(AUDIO) BOOK REVIEW
Fleeing Your Beloved Country To Find Safety
Book review of The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
Too many times, the news report mentions another rubber boat capsized, and refugees drowned. We all have our opinions, but have you ever tried to imagine yourself in the shoes of those who have to flee their homes, leaving everything behind, and paying an enormous amount to buy their ‘safety’?
The title — The Beekeeper of Aleppo — pulled me in before I even read the blurb of the story. It was only after I had finished with the book that I realized it’s a work of fiction, and not a retelling of facts.
It could easily have been a true story.
The author, Christy Lefteri
Just like Alex Michaelides, the author of The Silent Patient, Christy Lefteri (1980) has a Greek-Cypriotic background, even though she was born in London. Her parents were refugees, escaping Cyprus following the partition in 1974.
Christy later volunteered to work in a UNICEF refugee shelter in Athens.
She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Brunel University, where she is now a lecturer.
The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) is her second book, which became a Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the 2020 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her first book was A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible (2010), and her third is Songbirds (2021).
Personal, lived testimonies of trauma inform Christy’s fiction, clear in the fact she has engaged in voluntary work and dedicated her first book to her refugee mother, and the second to her father.
Something little of Christy’s readers knows is that she has a Havanese dog called Alfie, which she says is the funniest little thing she has ever met.
Nuri and Afra’s journey
While volunteering in Athens at the women and children’s refugee center, Christy had an image in her mind of a man entering a crumbling home holding a pomegranate he had found in the streets. He gave the fruit to his wife. In the image, the wife was blind, and the couple had lost their son.
Back in London, Christy wrote the scene in the third person, and developed the story from there, but went back to change everything to the first person when she finally found Nuri’s voice writing the asylum interview sections.
The story is about a couple, Nuri and Afra. Nuri is a beekeeper who rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to the hives. Afra is an artist and sells her beautiful paintings at the market.
Then the unthinkable happens, and it destroys their simple life. War wrecks their country, and the same attack that claims the life of their son also steals Afra’s sight. Overhearing things in the street, Nuri knows they have to leave their beloved Syria, not a simple task with Afra’s blindness, and the grief for their son.
Knowing Nuri’s cousin, Mustafa, waits for them in Yorkshire where he has started new colonies of hives and teaches fellow refugees to care for bees, pulls the couple forward. Navigating the dangers on their journey, they also have to find their way back to each other and their love.
Nuri seems to be the stronger of the couple, but the reader discovers Afra’s strength lies in her deep and quiet demeanour.
A remarkable story
The first person narrative makes this story feel close and personal. You feel the grief of the parents for losing their son, the fear as they embarked on their journey, and the helplessness when they struggle to find their way back to each other.
The way the story jumps from the present to the past, to eventually end in the present when the full story has been told, unfolds a remarkable story of grief and courage, and left me with gratitude to live in relative safety.
For now.
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