At the B&B, Afra is not in the living room or the kitchen. I find her in the bedroom, lying on the bed this time, her face still wet with tears. She is holding the marble in her fingers and twirling it around. Sometimes she rolls it over her lips, or along her wrist.
She doesn’t speak to me when I enter the room, but when I lie down next to her she says, ‘Nuri, have you heard from Mustafa?’
‘Won’t you stop asking me?’ I say.
‘No. He is the reason we are here!’
I don’t say anything.
‘You are lost in the darkness, Nuri,’ she says. ‘It is a fact. You’ve got completely lost somewhere in the dark.’
I look at her eyes, so full of fear and questions and longing, and I had thought it was her who was lost, that Afra was the one stuck in the dark places of her mind. But I can see how present she is, how much she is trying to reach me. I stay there until I know she is asleep and then I head downstairs.
The living room is quiet tonight, the Moroccan man is in the kitchen on the phone, pacing, and now and then raising his voice. Diomande took a shower after the fair and has stayed in his room. There are two or three residents sitting around the dining table playing cards. I sit down at the computer. The light of the TV is flickering in the room.
I log into my emails quickly before I have a chance to change my mind. There is a message there from Mustafa.
11/05/2016
Dearest Nuri,
I wonder if you made it out of Athens. It is hard for me to sit here not knowing if you and Afra are safe. I hope that you are making your way to us. It was raining today, all day, and I miss the desert and the sunshine. But there are good things here too, Nuri, and I wish that you were here to see. It is a colourful place, full of flowers now in spring. I have just given the third of my weekly workshops to volunteers. One was a Syrian woman who arrived here with her mother and son, another a Congolese refugee who has memories of gathering honey in the jungle, and an Afghan student is already asking how to get her first queen!
At the moment I have six hives to demonstrate beekeeping and the project is growing week by week. These bees are gentle, not like the Syrian bees. I can even collect the honey without protective gear – I know when they are about to get aggressive because their tone changes. It is a wonderful experience to stand among them exposed like that, and I am getting to know them. Their humming is beautiful – when you hear their song it will fill your heart to the brim with sweetness.
But sometimes this sound reminds me of everything we have lost and I think always of you and Afra. I hope to hear from you soon.
Mustafa
I type a reply and press send.
Dear Mustafa,
Afra and I have made it to the UK. We have been here for over two weeks now. I am sorry that I wasn’t in touch sooner. It was a very difficult journey. We are staying at a B&B in the far south of England by the sea. I must stay here until I have my interviews and until I find out whether we have been granted asylum. I am worried, Mustafa. I am worried that they will make us leave. I am so pleased to hear about your project. I wish I could be there with you.
Nuri
I think about the cold tone of my email, the fact that I have been here so long and had not contacted my cousin. I am here because of Mustafa, I escaped Athens because of the hope and the will he gave me, but somehow the darkness inside me has swallowed me up.
I send another message:
Mustafa, I believe I am unwell. Since I got here my mind is broken. I think I am lost in the darkness.
I am about to log out when an email comes through:
Nuri! I am so pleased to hear that you are in the UK at last. This is amazing news! Please send me the address of where you are.
I find the address on a letter in the bedroom and return to the computer, where I copy it out and press send. I say nothing else to Mustafa and there is no reply after this.
I fall asleep in the armchair and when I wake up it is dark and the living room is empty. But I can hear the marble rolling across the wooden floor. At first, I can’t see Mohammed but then I realise that he is sitting under the table in the same red T-shirt and blue shorts that he was wearing last time.
I crouch down to meet his eye. ‘What are you doing under there, Mohammed?’
‘This is my house,’ he says. ‘It’s a wooden one, like in The Three Little Pigs – do you remember when you told me that story?’
‘Did I tell you that story? There was only one story I ever told you – the one about the brass city. The only person I read that story to was Sami, because I found the book one day on a stall at the souq.’ He is not listening to me; he is busy pushing the marble along the cracks of the wood, then he tucks it under the rug.