Dahab is very unhappy, Nuri. She was trying to stay strong for Aya, but since I arrived here she has been lying down all day with the lights switched off, holding on to a photograph of Firas. Sometimes she cries, but most of the time she is silent. She will not talk about him. All she says is that she is happy that I am by her side now.
I see from your last email that you were in Istanbul. I hope that you have made it to Greece by now. I have heard that Macedonia has closed their borders so it will be difficult from there, as it was for me, but you must keep going. By the time I hear from you again I hope that you will have moved closer to where we are.
So many times I wish I had not stayed behind, that I had left Aleppo with my wife and daughter because then my son would still be with us. This thought brings me close to death. We cannot go back, cannot change the decisions we made in the past. I did not kill my son. I try to remember these things because if I don’t I will be lost in the darkness.
The day that I hear that you have made it to England will bring light to my soul.
Mustafa
I sat there and read and reread the email. You are like my brother, Nuri. And the memory came back to me of Mustafa’s father’s house in the mountains. The house was surrounded by pines and fir trees and it was dark and cool inside, old mahogany furniture and handwoven rugs, and on a console table at the far end, beneath a window, a shrine to the mother and wife who had left them. There were photographs of her as a young girl and then as a young woman, tall and beautiful with glittering eyes. There were wedding photographs and pictures of her holding Mustafa in her arms, and others when she was pregnant with the child she would die with. Mustafa grew up under the care and protection of his father and grandfather, no women to soften the place or bring light to it, no siblings to play with, so he found solace in the brilliant light and beautiful sounds and smells of the apiaries.
He got to know the bees like they were his siblings, he watched them and learnt how they spoke to one another, he followed paths deep into the mountains to find the source of their journey and sat in the shade of the trees and watched as they collected nectar from eucalyptus and cotton and rosemary.
Mustafa’s grandfather was a strong man, with huge hands like Mustafa, a sharp eye and a sense of humour – he encouraged Mustafa to be curious, to have adventures with nature. He liked it when I came to visit and would cut up tomatoes and cucumbers for us, as if we were children, as if I had become the missing link in their family. On soft bread he would spread butter and honey fresh from the hives, then he would sit with us and tell us stories about his own childhood, or about his beloved daughter-in-law.
‘She was such a kind woman,’ he would say. ‘She looked after me well, and she would never tell me to shut up when I babbled on.’ And even after all these years he would wipe his eyes with his liver-spotted hand. Sitting in that cool living room, we seemed to be surrounded by his mother’s never-faltering smile, a smile that engulfed us and weaved itself around us, a bit like the sweet sound of the bees.
Then he would become brisk. ‘Right, you two do something useful now. Go and show Nuri how to extract the honey. And give him some royal jelly to eat – he needs it after being cooped up in the city like he is.’
And Mustafa would take me to the place where the bees sang.
‘We will build things together, I can tell,’ he said. ‘We balance each other you and me. Together we will do great things.’
*
03/03/2016
Dear Mustafa,
You have always been like a brother to me. I remember the days when I visited your father’s house in the mountains, I remember the photographs of your mother, and your grandfather … What a man he was! Without you, my life would have been very different. We created great things together, just as you said we would. But this war snatched it away from us, everything we dreamed about and worked for. It’s left us without our home, without our work and without our sons. I am not sure how I can live like this. I fear that I am dead inside. The only thing that is keeping me going is the wish to reach you and Dahab and Aya.
I am so happy to hear that you have finally reached your wife and daughter. This thought alone, knowing that you are with them, brings joy during these dark times.
Afra and I have reached Leros and hope we will be leaving for Athens soon. If the Macedonian border is closed, then I will find another way. Don’t worry, Mustafa, I will not stop until I get there.
Nuri
I returned to the camp, back to the shining metal and white gravel and concrete and rows and rows of square box containers, all surrounded by wire mesh. Afra was standing in the doorway of our cabin holding the white stick like a weapon.