The Beekeeper of Aleppo(77)

I am standing a little away from them by the glass doors, watching them, and I think about the little boy who never existed and how he had filled the black void that Sami had left. Sometimes we create such powerful illusions, so that we do not get lost in the darkness.

‘One day,’ I hear Mustafa say. ‘One day we will go back to Aleppo and rebuild the apiaries and bring the bees back to life.’

But it is Afra’s face that brings me to life, standing here in this tiny garden like she stood in Mustafa’s courtyard in Aleppo, her eyes so full of sadness and hope, so full of darkness and light.

She is looking up at something. Among the blossoms of the cherry tree, three hoopoe birds perch on a branch, checking out their surroundings, with their majestic crown of feathers and curved beaks and stripy wings. Here they are, migrants from the east, in this small town by the sea.

‘Do you see them?’ I hear her say. ‘They have come to find us!’

We are all looking up now, and, all at once, they open their black and white wings and set off together into the unbroken sky.