Just then there are footsteps in the hallway and Afra appears, standing motionless in the doorway. Mustafa’s eyes light up, and he rises, at first to take her hand in his and then he puts his arms around her and holds her for a long time. I hear her exhale, as if Mustafa’s presence has lifted a heaviness in her heart.
It’s a warm day so we go out into the courtyard.
‘I can see the green of the tree,’ Afra says, her eyes smiling. ‘And over there –’ she points to the heather plant by the fence – ‘I can see a soft pink. There are times when things are clearer.’
Mustafa is happy for her. He is reacting in all the ways that I couldn’t. The Moroccan man brings out the tea and Mustafa tells us about his beehives.
‘Afra,’ he says, ‘you will like it there. Dahab and Aya are waiting for you, and there are so many flowers, lavender and heather fields, and the bees also collect nectar from private gardens and allotments and along the train tracks. You will be able to see the colours – I will take you myself; we will walk when it is warm and I will take you to the places where the bees go. And we have found a shop that sells halva and baklava!’ He speaks with the enthusiasm of a child again, but I can detect an undertone of desperation – I know him, and what he is really saying is this: This is how the story must end; our hearts can bear no more loss.
Then he lights a cigarette, biting and sucking the end of it while he tells us about the workshop groups and his students and about the beekeepers’ association.
‘When you come, Nuri will help me with the groups, and we will split the colonies and build new hives.’ He glances over at me as he talks, as he creates pictures with his hands and his words. He wants to give me something to hope for, I can tell. Mustafa has always given me something to hope for.
I am standing a little away from them by the glass doors, watching them, and I think about the little boy who never existed and how he had filled the black void that Sami had left. Sometimes we create such powerful illusions, so that we do not get lost in the darkness.
‘One day,’ I hear Mustafa say. ‘One day we will go back to Aleppo and rebuild the apiaries and bring the bees back to life.’
But it is Afra’s face that brings me to life, standing here in this tiny garden like she stood in Mustafa’s courtyard in Aleppo, her eyes so full of sadness and hope, so full of darkness and light.
She is looking up at something. Among the blossoms of the cherry tree, three hoopoe birds perch on a branch, checking out their surroundings, with their majestic crown of feathers and curved beaks and stripy wings. Here they are, migrants from the east, in this small town by the sea.
‘Do you see them?’ I hear her say. ‘They have come to find us!’
We are all looking up now, and, all at once, they open their black and white wings and set off together into the unbroken sky.