51 pages • 1 hour read
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The book begins with the thoughts of the first-person narrator Nuri, the protagonist of the book. He is getting dressed and looking at his wife, Afra. She is blind. The dramatic first lines of the story are “I am scared of my wife’s eyes. She can’t see out and no one can see in” (1). Afra tells her husband that she has dreamt of bees and that she has pain behind her eyes. Nuri tells her they will see a doctor as soon as they get the papers. In the next section, Nuri reflects on the couple’s move from Aleppo, on the edge of the desert, to their current location, which is near the sea. He mentions messages on billboards that are unwelcoming to people like him and Afra. Nuri reflects on their fellow lodgers of different nationalities and mentions a removal center called Yarl’s Wood: “There are ten of us in this rundown B&B by the sea” (5). Gradually, it becomes clear that they are in England. Nuri dresses Afra and does her hair, which has been dyed blond. They are due to meet a social worker at 1 pm.
Summary: “Bronze”
Nuri describes his memories of life in Aleppo. They lived on a hill above the city, with a garden full of fruit trees and flowers, although these would die in the desert climate in summer. Nuri recalls his dedication to his hives of bees, who repaid his care with the pollination of the land “to keep us alive” (10). He describes his introduction to beekeeping by his cousin Mustafa when they were at university. They built up the colonies until they had five hundred, producing tons of honey. The bees were very important to Nuri. “There were so many bees, and they made me feel alive” (11). Mustafa opened a shop selling honey-based products, with the future of his beloved daughter, Aya, in mind.
The bees were drought-resistant, even as the climate became harsher, and farmers struggled. Nuri recalls Afra’s visit to the bees with their baby son, Sami, amongst the dust storms and the drought. The family would have lunch with Mustafa and his wife and children, Firas and Aya, every Saturday. Nuri alludes to the eventual civil war when he mentions, “Mustafa began to fear the worst before I did” (13). They had conversations about how life could have been different, and looking back, Nuri realizes that Mustafa had been suffering premonitions about a fearful future. Nuri’s thoughts return to happier scenes of the three children Firas, Aya and Sami playing together around the dining table. While cooking or eating, Mustafa was happy, but after dark, he would turn to talk of the worsening political situation. In March of that year, 2011, the civil war in Syria started, with protests in Damascus leading to violence. To dispel the negativity, Mustafa would return to thoughts of cooking and the two families would pass the time happily together: “Life was close enough to normal for us to forget our doubts” (17).
Nuri turns to “when the trouble first started” (17). Mustafa had sent his wife and daughter to England, where he had a friend. Mustafa had stayed behind in Syria for the sake of the beekeeping. After they left, Mustafa, Firas and Nuri would sit and watch the smoke from bombs rising in the distance and discuss smugglers who could get them to the UK. One night in late summer, vandals burnt down all the hives and bees.
Nuri describes the Queiq River at the bottom of the hill where he lived in southern Aleppo. The last time he saw it, the bodies of men and boys who had been shot were being pulled from the river. This makes him reflect on how Afra would have swum to the bottom to find him, had he been killed. Such was her passion for her husband and her passion for life, “before they blinded her” (20). He follows with a long description of her art, her beauty and her vivacity. Most of all, he loves her laugh.
After the bees were burnt, Firas went missing. Mustafa, Nuri and Firas had been about to leave Aleppo, so Mustafa and Nuri waited for Firas to return. Mustafa worked in a morgue. One day Nuri found Firas, dead, having been pulled from the river. Nuri took his nephew’s body to the morgue, where Mustafa closed his son’s eyes and noted in his book:
Name: My beautiful boy
Cause of death: This broken world (23).
The last sentence of this chapter is: “Exactly a week after this, Sami was killed” (23).
Chapter 2 Summary
Nuri returns to the present, and the social worker’s visit to the B&B. She seems friendly and tells Nuri that he needs to have his story clear for the immigration officer in order for him and Afra to be accepted as asylum seekers instead of being sent back to Syria, Turkey, or Greece, which they have passed through to reach England. Nuri starts to feel flustered and threatened, despite the social worker’s pleasantness. Nuri thinks: “I wish I knew who my enemy was” (28).
