The crickets sang in unison, then fell silent for a brief moment, an interval, as if they were one breathing body that suddenly stopped, before the sound began again, a thick pounding buzzing noise that stretched far beyond and carved out the depths of the woods and the unknown.
Groups of men were hovering again by the trees, some sitting on benches smoking. There was banter and laughter tonight. Nadim was holding a lit cigarette without smoking it, his arm casually resting on his leg, and I couldn’t help noticing again those wounds, the deep red lines in the fine skin of his forearms, like the violent scratch-marks of wild animals. He took his phone out of his pocket and was typing a message. I waited for him to finish and asked him if he had an Internet connection.
‘I do,’ he said.
‘Would you mind if I checked my emails?’
Without hesitation, Nadim unlocked his phone and handed it to me. Then he sat there quietly and lit his cigarette.
Once again, there were emails from Mustafa:
15/03/2016
Dearest Nuri,
I haven’t heard from you in a while and I hope that you have made it to Athens safely.
It has taken me time to find my feet. I am waiting to find out if I have been granted asylum and in the meantime I have been volunteering at a beekeepers’ association in the town where I am living. I have made some friends there, but I am a beekeeper without bees. I only need one hive to start, so I have posted an advertisement on Facebook asking if anyone has a hive to donate. I am waiting eagerly to see if there is a response.
I hope to hear from you soon. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of you and Afra.
Mustafa
*
25/03/2016
Dear Nuri,
A woman from a town not too far from here replied to my advertisement! She offered not only a hive but a colony of British black bees, believed until recently to be extinct. This is like a treasure! I plan to split the hive seven times. My aim is to cooperate with the community to improve the strain. Beekeepers from Britain usually have Italian honeybees exported from New Zealand, but these native bees are much more able to withstand the crazy climate here. There has been such a collapse of colonies; the European bee is not surviving well. I believe this black bee could be the answer, and I already know there are others who agree. And, Nuri, in this country there are rapeseed fields and banks of heather and lavender! Because it rains so much it is full of flowers. And so much green. More than you could ever imagine. Where there are bees there are flowers, and where there are flowers there is new life and hope.
Do you remember the fields surrounding the apiaries? They were beautiful, weren’t they, Nuri? Sometimes I remember the day of the fire but I try not to think of these things. I do not want to get lost in that darkness.
I hope to hear from you soon, we have things to do together! I am waiting for you! The bees are waiting for you!
Mustafa
‘The message has made you smile,’ Nadim said.
For a minute I had forgotten where I was. I looked up to see the Athenian sun beaming through the trees.
‘My cousin is in England,’ I said. ‘He is urging me to go there.’
‘It is a difficult journey,’ Nadim said, chuckling. ‘He is a lucky man that he made it there.’
There was silence between us for a while and I could think of nothing else but the rapeseed fields and the banks of heather and lavender. I could see it all in my mind as clear and as vibrant as one of Afra’s paintings. But the sounds of the crickets invaded my thoughts.
‘It sounds like the woods go on forever,’ I said.
‘No. They don’t. All around is the city. Civilisation.’ Nadim grinned now with a kind of glee, and there was the sudden flash of a different personality, a kind of mocking or malice that comes from someone who knows more than he is letting on.
‘Have you been here a long time?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ But this word seemed final, and I didn’t even know what ‘a long time’ meant anymore. Was it weeks or months or years or centuries like these heroes of antiquity cast here in stone?
Just then I noticed something very strange. It was so fast that if I had looked away for a moment I would have missed it. One of the men on a nearby bench, sitting with his back to us, turned his head, over his shoulder, and caught Nadim’s eye. There was familiar acknowledgement, a quick nod, followed by a sudden change in Nadim’s movements, a nervousness, a twitching of the fingers and the skin around the eyes. This made me pay more attention. Nadim waited a while, tapping his foot on the ground to his secret rhythm, and finally he got up, took a bottle of water from where he had been sitting earlier, poured some into his hands and ran his hands through his hair. This wasn’t so unusual, but it was what happened after this that seemed the strangest of all.