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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Home, Displacement, and the Refugee Experience
Grief, Memory, and Coping Mechanisms
Hope vs. Delusion
The Trauma of War
Dehumanization vs. Connection
Summary
Analysis
Nuri is afraid of his wife Afra’s eyes. Afra is blind and is waiting for Nuri to help her get dressed, rolling a marble belonging to someone named Mohammed between her fingers. Taking his time, Nuri exhorts the reader to look closely at the details of his wife’s body; it is different than it used to be, and he worries that she is disappearing. Afra tells Nuri about a dream she had where her broken dreams filled the room like bees. Nuri does not tell her he only dreams of murder nowadays. Afra has pain behind her eyes and asks Nuri to take her to the doctor, which he says he will do once they get papers.
The narrative immediately centers Afra’s blindness as integral to her character and the story. Nuri’s fear of that blindness suggests the distance between the two of them, which is amplified by his assertion that she is disappearing from the realm of his understanding. Afra’s description of her dream comes across as vague but full of grief. The lack of immediate access to healthcare signals to the reader that Nuri and Afra’s situation has resulted in them being underprivileged.
Themes
Nuri is grateful that Afra cannot see the bed and breakfast where they are currently staying in England, though he thinks she would like how near they are to the sea. Afra used to paint water before her son Sami was born, when she first came to live with Nuri in Aleppo, Syria. Nuri wishes he could give Afra a key to another world that more closely resembles their home—only then would he wish for her to see again. As it is, their surroundings are damp and depressing, and billboards outside suggest their presence as Syrian refugees is not altogether welcome.
That Nuri is grateful for Afra’s blindness conveys the bleakness of their current circumstances. The mention of their life in Aleppo and the imagined key to another world introduce a kind of desperate wishful thinking that will persist throughout the narrative. The unfriendly billboards infuse the present timeline with political tension, hinting at potential difficulties brought about by dehumanizing views of refugees.
Themes
Nuri tries not to think about Sami still existing in the hypothetical world where Afra can see. He is still waiting for Mohammed to find his way back to him and Afra (the narrative has not yet clarified who Mohammed is to Nuri). He thought he glimpsed Mohammed in the bathroom yesterday, but it was only the Moroccan man who also stays in the house. They talked about the social worker who Nuri will meet with this afternoon. The Moroccan man is old but attempting to learn British customs, though he also disdains them. There are roughly 10 refugees from different places staying in the bed and breakfast with Nuri, waiting to be told where they are allowed to go.
Nuri’s avoidance of Sami’s memory hints at some unexplained grief and reveals that Sami is not currently with them. Mohammed, who has already been mentioned twice, seems related to Sami somehow, but the narrative is reluctant to provide more information. Through conversations with the Moroccan man, the reader learns where Nuri and Afra are in the process of claiming asylum—among other refugees, but in a state of flux, unsure of whether they will be allowed to stay. This outlines the stakes of the present timeline.
Themes
Nuri dresses Afra in her abaya and her hijab, reflecting that she looks older but acts more childlike. They will tell the social worker their story this afternoon, hoping to say the right things that will convince her not to send them away. Nuri is confident “because we have come from the worst place in the world.” He believes the Moroccan man has more to prove than they do. Nuri watches the man sitting in the living room, holding a broken bronze pocket watch, and he slips into a memory.
An abaya is a robe-like dress worn by some women in the Middle East, while a hijab is a head covering worn by many Muslim women. Afra’s dependence on Nuri to dress her further suggests that she is in a fragile state. In attempting to strategize and gauge their chances with the social worker, Nuri reflects his own learned dehumanization in that he knows he cannot count on other people to help simply because he is in need. Indeed, he almost views the Moroccan man as a rival in this moment, considering that his homeland is not in the same turmoil as Syria, so he might be less likely to be granted asylum.
Themes
Get the entire The Beekeeper of Aleppo LitChart as a printable PDF.
In a flashback, Nuri sees his bungalow in Aleppo, looking down on the city from a hilltop. His memories of the seasons are intimate and detailed, and he finds the architecture of the city beautiful. At home, Nuri has four beehives in his garden, but the rest are in a field on the outskirts of the city. Most mornings, he wakes before the call to prayer and drives out to the field. Nuri calls the bees “an ideal society, a small paradise among chaos.” He monitors and protects the hives as the bees work, harvesting their honey and keeping them healthy so that they can “keep us alive.”
This initial flashback is full of Nuri’s love for Syria. His descriptions convey an intimate knowledge of his home and care for his livelihood working with the bees. Describing the bees as an ideal society sets them up as a symbol of idyllic hope in comparison to the broken human society of which Nuri is a part. Having invested so much of himself in protecting the bees, Nuri even credits them with keeping him alive, leaving the reader to interpret how literal he is being. Throughout the narrative, thoughts of the bees will sustain him in varying ways.