Nuri finds and rescues a wingless bee in the garden, and talks about it with the Moroccan lodger, who has an issue with male lodgers of other nationalities who stand up to urinate.
Nuri checks his emails, hoping for a message from Mustafa who is waiting for him in Yorkshire in the north of England. He waits until the room is empty and, looking out into the garden, sees a boy. The boy is called Mohammed and greets him as “Uncle Nuri.” Nuri asks how Mohammed found him and the boy says he does not like the sea. There is a smell of lemons, which takes Nuri back to Aleppo.
Summary: “Aleppo”
Remembering the time after the deaths of Firas and Sami, Nuri says everyone had left Aleppo, but Afra would not leave. Nuri went to Mustafa’s house and found a letter explaining that he had shot three men out of four whom he had seen shooting four boys. Because of this, Mustafa knew his life was in danger and he left for England without saying goodbye to Nuri. He exhorted Nuri to be strong and follow him, with Afra. Nuri cried and kept the letter and a photograph of him and Mustafa in their younger days. Back at home, Afra had made bread, and she asked Nuri “What did you see?” (39), as she often did. She was already blind. Nuri described to her how he saw two armed men shoot an eight-year-old boy in the head and how his mother had come out into the street screaming but unable to get to him. Afra asked Nuri about the boy’s clothes and his hair and eye color. “She was postponing the inevitable, holding on to the living boy for as long as possible, keeping him alive” (42). Nuri wished he could erase this image from his mind. Afra hugged him.
Nuri remembers lying in the darkness in their home, which had lost its roof to a bomb and was open to the sky. He wished Afra would make love with him, something that had not happened since Sami died. She insisted on staying in Aleppo and not leaving him. The next morning, he went out to find some food, passing through the devastated city. Two soldiers stopped him and tried to force him to take a machine gun. Nuri implored them to give him a few more days before he would work for them, as his wife was very ill. The soldiers agreed, threatening death if he did not comply. Back home, he explained to Afra that they needed to leave immediately. She went and lay down. He spent the rest of the day feeling lost and alone. At midnight, the couple heard footsteps and men’s laughter, so Nuri took Afra to their hideout. In the total darkness, Nuri managed to make Afra laugh, then cry, before she fell asleep. She woke up and told Nuri she loved him. They returned to the house, which they discovered had been trashed and the walls graffitied: “We win or we die” (51). Sami’s broken toys were strewn everywhere. Despite being unable to see, Afra was aware of what had happened, and said she was ready to leave.
Chapter 3 Summary
The narrative returns to England. Nuri wakes up in the damp garden. Afra has been looking for him and has managed to dress herself. He goes out for a walk and watches a boy playing in the sand. Then he looks at the asylum seeker documentation and contemplates the words “UK. Any part (of your country). Persecution.” Returning to the B&B, he thinks about the other occupants and their mixed backgrounds. Afra exhorts him to check if Mustafa has sent an email, but Nuri avoids doing so. He encourages her to come outside and see the town, saying, “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.” She refuses. They lie in bed and Nuri picks up Mohammed’s marble from the floor. He lies awake, afraid of the night.
Summary: “Night”
Returning to his memories of Syria, Nuri thinks about the night they waited in the old city for the smuggler. A dead man had lain next to them, his phone screen lighting up. Afra recalled the place as beautiful and connected it with Sami. She was living in her memories, “an illusion, a vision of life, of Aleppo” (66). Nuri took the dead man’s phone. The smuggler arrived, disguised as a fighter from Assad’s regime in order to avoid being caught by the “shahiba”—armed gangs supporting the regime. Afra and Nuri sat in the back of the truck with a cow, and there, the dead man’s phone rang. Nuri answered it to find the man’s wife asking for him. The smuggler took the phone away. They drove through the old city of Aleppo, divided by the river into the western neighborhoods held by the government and the eastern strongholds of the rebels. Nuri contemplated all that would be lost of Syrian history, homes, families and sons, which brought his thoughts back to Sami.
