes.

‘I want you to explain why you leave your country,’ the Moroccan man says. And Diomande begins to talk, the same story he told us before, but this time with added detail. He mentions the names of his mother and sisters, he describes his job in Gabon and their financial situation and then he is talking about history and politics, about French colonisation, independence in 1960, civil unrest and civil war, increasing poverty. He talks about how C?te d’Ivoire was once a place of economic prosperity and stability, and how things changed after the death of the nation’s first president. He goes on and I stop listening, until the Moroccan man interrupts him.

‘I think, Diomande, that they will want to hear your story.’

‘This my story!’ Diomande insists. ‘How else will they understand if I don’t tell it?’

‘Maybe they know these things.’

‘Maybe they not know. If they not know, how they will understand why I need to be here?’

‘You tell your story. Why you leave.’

‘I am explaining these things!’ Diomande is angry now, and I see that he is sitting more upright. His anger has somehow straightened his spine.

The Moroccan man shakes his head. ‘This anger will not help your case,’ he says. ‘You must make your story. What was your life? How was life there for you and sisters and mother? Only this, Diomande! This is not a history lesson!’

They start the mock interview again. Afra is sitting on the armchair, with the sketch-pad and colouring pencils on her lap, rolling the marble around in her fingers; I watch the vein of the marble, twisting and brightening in the lamplight, and their voices fade into the background. I drift away from the conversation and I begin to think about the bees. I can see them in the summer sky, heading up and out to find the plants and flowers. I almost hear their song. I can smell the honey and see the glimmer of the combs in the sunlight. My eyes begin to close but I see Afra opening the sketch-pad, running her fingers over white paper, taking a purple pencil out of the box.

I wake up to the sound of the marble again, rolling along the floorboards. I know immediately that Mohammed is here and I take a moment to open my eyes, and when I do he is sitting on the floor cross-legged and there is a key beside him.

‘You found the key, Mohammed?’ I say to him.