The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Back in the B&B, Nuri finds the bee again. He listens to the story of a new occupant who has made a long and perilous journey from the Ivory Coast to the UK. At night, he goes into the garden and finds the boy Mohammed, who asks him to get one of the golden keys down from the tree. Nuri picks a hundred keys off the tree, but Mohammed has gone. Then he joins the peacefully sleeping Afra in bed and his thoughts turn to Istanbul.

Having crossed the river to Turkey, the refugees crawled for a while in the dust, then walked through fields for hours in the cold. They passed through a village where the fearful residents gave them water, food and blankets. They then arrived at a dirty, makeshift camp of tents and received some food. Nuri met Elias, a man from Syria who had lost his wife and daughter but was determined to find a smuggler to take himself and the couple further, which he arranged by the next morning.

In Istanbul, Nuri and Afra slept with other refugees in a smugglers’ flat, waiting for the weather to be good enough for the crossing to Greece.