Their journey towards the border continued. An old man warned them of a sniper up ahead, so the smuggler took a detour. Nuri joined Afra in her memories of a beautiful, untouched Syrian countryside and its scents and sounds. He recalled the bees and Mustafa’s elation at their delicious honey. The memory led once again back to Sami. Nuri awoke from his reverie to find Afra telling him he had been crying, and he held her close to him for a short while. They reached the border with Turkey at the Asi River. Here they had to cross the river in a large saucepan pulled by a cable. A man was forcing his daughter to cross this way, and after she had crossed, the man collapsed in tears. Nuri looked back at his country and the path that could take him back.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The narrative structure of the book is established from the first chapter, which begins in England in the present, and then moves to the past through a link, which is always a word depicting a symbol or theme in the following flashback. These flashbacks are in chronological order, such that there are two parallel narratives in each chapter/flashback. The first section of the story is based on the flashbacks that depict Syria, before Nuri and Afra escape to Turkey.
From the very beginning, the unsettling effect of the past trauma and current situation of the protagonists is established. The first lines “I am scared of my wife’s eyes. She can’t see out and no one can see in,” (1) set up the intrigue that permeates the story as the events prior to the couple’s present situation are slowly revealed. The mention of colored paint on Afra’s fingertips is a hint that she used to be able to see and is also a contrast with the “grey stones” of her eyes now. The themes of color, light and darkness are central to the book, reflecting the before and after of the story’s most traumatizing events.
The beginning of Chapter 1 also introduces the dynamic in the relationship between Nuri and his wife: “I am so tired of dressing her” (1). Nuri is clearly a sensitive man, very aware of his surroundings, which he describes in great detail, and the feelings of others. Yet his wife’s blindness is at once a burden and a relief to him, as she cannot see where they are: “I’m glad she is blind” (3). Another unsettling aspect of Nuri’s memories and character is the reference to killing a man with a bat. Soon after, he is reminiscing about his son, Sami, and another boy, Mohammed. All these mixed and fleeting images create the impression of a troubled mind, haunted by the past and uneasy in the present.
The first flashback begins before the war in Syria started and depicts an idyllic rural life on the outskirts of Aleppo, where flora and fauna thrive, except in the hottest months when there is a reference to death in the drying up of the river. The history of how Nuri and Mustafa became beekeepers and the importance of the bees to the men, their families, and nature itself is established here. Mustafa’s energetic and inspiring character is also introduced. The strong family relationship between the cousins, including their happy routine and shared love of food, is depicted. It is a life full of color, flavor and sweetness, not least that of the delicious honey produced by the bees. However, Mustafa is the first to have a premonition that this idyllic life may be threatened: “Mustafa began to fear the worst before I did” (13). This is an example of foreshadowing, creating tension and intrigue by alluding to events that will later occur. From then on, the war gets closer and closer to the families. Bodies are found in the river. Vandals destroy the hives and the bees, which are the things most precious to Nuri and Mustafa, except for one thing: their children. The war eventually causes both of them the biggest pain of all: the loss of a child.
In this flashback, Nuri describes his adoration of Afra and her vivacious, creative nature. Before the still-unnamed event that made her blind, she was brimming with life: “Afra loved, she hated, and she inhaled the world like it was a rose. All this is why I loved her more than life” (20). Nuri describes in detail aspects of Afra’s character, her art, her beauty and her laugh: “She laughed like we would never die” (22).
Immediately following this line, Nuri returns to the story of the war, and how Firas was found dead. The description of how Mustafa received his son’s body in the morgue, and the way in which he recorded his death in his notebook, emphasizes the arbitrary and tragic nature of the loss. This tragedy is followed exactly a week later by Sami’s death. The contrast between the joy of the families’ lives before the war and these harrowing wartime events is explicit and stark.
