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Chapter 10
Themes
and Colors
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
In the present, Afra, Nuri, and Diomande travel by train to their interviews with immigration. Diomande looks to Nuri like a character in a fairytale, with his tall stature and his hidden wings. Lucy Fisher meets the group and leads them into the center. Nuri is taken to a room with two immigration officers, a man and a woman. They record the interview and begin questioning him. These questions become stranger and stranger, as if Nuri is meant to prove he is from Aleppo and in danger in Syria, and they are trying to trip him up. He becomes agitated when they ask questions about Sami and the situation of his country, replying sarcastically that it is “heaven on earth.”
Comparing Diomande to a fairytale character makes him feel out of place in the normal world; perhaps thinking of him in this way helps Nuri deal with the stress of his upcoming interview. The interviewers are cold and impersonal, representative of the unfeeling institutions that determine whether refugees like Nuri are worthy of help. Their questions seem designed to catch him in a lie, implying their true goal is to find a reason to deport him rather than grant him asylum. Nuri’s frustration and sarcastic response to their asinine questions are understandable reactions to the outright erasure of his humanity.
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After questioning Nuri in this way, the immigration officers finally ask about his journey to the UK. Nuri does his best to deliver his story in a straightforward fashion, but the officers keep interrupting and throwing him off. He does not tell them about Nadim or what happened to Afra before they arrived in England. The interview concludes, and Nuri exits to find Lucy Fisher waiting for him. Nuri has no response when she asks how it went, and she begs him not to lose hope.
Again, the interviewers seem unsympathetic to Nuri’s situation. They constantly interrupt his carefully curated story, making Nuri feel less than human. The fact that he avoids the most traumatic parts of his story show he is aware that they will not understand his experiences and may even use them as a basis for denying him asylum. Lucy Fisher’s lack of surprise after his interview suggests this is how the process usually goes; her instruction not to lose hope is well-meaning but hollow.
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Nuri flashes back to Pedion tou Areos, where he is losing hope. He travels to Victoria Square in search of aid, trying not to think of Angeliki’s claim that Athens is where people are trapped and die inside. He gets directions to Elpidos Street from a man selling worry beads. There, he finds The Hope Center, a place for women to have a shower and children to play. Nuri retrieves Afra and brings her to the center to join the shower queue. Leaving her in good hands, he finds an Internet café to check his email.
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In Mustafa’s latest email, he tells Nuri that he has met a local beekeeper who is helping him set up beekeeping workshops. His hives are thriving, the British bees working under all conditions. Nuri can sense Mustafa’s boyish excitement and replies, saying he and Afra are in Athens but struggling to move forward. Still, Mustafa’s projects give him hope, and he assures his cousin he will find a way to him. Outside the café, Nuri sees a nervous Syrian man waiting for someone on a bench. Nuri picks up Afra from the center and notes how bad he smells. She agrees, and they laugh like they are “the people [they] used to be.”
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Nuri and Afra return to the park. A young boy remarks on how big the sky is, how full of stars it will be, and Nuri wishes on those stars to make it to England. Angeliki joins them after nightfall; Nuri notices that Afra is engaged when she is there. Angeliki tells Nuri she is from Somalia, but her past is painful to talk about. Nevertheless, Angeliki tells Nuri she left when she was pregnant, to give her baby a better life. When she reached Athens, someone drugged her and stole her baby. She remembers how beautiful her country is, but she came to Greece because she thought there was a way forward here.
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In the morning, Afra draws a picture for Angeliki before Nuri drops her off at the Hope Center. He sees the young Syrian man from the bench and approaches him, guessing correctly that he has connections to a smuggler. The man, Baram, agrees to set up a meeting, but tells Nuri that getting to England will be expensive. Later, two new refugees claim the blankets Ryad and Ali abandoned. Nuri notices that the park is becoming more of a home to people, but this only makes him more eager to leave.
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Literary Devices
Afra and Nuri meet Baram in Victoria Square, where Baram is writing in a notebook. He tells them that he is rewriting his diary because the original was burned by the Turkish army because he is Kurdish. Baram leads them to the café to meet the smuggler (Mr. Fotakis), who tells them it will cost 7,000 euros to get to England. Nuri does not have that much money but offers to work to make up the difference. The smuggler agrees to this; Nuri will make deliveries for three weeks. He and Afra will have to live with the smuggler to make sure they do not run off with his packages.
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Returning to the park, Nuri finds himself scanning groups of children for Mohammed once again. He finds he is unable to picture his own son, Sami. Angeliki is waiting for them, her breasts leaking milk once again. Afra gives her the picture she drew. Angeliki says that the park hides everything no one wants to see, but this picture will remind her of a better world. She cries, and she and Afra hold one another all night, as if they know they will soon be separated.
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