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Chapter 11
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
The morning after his immigration interview, Diomande and the Moroccan man are waiting for Nuri in the living room. Diomande feels his interview went well; they asked him to sing the national anthem and he told them how hard his life has been, and how much he loves his country. The men decide to take a trip to the boardwalk, insisting that Nuri join them. He goes to the room to get ready and finds Afra crying. All she can see since the doctor’s appointment is Sami’s face. Nuri cannot face this conversation; he leaves her there and goes to the boardwalk.
Even in Diomande’s attempt to claim asylum in England, he ends up longing for home, emphasizing the complexities of displacement. After months of trying to reach Afra through her grief, in this moment when she is finally ready to talk about Sami, Nuri abandons her. This signifies the intensity of his own unacknowledged grief and the way constant dehumanization has caused him to wall himself off from those closest to him.
Themes
Diomande, Nuri, and the Moroccan man discuss the sea as they know it in their home countries, or in Nuri’s case, the desert. When they return to the bed and breakfast, Afra is still weeping, holding the marble. She asks Nuri if he has heard from Mustafa, since he is the reason they came to England. She tells Nuri he is lost in darkness, and he realizes that the tables have turned, that Afra is now the one trying to connect with him. When she is asleep, Nuri goes downstairs to check his email.
The three men speak of their homelands as if moving through a dream, romanticizing their countries in their longing to return to them. For Nuri, trapped in a state of flux, these imaginings are preferable to the present moment. Afra’s assertion that Nuri is lost in darkness supports this; Nuri has become intentionally avoidant of making progress in the present moment, dwelling instead on his memories and the visions of Mohammed. Nuri’s realization that he and Afra have traded places in regard to their desire for connection seems to strike a chord of recognition in him.
Themes
Mustafa’s latest message asks if Nuri has made it out of Athens. He is giving beekeeping workshops now and has made the acquaintance of other refugees. The project is expanding, and Mustafa loves working with the new bees, who let him harvest honey without protective gear. The humming is beautiful, but also reminds him of all he has lost, and he hopes to hear from Nuri soon. Nuri sends a stilted, cold reply telling Mustafa they have been in the UK for two weeks. Thinking of how he has delayed this reunion, he sends another message, telling his cousin he is “lost in darkness.” Mustafa immediately responds to ask for the bed and breakfast’s address, which Nuri sends.
Even the good news of Mustafa’s beekeeping cannot lift Nuri’s spirits in this moment, as he begins to realize how deeply unwell he is. That he cannot access the warmth with which he typically writes to Mustafa indicates that Nuri is preemptively withdrawing into himself, fearing being perceived in the midst of his suffering. Nevertheless, he takes the first steps and admits how lost he feels, as it has become undeniable.
Themes
Nuri wakes to the sound of the marble once again. Mohammed is under the table; he says it is his house, the wooden one like in the story Nuri told him about the three pigs. Nuri is confused; he told that story to Sami, not Mohammed. Mohammed says his house won’t break like the ones at home, and Nuri feels a pain in his head. Mohammed leads Nuri to the front door, beyond which stretches Syria’s bombed-out landscape. They make their way to the river.
Mohammed’s reenactment of things Sami said and did completely destabilizes Nuri; constantly comparing the two boys has blurred the lines between them. The Syria to which Mohammed leads Nuri is no longer intact and idyllic, but bombed out, as it was when he left it. This indicates that the narrative is approaching the painful truth that Nuri’s subconscious (represented by Mohammed) has been avoiding.
Themes
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Mohammed tells Nuri this is where the boys were, but he was dressed in black and so avoided being drowned. He says all the children who died are trapped in the river, and that Nuri has to go in to find them. Looking closer, Nuri can see the shadows of limbs and faces in the water. He is afraid, and Mohammed laughs at how they have swapped places. The boy wades in despite Nuri’s protest. Eventually, he follows Mohammed and sees something in the water. He scoops the object up—a key—and slips into another flashback.
At the river, Mohammed’s remarks bring Firas to mind, as that was where he died, but Mohammed never witnessed that particular trauma. Still, he invokes the horrific image of dead children trapped in the river; like Sami, they are unable to move on from Syria. Nuri, similarly, feels trapped in his circumstances. Pushing through his fear, Nuri follows Mohammed into the river with the sense that he is approaching the heart of his suffering—finding the key confirms that escape (or revelation) is imminent.
Themes
In the flashback, the smuggler, Mr. Fotakis, gives Nuri and Afra a key to a room in his apartment. The room contains only a mattress and is uncomfortable, but it’s better than the park. Mr. Fotakis makes Nuri uneasy, but he treats them like special guests. Mr. Fotakis has friends in the common area when he sends Nuri out on his first delivery, giving him the car and a new phone. Afra gives Nuri the key to their room and tells him to lock her in. All night he feels the key in his pocket and wonders if she gave it to him so he would not forget about her.
Here, the symbol of the key manifests as a physical object, insinuating that something of importance is about to happen. Mr. Fotakis’s kind treatment does not alleviate Nuri’s discomfort, indicating the reader should also be on alert. Afra’s request to be locked in the room by Nuri suggests that she too feels unsafe in the apartment. The alternative possibility—that she fears Nuri will leave without her—points to the strained state of their relationship.
Themes
When Nuri returns to the apartment in the early morning, everyone is asleep except for Afra, who stayed up waiting for him. They sleep together on the mattress, ignoring the apartment’s sounds because “dreams were better than reality.” The weeks pass in this way, and Nuri sometimes suspects Mr. Fotakis will one day turn them out without fulfilling his end of the deal. Finally, one day Mr. Fotakis provides hair dye and clippers and tells them to prepare to take passport photos. He reacts to Afra’s dyed blond hair with a greedy look. Nuri continues his nightly deliveries, feeling he and Afra are nocturnal.
Afra and Nuri find themselves in yet another transitory state where neither of them is able to fully relax. Preferring dreams to reality reiterates the longing for delusion, to escape the world into a more hopeful reality. The possibility that Mr. Fotakis will cheat them out of their trip creates an ambient tension throughout the weeks they spend in his apartment, keeping them in a constant state of fight or flight. The way Mr. Fotakis looks at Afra foreshadows his opportunistic actions in the next scene.
Themes
Nuri and Afra are assigned new identities to travel to the UK. Mr. Fotakis buys them new clothes for the trip. The day before they are to leave, Nuri has a long list of deliveries and accidentally leaves the room key on the table. He has no time to turn back and tries not to think about Afra. When he returns, the door is locked but the key is missing. When Afra emerges, Nuri can tell something is wrong. Afra tells him that Mr. Fotakis came into the room and lay down beside her; when she cried out, he told her to be quiet or Nuri would find her dead when he returned.
In forgetting the key, Nuri allows the safe place he and Afra carved out for themselves to be violated by Mr. Fotakis. That he would take advantage of Nuri and Afra’s desperate desire to survive is unsurprising given his characterization, but nevertheless disgusting in its flagrant disregard for Afra’s humanity. Mr. Fotakis takes advantage of Afra because he knows he will get away with it, showing how a society that dismisses the humanity of refugees leaves them vulnerable to predatory people.
Themes
