Book Review:The Beekeeper Of Aleppo
Its Aleppo, its 2016, Syria and its people are crumbling under a civil war. The reader is transported into the world of two Syrian refugees: Nuri a deeply troubled beekeeper and Afra who has gone blind after watching her child die in her arms. You watch as they struggle to stay afloat in the slipstream of post-traumatic stress and the cries of lost children as they journey across continents to reach England. It’s a human story; political without being political and tragically beautiful. One can almost taste the honey served on fresh warm bread- hear the hum of the bees throughout the book, but feel the bullets rip through your soul, like the children they hit.
The tale is told through a series of flashbacks connected by a simple word. Words like ‘hope’. Yet such words are often in stark contrast to the events that take place in the novel. The journey that the characters of Nuri and Afra take are often devoid of hope, but without the sense of irony. It a story that is supposed to be inspirational, but as a reader, one cannot help despising the depths that humanity has sunk to. First, in the soldiers of war-torn Aleppo, lining young men up against a wall and shooting them in the back, before throwing their bodies, unceremoniously, into the river. If the reader is looking for hope, there is little to hope for because our protagonist’s journey is fraught with exploitation. People feeding on the desperation of others - feeding on the fact that people, often children, have lost everything. So, what exactly do they have to lose except for themselves? This leads me to the two young brothers, also regugees, in Athens. These brothers can’t be older that 16 or 17 years old, yet it is subtly suggested that they are being sold for sex in the shadows of the woods by the park where they live. They are soon seen to have new shoes, new phones, new clothes and money. But how did they get these things? Through a man who made beautiful melodies on his guitar. The music soothes Nuri and Afra from all the hardships and troubles they have faced, yet beauty cannot hide everything. It cannot keep away the dark shadows from the woods that grow longer as the day wears on and the fact that those children are never seen again. There is some sense of justice, however, the refugees rise and beat the musician to death, Nuri helping them in the process. The man may have been a monster who exploited children in the deep dark woods, but Nuri cannot help but be horrified by what he has done. Humans are naturally afraid of the dark, as we do not know what unspeakable secrets the dark hides. Evidently the dark woods is home to the monster within, it reached into Nuri and calls to the monster. A monster born of exhaustion and trauma. So, can we really be surprised that Nuri beats him to death?
If one must have hope and in times such as these, one must. Then let it be found in a solitary bumblebee, who has been driven out of its home. It survives in a single flower. And survive - the bee does. The bee cannot fly, yet it keeps going against the odds and mother nature herself. Bees, the bedrock of the ecosystem, keeps Nuri and be proxy, Afra alive. The portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder and the vivid hallucinations that Nuri creates to stay sane, feel sane to the reader. Such as the incarnation of Mohammad who acts as a surrogate child for the one Nuri and Afra lost in Aleppo. Suddenly you realise the child was never real. Nuri felt like he’d lost the soul of his wife therefore, he needed something to live for. And he had lived for his child, who is now dead. You don’t feel the trauma that Nuri lives through because it is as though you are seeing it in a dreamlike state. It’s not until someone even mentions the term PTSD does the reality of what Nuri and Afra have been through suddenly put things into perspective. As a reader you realise that Nuri, our narrator, wasn’t really relaying the whole story. How could he? There are some images and tales that cannot be told through the medium of words. You have to live it. And the reader simply cannot.