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Intro
The Beekeeper of Aleppo alternates between two timelines, a past and a present. The present timeline takes place in 2016 England, where Syrian refugees Nuri and Afra are staying at a bed and breakfast while attempting to claim asylum. The past timeline chronicles the years before, when civil war leads the couple to flee Syria and make the long cross-country journey to England. By switching frequently between these two timelines, the novel’s non-linear structure intentionally withholds certain information from the reader to create suspense and mimic the disorienting nature of the characters’ trauma.
The novel begins in the present timeline, where Nuri confesses to the reader that he fears his wife Afra’s eyes and the way she seems to be disappearing. Afra is blind, but her condition is recent; in Syria, she made a living as a prolific artist. While the cause of Afra’s blindness is not explained at this time, it creates distance between her and Nuri, who can fully see the direness of their situation. Nuri and Afra stay at an English bed and breakfast with several other refugees, including Hazim (the Moroccan man) and Diomande, waiting to begin the process of claiming asylum in England. They meet with a social worker, Lucy Fisher, who processes their paperwork and helps them prepare for the all-important interviews with immigration. Even after their long journey to the United Kingdom, Nuri and Afra are in danger of being refused asylum and sent back to Syria.
Nuri’s initial flashbacks describe his life before the war as a beekeeper in the city of Aleppo. Mustafa, Nuri’s cousin, teaches him about beekeeping, and together they run a successful business looking after their bees and selling honey-based products. Nuri loves his work. He and Afra have a young son, Sami, and the three of them take meals with Mustafa, his wife Dahab, and his children Firas and Aya. When the war begins, Mustafa, sensing trouble, sends Dahab and Aya to England. After vandals destroy the apiaries, Mustafa makes plans to leave Syria, but before he can do so, Firas is killed. Mustafa eventually flees to England, leaving a note for Nuri asking him to follow as soon as he can. Afra, grief-ridden after Sami’s as-yet unexplained death, refuses to leave the country until soldiers threaten Nuri’s life and ransack their house.
In the present timeline, Nuri’s days are structureless and transitory. He tries to set up a doctor’s appointment for Afra for the pain behind her eyes, only to be told he does not have the proper paperwork. At this moment and others, his hands shake and he hears phantom planes and explosions that are not there. In the courtyard of the bed and breakfast, Nuri finds a flightless bee and begins to care for her with the Moroccan man’s help. At night, Nuri’s experiences become more surreal. He sees Mohammed, a young boy he met during his travels, in the downstairs courtyard. Mohammed tells Nuri he needs to find a key, and he turns to find trees full of them. There is a dreamlike quality to these visions, and though Nuri wakes in strange places after having them, it is not clear whether he is asleep or awake for their duration. As a result of Nuri’s nighttime wanderings, the distance between him and Afra grows.
Nuri’s flashbacks to his journey from Syria to England are richly detailed. He and Afra escape Syria into Turkey. In a smuggler’s apartment, he meets Mohammed, a young boy around Sami’s age, who seems to be alone. Nuri takes the boy under his wing, comforting him during the harrowing sea crossing to Greece and pretending Mohammed is his son when interacting with local authorities. In a Greek camp, Nuri loses track of Mohammed and is forced to leave for Athens without him, a decision that haunts him for the rest of his travels. In Athens, Nuri and Afra stay in Pedion tou Areos, a public park surrounded by woods that has been turned into a sprawling refugee camp. There, they meet Angeliki, who tells them children are often stolen from the park for organs or sex. Angeliki’s own baby was stolen from her, and her leaking breasts emphasize the newness of this loss. Nuri also interacts with Nadim, a talented musician from Afghanistan, though he eventually discovers Nadim is one of the men who take and exploit children from the park. When a mob beats Nadim to death, Nuri deals the fatal blow, and the guilt follows him to England. Throughout Nuri’s travels, he exchanges emails with Mustafa, who has made it to England and is pursuing beekeeping once again, hoping Nuri will join him soon.
Back in the present timeline, Afra finally sees a doctor. She tells him her blindness was caused by the bomb that killed Sami while he was playing in the garden. The doctor says Afra’s eyes seem to be functioning normally, leading him to believe her blindness is her body’s way of coping with the trauma of watching Sami die. Afra insists to the doctor that Nuri is also unwell, that he talks to people who are not there. Nuri protests, but the doctor is suspicious. Later, Lucy Fisher takes Nuri and Afra to their asylum interviews. The immigration officers ask Nuri strange questions that seem designed to catch him in a contradiction or otherwise make it difficult to claim he is in danger in his home country, and he worries he and Afra will be sent back to Syria.
Nuri’s final flashbacks detail his escape from Athens. To knock down the price of a trip to England, he agrees to make deliveries for a smuggler—Mr. Fotakis—for three weeks while he and Afra stay in the man’s apartment. Nuri locks Afra in their room while he makes these deliveries, but on the last night, he forgets the key, and Mr. Fotakis—knowing Nuri and Afra can do nothing without jeopardizing their chance to leave Greece—rapes Afra. The guilt Nuri feels further drives a wedge between him and his wife.
Back in England, Nuri returns Mustafa’s latest email, telling him where he is but that he is unwell. He sees Mohammed again and follows him through a door that transports him back to Aleppo, where he submerges himself in the river. He wakes in England on a beach and then spends several days in the hospital. Speaking to Afra after his return, she reveals to Nuri that she does not know Mohammed, that the boy is a product of his own imagination. Nuri realizes this is true, that everything Mohammed did and said and feared were things that Sami did and said and feared. Nuri’s grief over his son’s death led him to create this other boy as a way to cope. That night, he apologizes to Afra and the two of them reminisce about Sami, beginning the long process of healing their shared grief at last.
The next morning, Mustafa arrives at the bed and breakfast, and Nuri breaks down. Both men are older and have experienced so much loss and trauma, but Mustafa hopes that Nuri will come help with his new bee colonies and begin to rebuild. Afra’s sight is slowly returning, enough for her to see three non-native birds take flight from the tree in the courtyard, and this final image represents the hope of finding a new home.
