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Afra
Mustafa is Nuri’s cousin who teaches him how to care for bees and invites him into a business partnership. After Mustafa’s mother died, the cousins lost touch for many years until fate—as Nuri’s mother claimed—brought them back together. Mustafa is married to Dahab, and his children are Firas and Aya. While living in Aleppo, Mustafa’s family, Nuri, Afra, and Sami regularly take meals together. Even in these happy flashbacks, Mustafa seems to sense that great loss is coming. An eccentric professor at the University of Damascus, he is prone to melancholic ruminations. Mustafa sends Dahab and Aya to England long before he and Firas leave Syria, and Firas is murdered. Broken by his son’s death, Mustafa kills some soldiers and flees the country, leaving a note behind for Nuri. Upon arriving in the UK, Mustafa adopts a colony of bees and writes to tell Nuri he is waiting for him, so they can pick up where they left off. Through emailed updates, Mustafa becomes a representation of hope for Nuri. Although the novel ends with the cousins’ reunion, Mustafa’s hopefulness contains a note of desperation that tells Nuri the losses they have sustained weigh heavily on him.
Mustafa Quotes in The Beekeeper of Aleppo
The The Beekeeper of Aleppo quotes below are all either spoken by Mustafa or refer to Mustafa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
And for a while on those evenings […] we were still happy. Life was close enough to normal for us to forget our doubts, or at least to keep them locked away somewhere in the dark recesses of our minds while we made plans for the future.
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Chapter 4
Quotes
People are not like bees. We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good—I’ve come to realize this now.
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Chapter 9
Quotes
But in the days and weeks that followed I saw him become smaller, and less urgent, less purposeful in his actions, as he cut or sewed or measured. As if he had lost the fire that had driven him. And I thought in that moment, lying there looking up at the Athenian sky, that if I had sacrificed my father’s happiness to become a beekeeper, then I had to find a way to make it to Mustafa.
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Chapter 14
Quotes
He speaks with the enthusiasm of a child again, but can detect an undertone of desperation. I know him, and what he is really saying is this: this is how the story must end; our hearts can bear no more loss.
[…]
He wants to give me something to hope for, I can tell. Mustafa has always given me something to hope for.
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Mustafa Quotes in The Beekeeper of Aleppo
The The Beekeeper of Aleppo quotes below are all either spoken by Mustafa or refer to Mustafa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
And for a while on those evenings […] we were still happy. Life was close enough to normal for us to forget our doubts, or at least to keep them locked away somewhere in the dark recesses of our minds while we made plans for the future.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4
Quotes
People are not like bees. We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good—I’ve come to realize this now.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9
Quotes
But in the days and weeks that followed I saw him become smaller, and less urgent, less purposeful in his actions, as he cut or sewed or measured. As if he had lost the fire that had driven him. And I thought in that moment, lying there looking up at the Athenian sky, that if I had sacrificed my father’s happiness to become a beekeeper, then I had to find a way to make it to Mustafa.
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Chapter 14
Quotes
He speaks with the enthusiasm of a child again, but can detect an undertone of desperation. I know him, and what he is really saying is this: this is how the story must end; our hearts can bear no more loss.
[…]
He wants to give me something to hope for, I can tell. Mustafa has always given me something to hope for.
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