The Beekeeper of Aleppo: A Novel

I received a free electronic ARC copy of this novel on August 28, 2019, from Netgalley, Christy Lefteri, and Random House - Ballentine Books. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this book of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest personal opinion of this work. I am very pleased to recommend this novel to friends and family. This is a book to read and savor, more than once. There are passages from this novel that keep drumming in my heart as I picture them in my head. Nuri, with his cousin Mustafa, is a beekeeper in the hills overlooking beautiful Aleppo, Syria. Nuri handles anything to do with the bees and apiaries, and Mustafa researches and manufactures items using the honey and manages their retail business - though the started from scratch, at this point in time they are producing ten tons of honey a year. Nuri had to break his father's heart to become a knowledgable beekeeper, learning the business from his Uncle - Mustafa's father and their common grandfather were beekeepers. It is a lifestyle, a calling that Nuri felt in his heart far stronger than those nudges from his conscious urging him to join his father in his family business, shut up all day in a store selling fabric and notions to the masses. Nuri's wife Afra is a successful artist. Nuri and Afra have a beautiful, contented outdoor life and an eight-year-old son, Sami, the light of their lives. Until. Afra suffers blindness after watching her son Sami die during a bombing in the streets of Aleppo. Nuri does his best to help his wife and protect his bees as he watches friends, neighbors, eventually, even his partner Mustafa with wife Dahab and daughter Aya gather up essentials and flee to the coast seeking refuge across the Mediterranean Sea. Anywhere else. Afra, in deep mourning, lost and helpless, refuses to leave their home. They will stay with Sami, who is buried in their gardens. Nothing Nuri says will change her mind. When she finally concedes and they join the masses of refugees of Syria, Afghanistan and the African continent, the nightmare continues, unabated. For YEARS. I live an hours drive from Juarez, Mexico. I thought I was cognisant with the whole idea of pain and loss and fear behind the fleeing citizens of a beleaguered country - leaving all you love, facing a life among strangers and starting all over again because you no longer have a home, a country, a place in your world. I have done what I thought I was capable of to assist those fleeing through Mexico from Central America, Europe, even the Ivory Coast. Locally we hold food drives and clothing drives, gather truckloads of water and diapers, try to provide tea and sympathy. We bombard our legislatures with letters and e-mails. But I truly had no idea. Though presented as fiction, The Beekeeper of Aleppo has truth at the heart. Please read this book. We cannot do enough to assist these families awaiting validation at our borders around the world. And this is a problem that the world must solve before it is too late - for all of us.

Nuri and Afra are the focus of the story, with Nuri being the narrative voice: a voice that switches from past to present, reality to dream states in ways unexpected and wholly heartbreaking. After losing their young son to a bomb in Aleppo as the bombings and strife raged on, Afra, known for her unique paintings and artwork was rendered blind: shock, sadness, even the numbing grief of the loss of their child seemed to weigh her down in ways unimagined. But it was not the first inclination of hardships to come. Her husband Nuri, along with his cousin Mustafa were raising and keeping bees in the hills above the city. Harvesting the honey, Nuri and his cousin have a certain affinity for the little creatures: Nuri’s the more instinctual and emotional tie where his cousin’s was more scientific. But with the war and hardships, and untold dangers, Nuri and his cousin started to stockpile money, passports and other means of escape from Syria – knowing that things would only get worse. In fact, his cousin’s wife and daughter left the country and resettled in England, just waiting for the rest of the family, including Nuri and Afra to join them. But here – the story dives again into deeply disturbing imagery as the search for Mustafa’s young son ends in tragedy and Mustafa makes the perilous journey out of Syria to join his wife and daughter. Throughout the story, Nuri and Mustafa keep ‘in touch’ through email – telling of the dangers, the journey, even the successes as Mustafa finds himself in Yorkshire and is teaching other immigrants about bees and beekeeping. It is truly Nuri’s story that we are following – the confrontations with ‘police’ and the associated death threats, rivers and abandoned buildings full of bodies – many with hands bound, the outrageous sums of money to ‘leave’ along with the dangers of unscrupulous ‘agents’. Death from drowning, being lost in the shuffle of ‘refugee camps, endless piles of paperwork and Nuri’s own tentative (at times) grasp on reality. From a park in Athens that becomes a hunting ground for the weak and uncertain, to finally arriving at Heathrow and placed in a boarding house while awaiting asylum paperwork the story is gripping, heartbreaking and a lesson to us all about the lengths and breadths people will go to assure a better life for themselves, even leaving behind all that is familiar and known. Lefteri’s prose and story-telling is solid and based on her own experiences in working with refugees, and her own life being effected by fleeing her homeland with her family. Personally I think her own ‘stories’ as a child growing up in a new place helped to infuse this story with an emotional accessibility that speaks to readers throughout the book – as we hope for the best for Nuri and Afra, and wonder of his gentle caressing of the little bee with no wings….perhaps he’s decided that everyone needs a chance. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.