The Beekeeper of Aleppo(55)

I lay down next to Afra and pretended to close my eyes, but I watched Nadim and the boys. At ten o’clock on the dot Nadim got up and went into the woods. Three minutes later the boys followed. I got up and followed them too, trying to keep enough distance between us so that they would not see me, while at the same time staying close enough so that I would not lose them.

They took sharp and unexpected turns, as if they were following an invisible path, and eventually reached a different clearing in the woods than before. Here, there was trash everywhere, piles and piles of it; a dried-up pond had become a rubbish dump. In the middle of a concrete well there was a stagnant fountain surrounded by the pipes of an ancient watering system. Just beyond this, all the bushes in a rose garden were dead. Drug addicts and dealers hovered around the well, syringes lay strewn on the ground. People sat on the roof of a maintenance building, and scattered around were mattresses and boxes – the remnants of a past life.

The boys stood by the well and they were soon approached by a man who slipped some money into Ryad’s hand. Then the boys split up. Ali took the path to the right of the fountain, and Ryad waited until another man came shortly after to collect him, and they went off together in the opposite direction. I stood there for a while, and people started to notice me. Nadim was nowhere to be seen, he must have slipped away. I couldn’t stay here too long. I had to leave this place, go back to the campsite.

So I began to make my way there, taking wrong turns and retracing my steps. When I heard the sound of children kicking a ball I knew I was close, and shortly after I saw the light of the campfire. I found Angeliki sitting by the tree again beside Afra. The notepad and colouring pencils were in her lap, her head pressed against the bark of the tree, fast asleep. Afra was also asleep, curled up on her side in a foetal position with her head resting on both hands. I could feel that someone was watching me, and when I turned around I saw that Nadim was back on the step of the statue, smoking and staring at me.

He raised a hand, signalling for me to come over, and I went and sat beside him on the step.

‘I have something to give you,’ he said.

‘I don’t need anything.’

‘Everybody needs something,’ he said, ‘especially here.’

‘Not me.’

‘Just hold out your hand,’ he said.

I watched him without blinking.

‘Come on!’ he said. ‘Hold out your hand. Don’t be scared. It’s not bad, I promise.’

He took my hand and opened up my palm.

‘Now close your eyes.’

This thing had gone too far now. I attempted to pull my hand away, but Nadim tightened his grip. ‘Come on. Just close your eyes,’ he said with a grin, his eyes sparkling in the firelight.

‘No way,’ I said, and attempted to pull my hand back with force, without making a scene. But what happened next was so sudden and unexpected that it caused my mind and my body to freeze. I felt intense pain across my wrist. He’d slashed me with his knife. I held my arm up like a wounded bird, the blood coming out fast, dripping onto my trousers.

I rushed away from him, stumbling over to Afra, pleading with her to wake up. She opened her eyes, frightened, and I led her hand to my wrist. She sat up sharply, the blood now running through her fingers. She began to feel the wound with her hands and she pressed down on it, attempting, in vain, to stop the blood. Then I could feel another pair of hands. Angeliki had taken off her green headwrap and was twisting it around my wrist.

‘What happened?’ Afra said. I looked back toward the statue, but Nadim had disappeared.

Angeliki exhaled and sat down beneath the tree, her face full of anxiety. The blood was seeping through the layered material of the scarf, my arm throbbing. I lay down from exhaustion, but Angeliki was sitting upright. The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was her long neck, her polished cheekbones sharp in the dying light of the fire.

When I woke up, hours later, in the middle of the night, I saw that she was still sitting in the same position, her eyes scanning the darkness and the shadows.

‘Angeliki,’ I whispered, and she turned to me, wide awake. ‘Lie down here next to Afra. I’ll take over for a bit.’

‘You won’t fall asleep again?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She was hesitant for a moment, but then she lay down on the blanket next to Afra and closed her eyes.

‘Odysseus,’ she said out of nowhere, ‘he pass the island of Sirens. Do you know who the Sirens were?’ This was not a rhetorical question – she waited for me to reply, and she opened one eyelid, halfway, to make sure that I was listening. But I was in pain and I found it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

‘They will try to entice men to death with their song. If you hear their song they will take you. So, as they are pass the island, the men put wax in their ears to no hear the song, but Odysseus want to hear the Siren song because he had been told it is so beautiful. So do you know what they do?’

‘No.’

‘This very important. The men tie Odysseus to the mast of the ship – they tie him on so tight. He says for them to leave him tied there no matter how much he begs, until they are safe, far from the Sirens and their song.’

I didn’t respond. I held my bandaged arm, trying to ignore the heat of the pain, and looked out into the woods, into the things unseen lurking there.