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Chapter 2
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
In the present, Nuri wakes up in the garden of the bed and breakfast, clutching some blossoms in his fist. The Moroccan man finds him there and tells him that Afra has been looking for him, crying. Nuri doubts this; he has not seen his wife cry since Aleppo. He comes inside to find Afra already dressed, which he mentions but then regrets. Afra says that Hazim (the Moroccan man) told her Nuri was sleeping in the garden, and that she should not worry about him.
That Nuri wakes in the courtyard garden feels significant, as if his memories or dreams are affecting his life in the real world. While it seems plausible that he simply fell asleep there, the fact that he saw Mohammed the night before and wakes clutching similar flower blossoms suggests something more is going on, though Nuri himself does not seem to know what it could be. His dismissal of Afra’s worry suggests he does not think she is capable of such strong feelings for him.
Themes
For the first time since arriving in the UK, Nuri goes for a walk outside. He makes his way to the seashore and watches children playing in a sandbox on the promenade. One young boy is making a city out of sand, using bits of rubbish to add color to his creation. Nuri takes the asylum documentation out of his backpack and looks it over, still stuck on the terminology of “any part” and “persecution.” It begins to rain, and he returns to the bed and breakfast to find Afra and the Moroccan man in the living room.
The image of a young boy making a city out of sand recalls the breakable houses in Syria and Sami’s Lego house, evoking ideas of impermanent civilizations. The asylum criteria that Nuri is dwelling on shows that his worries about being sent back to Syria weigh heavily on his mind. The words themselves seem exclusionary, as if their intent is to weed out the refugees who cannot prove they will be persecuted in all parts of their country.
Themes
Nuri keeps glancing to the garden doors, expecting to see Mohammed. He goes into the garden and brings the flightless bee back with him. The landlady brings tea. Nuri observes her attention to cleanliness—despite the bed and breakfast’s general shabbiness— and the way she remembers all the residents’ names. Nuri returns the bee to the garden and helps Afra get ready for bed. She asks if he has heard from Mustafa, but he is distracted by a phantom whistling sound. He tries to entice Afra into exploring the city, but she is uninterested.
The monotony of Nuri’s day indicates he is in a kind of holding pattern, a state of transition. His curiosity about Mohammed and the bee are preoccupations for a mind overwhelmed with worry. The landlady’s description paints her as distinctly empathetic toward the refugees who stay in her house, and the sense is that this sets her apart from other locals. Nuri’s mind reacts to the seemingly small stressor of Afra’s questions about Mustafa by conjuring a phantom bomb; his sensitivity to triggers in this moment hint at a trauma whose specifics have yet to be explored. Afra’s more visible trauma, on the other hand, keeps her withdrawn from the world around her.
Themes
Darkness falls. It “gets to” Nuri, as does the scent of Afra’s perfume mixed with her sweat. He recognizes the sound of the Moroccan man’s footsteps in the hall outside their room, and he hears the sound of Mohammed’s marble rolling across the floor. After retrieving it, Nuri watches the night with wide eyes and flashes back to another fearful time. Back in Aleppo, he and Afra wait for a smuggler to pick them up beneath a certain tree in the city. There is a dead man waiting with them at the pickup spot, but Nuri does not tell Afra he is there.
Nuri’s senses appear to be heightened; he is overstimulated by sight, scent, and sound. Again, the narrative seems to imply Nuri is experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder or something similar. That the darkness triggers another flashback supports this interpretation, as flashbacks are common responses to extreme trauma. The memory that unfolds is quietly traumatic, with Nuri seeing the dead man at their meeting place while simultaneously protecting Afra from the knowledge of the dead man’s presence.
Themes
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There is a phone in the dead man’s hand that keeps lighting up. Afra, unaware in her blindness, recounts memories of visiting this city’s clock tower and cafes. Nuri feels that some parts of the old Afra are breaking through her grief, but he is frightened by how she disregards their current reality. Afra whispers that she wants to return in spring and visit the famous market, “talking about Aleppo like it [is] a magical land out of a story.” Nuri worries she has forgotten the war’s destruction. The dead man’s phone flashes again, and a distressed Nuri puts it in his backpack.