Themes
Mustafa, Nuri’s cousin, introduces him to beekeeping. A professor at Damascus University, Mustafa hires Nuri to manage his apiaries and teaches him about bee behavior. The men eventually have over 500 colonies producing honey for them, and the work makes Nuri feel alive. Mustafa opens a shop to sell honey-based products. He trusts Nuri more than anyone else to look after his bees, saying he has a sensitivity to their patterns. Nuri himself is in awe of the bees, who change his understanding of the world around him. Over the years, the climate becomes harsher, but thankfully the bees are drought-resistant.
Mustafa’s introduction portrays him as a mentor and collaborator in Nuri’s life of beekeeping. The two men have a clear connection rooted in their passion for the work. Nuri’s deep respect for the bees’ patterns and the way he seems to learn from them amplify their importance in the narrative. Their persistence through the drought once again invokes feelings of hope.
Themes
On Saturdays, Nuri’s family has dinner with Mustafa’s family. Mustafa’s wife, Dahab, cooks with him, though Mustafa is too slow for her liking. They eat in the courtyard of the apartment block, which is lush with greenery. Mustafa is prone to melancholy and overthinking during these meals, once asking Nuri if he ever imagines having a different life. The thought scares Mustafa, who is so grateful for the life he has built. In retrospect it seems to Nuri that his cousin could already sense tragedy in the near future.
Already, dread begins to seep into Nuri’s memories of home as he recalls Mustafa’s own melancholic behavior amid happy family dinners. Mustafa’s musings about a different life suggest he senses some tragedy on the horizon and fears it greatly. In this way, the fear of loss poisons the present before such loss even comes to pass.
Themes
Mustafa has two children, Firas and Aya. He is often frustrated with Firas for preferring computer games and his phone to assisting with the family meal. Aya loves to play with Sami, who is a toddler. Mustafa is happy while cooking and eating, but afterwards becomes quiet, his mind always working. He tells Nuri that the political situation is worsening, as civil war began earlier in the year. They cannot keep living like this forever. Despite his worries, Mustafa makes plans with Aya for new honey recipes, and Nuri likewise pushes his doubts away in these final happy days.
Introducing the children raises the question of what has happened to them since Nuri became a refugee, lending the flashback an ominous tone. This feeling is amplified by Mustafa’s worrying about the civil war, which places the reader in a specific historical moment. Despite their premonitions of disaster, the desire to go on living as if nothing is wrong exerts a strong pull on all the characters. Here, hope for a peaceful future begins to look like a kind of willful delusion.
Themes
As civil unrest worsens, Mustafa sends Dahab and Aya away to England to keep them safe. He and Firas stay behind in Syria. Mustafa insists that they cannot abandon the bees, who are like family. Nuri and Mustafa’s families still dine together, making tentative plans to leave the country via smugglers, but Nuri is sure that Mustafa will not leave the bees. In the summer, vandals destroy the apiaries, burning them to a char. The silence of the field is deafening, a loss that Nuri will never forget.
Mustafa’s refusal to leave the bees even as he watches his country fall apart highlights the difficult choices faced by people living through war. The loss of the bees is tragic not only because of the hope and idealism they symbolize for Nuri and Mustafa but because, in trying to save the hives, Nuri and Mustafa further endanger their own lives by staying in Syria. The silence of the destroyed apiaries is an evocative image and somewhat surprising, given the backdrop of loud bombs. Silence here indicates a lack of life that will continue to haunt Nuri.
Themes
That winter, the bodies of men and boys are fished out of the river at the bottom of the hill. They have their hands tied and have been shot in the head. Nuri knows that if he had been one of them Afra would have stopped at nothing to find him. Before the war, Afra is loud, boisterous, and has a zeal for life. She is an amazing artist, painting Syrian landscapes, and her paintings win awards and sell easily in the market. Nuri loves her mysterious depths and the way she laughs “like we would never die.”
These glimpses into the horrors of war bring specificity to the dangers Nuri and his family face by staying in Syria. Nuri’s memory of a pre-war Afra—full of life and artistic vision—contrasts sharply with the version of Afra in the present timeline, since she is now listless and literally blind. This juxtaposition implies that Afra’s life in the years between then and now have contained much trauma, which has irrevocably changed her.
Themes
After the bees die, Mustafa is ready to leave Aleppo, but Firas goes missing. The family waits for him, Mustafa fretting ceaselessly and filling his hours by working in the local morgue, recording causes of death and identifications in a black notebook. He does this until Nuri recognizes Firas as one of the boys pulled from the river. Nuri brings Firas’s body to his father, and Mustafa writes in his black book: “Name—My beautiful boy. Cause of death—This broken world.”
That Mustafa feels compelled to record the details of the dead in the hopes of helping to identify them indicates the desperation of the situation in Aleppo. Mustafa’s decision to remain in Syria to look after the bees indirectly results in Firas’s death, filling him with guilt. Having lost his bees and his son, Mustafa places the blame at least partially on the brokenness of humanity, conveying an uncharacteristic sense of hopelessness.
Themes
