Review: The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Many thanks to my friend Abigail, who bought this book for me to enjoy when on adoption leave.

I hope this book marks the start of more stories to come out of Syria. The civil war there has been waging for so long it's easy to forget that there are still millions displaced and suffering, whether in Syria or in refugee camps across the Middle East and Europe. Although this book is a work of fiction, it is based on true stories that the author learned while volunteering at a refugee centre in Athens.

Nuri, a beekeeper, and his artist wife, Afra, had a wonderful life in Aleppo, Syria, until the war started. They held on and on until tragedy and threats to their lives struck, at which point they decided to leave. They want to make it to England, where Mustafa - Nuri's cousin - already is with his family.

The novel starts with Nuri and Afra having made it to England. They are staying in a B&B while waiting for an interview process that will tell them if they have been granted asylum. Nuri is broken while not admitting to it. Afra is blind (the result of a bomb) but still perceives more than she sometimes lets on. They make friends with other asylum seekers in the B&B, including a character called the Moroccan Man (we never learn his name) who becomes somewhat of a rock for Nuri.

Nuri, we discover, is suffering from PTSD. He talks to a ghost of a boy called Mohammed he met in Turkey, but these hallucinations lead him unwittingly into trouble. Whenever he has these hallucinations, we are led into a flashback of Nuri's and Afra's journey out of Syria, which is truly harrowing. Whether it's driving through bombed out cities, mere shells of their beautiful former selves (search up pictures of Syria before the war. It truly was stuning), traversing dangerous seas in smuggling boats, or dealing with the danger and desperation of refugee camps, these parts of the novel puts faces on the suffering of those who have gone through unspeakable tragedy.

These refugees are not just refugees. This is something I tell my students all the time - refugees are people who don't want to leave their countries. They have homes, families, lives there. I try to get them to understand how bad things have to be to make one think that one has to leave their country with pretty much nothing but the clothes on their backs. No one would do that unless they were truly desperate.

I think this novel is essential reading for this time. COVID-19 has obviously put the world on hold but it wasn't so long ago that people with relatively safe and stable existences in European countries were complaining (at best) about refugees wanting to find safety in our country and elsewhere in Europe. I would be surprised to find anyone who isn't moved, challenged, and brought to compassion by this novel.