It’s a strange coincidence that I started reading this around the 10th and finished reading it on the 22nd, the day that the Pahalgam attack took place. Syria, which was a Christian country before 7th century CE, is today a war torn Islamic country where Christians have been reduced to less than 2% of the population and will soon be wiped off.
ISIS has ravaged the country and Aleppo has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. There are bombs going off in the city, children getting maimed or killed, hordes of refugees making their way to Greece and then onwards to some European country.
From the outside, while it’s totally clear that Europe’s demography is being changed using these refugees, it’s difficult not to be drawn into the story of one refugee and feel terrible. The mob is the problem, an individual never is. With radical Islamists, the mob is obviously barbarian, but the individual Muslim is also voiceless. No one from the community stands up to the barbarians amongst them.
The Beekeeper Of Aleppo – Summary
The story alternates between two timelines. It starts with Syrian refugees, Nuri and Afra staying in a B&B in London. They are trying to get asylum in Britain. Afra is blind and Nuri feels her blindness is causing a rift in their relationship. He loves her dearly, and as the timeline switches to their arduous, dangerous journey from Aleppo, we realise why he feels so dejected. There are other refugees from other parts of the world at the B&B.
As the novel unfolds we get to know that Nuri was a beekeeper in Aleppo before the civil war and ISIS happened. He alongwith his cousin Mustafa were very successful. We also get to know that Afra’s blindness is recent, and that she was a brilliant painter back in Aleppo. In one of the stray bombings, Afra and Nuri’s only son Sami is killed. Afra sees it happening …. and instantly goes blind.
As soon as the civil war and ISIS comes into Aleppo, Mustafa sends his wife and daughter to London, and thinks about following them alongwith their son after selling off their apiaries. But unfortunately his son Faras is killed before he can leave Syria. Mustafa does leave Aleppo and urges Nuri and Afra to go with him. Afra refuses to leave, so Mustafa leaves a note for the two of them and goes to London.
Finally Afra relents when Nuri is caught and questioned by the ISIS soldiers one day and they both manage to escape to Turkey. From Turkey to reach Athens, Nuri tries to find a smuggler. At the smuggler’s apartment, Nuri meets a young boy Mohammed, who reminds him of Sami and he immediately takes him under his wing. Nuri comforts Mohammed during the treacherous sea crossing to Greece. Once they reach the camp in Athens, Mohammed is nowhere to be found and Nuri is heart broken again.
From the Athens refugee camp, they once again use a smuggler’s services to reach UK. This smuggler is in reality a drug dealer and he makes Nuri do drug drops around Athens to pay for his and Afra’s flight tickets. This smuggler Mr. Fotakis ends up raping Afra, one day prior to their taking the flight to London.
All this weighs heavily on Nuri. Once when he takes Afra to a doctor in London, for her eyesight to be restored, Afra tells the doctor that Nuri is unwell too. While he refuses any treatment, he tries to commit suicide by lying down on the beach close to the sea. As he is treated in a hospital he acknowledges that he was having nightmares and other mental health issues. For instance, Mohammed was Nuri’s mental creation and never existed.
In the end, Mustafa comes to the B&B and the cousins are reunited. The reader still doesn’t know if Nuri and Afra get asylum.
Just like The Kite Runner took the reader to Afghanistan under the Taliban, The Beekeeper of Aleppo takes the reader on the refugee trail. It’s dehumanising, filled with hope and abject despair at the same time and heart wrenching.
The book is written beautifully and the story is truly moving. Individuals who had nothing to do with ISIS suffered so much… and continue to suffer. The refugee crisis is far from over.
Post Notes : I do hope some day, some courageous author writes about the Pakistani Hindus in the same way. Hindu genocide hasn’t been spoken about at all… the pain is so much more because it has been a drawn out struggle. The Islamic invaders behaved worse than ISIS and then the colonial British looted us blind, destroyed our traditions and nearly whitewashed our history.
Bindu, Aleppo has lots of Biblical significance, too, because it was on the old trading and passenger route between Africa, Europe, and northern Asia. A lot of cultures criss-crossed there. That Eastern slope of the Mediterranean Sea, where Baron Rothschild bought what is now Israel in the early 1900s, is under seige because of a financial deal between the Brits and the Jews. Remember Mahatma Gandhi was an attorney trained in London. He may have contributed to the splitting off of India from Pakistan, as well. The first half of the 1900s brought a lot of geographical upheavals and territorial disputes.
Oh Katharine … you said just the thing many of us always wonder about – Did Gandhi bring about the partition ? Rather than preventing it. This opens a really long debate in India.
My pet peeve is about the fact that Gandhi Ji and all the other great leaders allowed a coloniser to dictate terms and cut us up. We lost the Indus Valley civilization sites of Harappa and Mohenjadaro in the process besides several other Hindu and Sikh historical/religious sites.
… this is a separate blogpost. Sometime, when am angry again about it. 🙏
I’m not sure how involved Gandhi might have been. I only know what I have read in a small biography written many years ago. It doesn’t cover the partition itself, or the politics involved. But I will look again at my book for some answers to your question. Will let you know what I find.
Bindu, I don’t know whether Gandhi participated in the actual decision making. My memory is only that it happened at the same time in world history. The British Empire did a lot of damage all over the world, including in India, over its centuries of pompous superiority. That’s probably why so many of us speak English.