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Chapter 3
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
Back in the present, there is a new resident at the bed and breakfast, a young man named Diomande from the Ivory Coast. Nuri eavesdrops on his conversation with the Moroccan man about how he came to the UK. Diomande has prominent shoulder blades that look like wings, and he describes a harrowing journey of imprisonment and death threats. Later, Nuri returns to the garden to find Mohammed playing with his marble. He says he is looking for a key to get out, and Nuri sees that the tree is filled with hundreds of golden keys. He collects them all in a bowl, but Mohammed disappears, so he takes them upstairs to his and Afra’s room.
Diomande’s introduction presents a new kind of refugee story, in which a person leaves home for work rather than safety and finds themselves in an unsafe situation. It is unclear whether Diomande’s story will fill the asylum criteria, but his arrival coincides enough with Nuri and Afra’s to make their situations comparable in future chapters. Mohammed’s search for a key recalls the key Nuri imagined in an earlier chapter—the key that would take Afra to a different world. In both these instances, the key symbolizes a means of escape. The multitude of keys Nuri finds in the garden suggests he is overwhelmed with options or choices, perhaps reflecting how unsure he is that he has taken the right path.
Themes
Nuri flashes back to his time in Istanbul—where he met Mohammed—after he crossed the river into Turkey. Nuri and Afra pass through a border town on foot, eventually making their way to an open field at the foot of snowy mountains where other refugees are camped. There, Nuri meets another Syrian refugee named Elias who has lost his wife and daughter. Together, they make a plan to pool their money and find a smuggler to take them to Istanbul, bypassing the lawful authorities.
By identifying Istanbul as the place where Nuri meets Mohammed, the narrative emphasizes the importance of that meeting and signals that the reader will finally get some answers about Mohammed’s character. Nuri and Elias’s plan shows how, oftentimes, the only people refugees can depend on are other refugees, as governments leave them suspended in bureaucratic limbo.
Themes
Nuri, Afra, and Elias meet a smuggler in the nearest town who takes them to an apartment in Istanbul. They wait there with several others for the smuggler to bring news of the weather and when it would be safe to cross the sea into Greece. Afra tells Nuri she does not want to go, that she is scared of the water. Nuri replies that she is scared of everything, and she denies this. This is when Nuri notices a young boy (Mohammed) sitting on the floor, rolling a marble around. The boy seems to be on his own in the smuggler’s apartment.
The days Nuri and Afra spend in the smuggler’s apartment convey the frustration of not having control of one’s own life. In this case, they are literally at the mercy of the weather, waiting for the sea crossing to be safe. While it makes sense that Nuri is frustrated with Afra’s imminent refusal to make that crossing, his dismissal of her as “scared of everything” feels uncharacteristic and harsh, hinting at his underlying stress. The appearance of Mohammed in this moment of tension seems to give Nuri something else to focus on, and he welcomes the opportunity.
Themes
Later, Mohammed approaches Nuri on the balcony. His questioning eyes remind Nuri of Sami. The boy asks Nuri if they will fall into the sea during the crossing, and Nuri assures him that Allah will protect them. The boy introduces himself and asks why Allah did not help “the boys when they took off their heads.” He also tells Nuri that his father gave him a key to a house, but when he reached the house there was no door. Mohammed is dressed all in black. None of the other refugees speak to him, but Nuri thinks he makes the boy feel safe.
This initial conversation shows that Nuri connects Mohammed to Sami; they are around the same age and have the same wide, questioning eyes. His efforts to comfort Mohammed’s fears about crossing the ocean are rooted in fatherly love. The meaning of Mohammed’s question about the boys who lost their heads is unclear, but the implication is that Allah has not managed to save everyone—a very honest, childlike observation. His mention of the key his father gave him recalls the key Mohammed was searching for in the bed and breakfast, suggesting that Nuri is remembering this conversation and projecting it as a dreamlike vision in the present. Though the house’s lack of a door suggests Mohammed was unable to find escape or safety, it is not stated in this moment what he was trying to escape from. Nuri does not press Mohammed for details about his family, and much of his situation remains ambiguous. That the other refugees ignore Mohammed also seems to hint that something odd is going on with him.
Themes
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Nuri spends his days in Istanbul walking through the city, often accompanied by Elias. The stray cats and dogs remind him of those in Aleppo, and he watches other refugees in the market trying to make enough money to move on. Nuri sometimes forgets that he is one of them. Watching other families with children, he wonders how Sami would have adapted here, and how Afra might be different if their son was still alive. She refuses to go out with Nuri, but he brings her dough rings, neglecting to tell her about the children on the streets.
In this section, Nuri experiences a subtle disassociation from his own status as a refugee. His mind returns him to the streets of Aleppo, and he feels separate from other refugees, as if his mind is trying to shield him from that reality. He even imagines the slightly different reality in which Sami is alive and with them, and he thinks about how Sami’s presence would change Afra. The entire experience would feel more like an adventure, filled with exploration. Although the time Nuri spends wandering the city distracts and possibly comforts him, he avoids telling Afra about certain details, reinforcing the walls she has thrown up against the outside world.
Themes
Sometimes Afra wakes in the night and forgets she is not in Aleppo. These moments frighten Nuri to the point where he wishes he could kill her, if only to bring her peace. To pass the time waiting for the weather to improve, Nuri and Elias work washing cars. One day, Nuri comes across an Internet café and checks his email to find several messages from Mustafa. His cousin has spent time in camps in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Germany. Regarding smugglers, Mustafa writes, “People are not like bees. We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good.” He is still hoping to reunite with his family but is also filled with sorrow.
Afra’s nighttime hallucinations feel similar to Nuri’s daydreams of returning to Aleppo, but he is concerned for her because he does not know how deep that delusion goes, as she is literally blind to reality. His compulsion to kill her, while rooted in a loving desire to give her peace, shows how affected he is by her infirmity. Mustafa’s difficulty getting to England foreshadows Nuri and Afra’s journey. His comparison of people and bees imply that there is little hope for a humanity that empathizes and cooperates in pursuit of a greater good. That Mustafa’s hope is flagging is a major character shift from the eccentric optimist Nuri knew in Syria.
Themes
Nuri remembers the first time Mustafa took him to see the bees’ apiaries, how he told him to relax and become like nature. He writes about this memory to Mustafa in an email and tells him about Mohammed and the progress of his journey. Thoughts of reuniting with Mustafa give him hope. Later, Nuri gives Mohammed some small items he found in the washed cars. Mohammed spends the evening creating a family of stones to traverse a road map, and Nuri puts him to bed like he would his own son. Although their journey across the sea is imminent, Elias decides he has gone far enough and will not continue the journey.
This memory transports Nuri to a time when he felt aligned with his surroundings, working as one with the bees. Including this memory in his response to Mustafa, Nuri tries to revive his cousin’s hope, even as his own hope is buoyed by the act of connecting with Mustafa in this way. Nuri’s attachment to Mohammed grows as he watches the boy play and puts him to bed. Knowing that Mohammed is, in some way, lost in the present moment, this attachment gains the potential to cause Nuri further pain. Elias’s decision to remain in Istanbul suggests that some refugees, having lost so much, feel there is nothing left to move toward.
Themes
