‘Maybe they know these things.’
‘Maybe they not know. If they not know, how they will understand why I need to be here?’
‘You tell your story. Why you leave.’
‘I am explaining these things!’ Diomande is angry now, and I see that he is sitting more upright. His anger has somehow straightened his spine.
The Moroccan man shakes his head. ‘This anger will not help your case,’ he says. ‘You must make your story. What was your life? How was life there for you and sisters and mother? Only this, Diomande! This is not a history lesson!’
They start the mock interview again. Afra is sitting on the armchair, with the sketch-pad and colouring pencils on her lap, rolling the marble around in her fingers; I watch the vein of the marble, twisting and brightening in the lamplight, and their voices fade into the background. I drift away from the conversation and I begin to think about the bees. I can see them in the summer sky, heading up and out to find the plants and flowers. I almost hear their song. I can smell the honey and see the glimmer of the combs in the sunlight. My eyes begin to close but I see Afra opening the sketch-pad, running her fingers over white paper, taking a purple pencil out of the box.
I wake up to the sound of the marble again, rolling along the floorboards. I know immediately that Mohammed is here and I take a moment to open my eyes, and when I do he is sitting on the floor cross-legged and there is a key beside him.
‘You found the key, Mohammed?’ I say to him.
‘You dropped it when you were climbing over the fence.’ He stands up now, beside me. He has different clothes on today, a red T-shirt and denim shorts, and he seems preoccupied with something. He is looking over his shoulder through the open door of the living room and into the corridor.
‘You’ll get cold dressed like that,’ I say.
He begins to walk away from me and I get up and follow him. We climb the stairs and follow the hallway, past all the bedrooms and the bathroom, until we reach a door at the end of the corridor that I previously did not know existed.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ I say to him, and he hands me the key.
I put the key in the lock, turn it and open the door. An intense light dazzles me, and when my eyes adjust I see that I am high up on the top of a hill, looking down over Aleppo. There is a full moon, close to the horizon, full of the colours of the desert. A blood moon.
I can see far across the city, the ruins and hilltops, the fountains and balconies. In a field to the east there are apiaries, thorn bushes and wildflowers. The bees are silent at this time. Only the nurse bees work by moonlight. Bees become blind before humans. The air is warm and sweet with the smells of heat and soil. There is a path to the left of me, leading down into the city; I follow it until I reach the river. It is trickling out of the city park and struggling across the ravine, and the light of the moon glows and the water shimmers beneath it.
Ahead, someone is running, a flash of red. I follow the sound into the alleyways. It is darker now and the lanterns are on, but in the market stalls there are golden pyramids of baklava. Tables are set up outside cafés, menus and glasses and cutlery, a single flower in a slim vase on each. Shoes are displayed in shop windows, fake designer handbags, rugs and boxes and coffee urns and perfume and leather, and at the end of the row a stall full of headscarves of the finest material, like smoke streaming in the lamplight, blue and ochre and green.
A sign hanging from an arch high above me reads: The Museum. Just beneath the arch, I see that I’ve reached my father’s old shop. The door is closed and I press my face against the glass. Rolls of fabric are piled high in the back, silks and linens of all shades and colours. In the front is the till and his pots of scissors and needles and hammers.
At the end of the alley a purple glow. When I look again, I see Mohammed, turning a corner. I call him, ask him to wait for me, to stop running away from me, ask him where he is going, but he doesn’t slow down, so I walk faster to catch up with him, but when I reach the end of the alley, the world opens, and I am back at the river and the moon is higher in the sky. Mohammed is nowhere to be seen, so I sit down on the ground, close to the water, and wait for
revealed Piraeus, the sky filled with seagulls. We disembarked at the port in Athens and were taken to a concrete yard by the harbour overflowing with tents and overlooked by construction cranes. The people who did not have tents were wrapped in blankets, sitting on the ground. Birds were scavenging on rubbish among them and there was the strong smell of sewage.
We were in the shadow of a rectangular building, heavily graffitied to show a rugged port with huge white waves and an ancient ship with billowing sails. On the rocks of the painted harbour there was a picture of a crane and beneath it people from a distant time. Sami would have loved this painting. He would have made up stories about the people; the ship probably would have been a time-travelling device, or, knowing Sami’s sense of humour, the crane would have been the time-travelling device – it would have lifted people up by their collars and dropped them into another time.