The collision of hope and delusion appears clearly in this moment. Afra’s optimistic desire to visit the market (unhampered by the visual truth of her surroundings) is so completely outside the realm of possibility that Nuri compares it to a fairytale. Whether Afra’s blindness is to blame or if some part of her has forgotten the truth—that the market is long gone—is left ambiguous. It seems likely her hope is partially born of desperation for things to be as they once were. Nuri worries about Afra’s mind but has himself expressed similar sentiments, wishing to unsee what he has seen. With the dead man’s phone keeping Nuri firmly rooted in the present, it is possible to see how failing to mention that reality to Afra keeps her safe at the same time as it reinforces her inaccurate view of the world—a necessary delusion.
Themes
Ali, the smuggler, arrives in a Toyota and instructs Afra and Nuri to lie down in the bed of the truck with a cow. The dead man, it seems, was meant to be his third passenger. After departing, the dead man’s phone begins to ring in Nuri’s backpack. Seeing that it is the man’s wife calling, he answers, but cannot bear to break the news that the man is dead. Ali hears Nuri’s conversation and stops the truck, threatening him with a gun before confiscating the phone.
Coming on the heels of Nuri’s choice to allow Afra to remain ignorant of the dead man, his inability to give bad news to the dead man’s wife characterizes him as kind-hearted and protective. He understands how ignorance might be preferable in such traumatic circumstances and that it might be less painful for the woman to hope for her husband’s survival instead of lamenting his certain death.
Themes
As they drive through Aleppo, Nuri considers all the ways in which the war has changed the country. They pass an intact billboard picturing Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, and Nuri tries to imagine everything is as untouched as this picture. They reach another pickup point and wait for a mother and child, but Ali is impatient, saying they must make it to their destination before sunrise. He gives food and water to a man on a bike, who warns them of a sniper on the road ahead. Ali decides to trust the man and takes the detour.
The landscape itself bears the scars of war; Syria is not the same place it was before. Although the narrative does not dive into the specifics of Syrian politics, the mention of Bashar al-Assad’s untouched photograph implies that the people in power are the ones who suffer the least. Even among civilians, human empathy has its limits, as seen when the smuggler decides to abandon the mother and child. The man on the bike saves Nuri’s group from the sniper, but he feels compelled to help them since he ate their food. These brief occurrences show how trust and empathy can make one vulnerable in times of war and survival can sometimes depend on one’s willingness to dehumanize someone else.
Themes
Driving through the countryside, Nuri once again tries to imagine the world before the war. He imagines the apiaries and the bees in their hives, and he remembers Mustafa dipping his finger into the honey and tasting it. He remembers coming home to Sami and Afra after working in the fields. Suddenly, Afra is saying his name in the truck bed. She tells Nuri he was crying, and she comforts him for a moment before fading back into herself again. Nuri knows he cannot force her to stay with him in reality and that he has to wait for her to come back on her own.
All of Nuri’s happy memories are bound to the grief he feels for all the things he has lost, tainting them. That Afra seems surprised by Nuri’s tears indicates that this display of emotion is a rare occurrence. Nuri’s outburst prompts Afra to respond even though she is usually withdrawn, showing how human suffering invites connection. The moment is brief, however, as Afra grapples with her own deep sadness.
Themes
Nuri and Afra finally reach the Turkish border and the river that marks it. They make their way through a dark wood to find more people on the riverbank, waiting for their turn to cross. A man tries to lower a young girl into a saucepan attached to a cable so she can be pulled across the river, but she will not let him go. He slaps her to silence her cries and she floats away down the river before the man collapses into sobs. Nuri knows the man will not see the girl again. He looks back at the home he is leaving behind.
In this scene, Nuri and Afra become true refugees, forcefully separated from their home. The man and the young girl—ostensibly his daughter—embody the complex emotions that come with such an exodus. He slaps her to break her grip on him and, moreover, to get her to go along with something that will ultimately keep her safe. This reflects the inherent and emotionally complex trauma of fleeing one’s home, demonstrating the pain of having to act against one’s instincts in order to keep loved ones safe. The permanence of the man and the girl’s separation exemplifies Nuri’s own doubts over whether he will ever again return to Syria.
Themes