In the next chapter, Nuri’s psychological problems are first introduced. He suffers a kind of panic attack when the social worker mentions that he and Afra may be sent back. He also mentions a knife wound, thereby planting another seed of intrigue regarding past events. When Nuri finds a wingless bee and takes care of it, his sensitive nature is again revealed. His memory returns to the bees, Mustafa, and the fact that his cousin is waiting for him in Yorkshire. These are the lifelines Nuri holds onto in his insecure, rootless state. When Nuri sees and talks to Mohammed in the garden, the scene is perfectly realistic, disguising the fact that this is actually a hallucination or dream. The boy talks of being scared of the sea, and Nuri says he remembers. The flower that came from a lemon tree in Aleppo is a link to the past and takes Nuri to the next flashback.
The flashback to Aleppo opens with the description of the birdsong that would still be heard whenever “the bombs were silent” (35). This is one example of the many references to the resilience of nature and its ability to comfort and assuage the soul, no matter what destructions humans wreak upon the world. Plants, trees, birds, animals, and of course the bees, provide Nuri with solace wherever he is. This connection to nature is one of the major themes of the book.
The use of the symbols of light versus darkness as a metaphor for life before and after the war are also developed in this flashback, through Mustafa’s letter to Nuri after he has witnessed and carried out murder: “Sometimes I think that if I keep walking, I will find some light, but I know that I can walk to the other side of the world and there will still be darkness” (36). The reference to walking indicates that Mustafa is about to start a long journey, seeking refuge, safety, hope and a future, but that he will always be haunted by the past. Nuri’s journey will be similar.
Mustafa details the horrific murder of the blindfolded boys and his subsequent shooting of the soldiers. Mustafa’s account emphasizes the brutal realities of warfare. Nuri then describes to Afra the terrible scene that he himself witnessed, when a boy playing in the street was shot in front of his mother. Afra’s image of the boy mixes with that of Sami, with his red T-shirt as a central detail, as she tries not to forget him. The suffering of bereaved mothers and fathers and witnesses to the death of children is highlighted here and is another key theme of the book. Despite their shared sorrow, the couple are still not able to reach out to one another: “I wanted to hold her […] to lose myself in her. For one minute, just one, I forgot” (43). But Afra will not touch Nuri. The pain they share is the barrier between them.
The terror of war continues in this flashback. Nuri’s life is threatened by government soldiers and the couple’s house is destroyed as they shelter in their hideout. When they emerge, the destruction of the ornament with the 99 names of Allah and Sami’s houses built of Lego are the last straw, finally convincing Afra to leave. Her faith in God and in the security of home have been shaken simultaneously.
The next scene in England builds an image of the homeliness of the B&B, with its curious and friendly residents, like the Moroccan man and the kindly landlady. Nuri’s first walk along the seafront provides a picture of peaceful, everyday life in a secure country. However, noticing the innocence of the boy reminds Nuri of the war, and he starts to feel doubtful about the outcome of their asylum claim again. His disrupted peace is mirrored by the sudden change in the weather. Afra’s reluctance to go out seems to be linked to the unpredictable climate but is really an excuse, as she refuses to leave their room, and remains locked inside her mind, her memories and her pain. Her only comfort is to have Nuri beside her in bed and to feel his breathing, and to know that Sami’s marble, a physical link between the past and present, remains on her dressing table.
The next flashback follows the couple as they travel across Syria to the border with Turkey, experiencing the horror and fear of war on the way. Nuri makes a rare reference to the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and his blue eyes, as they leave Aleppo. The couple pass through the different landscapes and towns of their country, inspiring Nuri’s reflections on the destruction of this ancient country with its rich history: “What was lost would be lost forever” (70). While the book’s depiction of war and its dreadful outcomes is applicable to the tragedy of conflict in general, it is also a brief guide to the war in Syria.
As always, Nuri’s thoughts and memories turn to Mustafa, the bees, and happier times, and then move on to Sami, causing his pain to return. When Afra comforts him, he feels some hope: “For those few seconds, I was no longer afraid of the journey, of the road ahead” (74). But the darkness returns to Afra’s eyes and to Nuri’s soul. Brought back to the present moment, Nuri must be practical about crossing the river and protecting Afra, while at the same time witnessing the sorrowful separation of another family in their bid to escape.
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