want to know, because if there was no email from him then I would find it even harder to keep going, but I was happy when I saw a stream of messages waiting for me:
* * *
04/02/2016
Dear Nuri,
Mustafa has not been able to get to his emails. I spoke to him today, he has made it to France and has asked me to check his messages and respond. He was hoping there would be a message from you, he has been hoping every day. I cannot even begin to explain how pleased I am to hear from you. Mustafa and I were both very worried. He tried not to imagine bad things but he found it hard not to, as you must know.
When I speak to him again I will tell him the good news. He will be very happy. Aya and I are in England. We are living at the moment in a shared house in Yorkshire and waiting to find out if we have been granted asylum.
I am glad you made it to Istanbul, Nuri, and I hope that you make it safely to Greece and further.
With love,
Dahab
* * *
28/02/2016
Dear Nuri,
I finally made it to my daughter and wife in England. It was a horrible journey through France and I do not want to write about it here, but I will tell you when you arrive. I know that you will make it to us. We are waiting for you. I cannot rest until you get here. You are like my brother, Nuri. My family is not complete without you and Afra.
Dahab is very unhappy, Nuri. She was trying to stay strong for Aya, but since I arrived here she has been lying down all day with the lights switched off, holding on to a photograph of Firas. Sometimes she cries, but most of the time she is silent. She will not talk about him. All she says is that she is happy that I am by her side now.
I see from your last email that you were in Istanbul. I hope that you have made it to Greece by now. I have heard that Macedonia has closed their borders so it will be difficult from there, as it was for me, but you must keep going. By the time I hear from you again I hope that you will have moved closer to where we are.
So many times I wish I had not stayed behind, that I had left Aleppo with my wife and daughter because then my son would still be with us. This thought brings me close to death. We cannot go back, cannot change the decisions we made in the past. I did not kill my son. I try to remember these things because if I don’t I will be lost in the darkness.
The day that I hear that you have made it to England will bring light to my soul.
Mustafa
I sat there and read and reread the email. You are like my brother, Nuri. And the memory came back to me of Mustafa’s father’s house in the mountains. The house was surrounded by pines and fir trees and it was dark and cool inside, old mahogany furniture and handwoven rugs, and on a console table at the far end, beneath a window, a shrine to the mother and wife who had left them. There were photographs of her as a young girl and then as a young woman, tall and beautiful with glittering eyes. There were wedding photographs and pictures of her holding Mustafa in her arms, and others when she was pregnant with the child she would die with. Mustafa grew up under the care and protection of his father and grandfather, no women to soften the place or bring light to it, no siblings to play with, so he found solace in the brilliant light and beautiful sounds and smells of the apiaries.
He got to know the bees like they were his siblings, he watched them and learnt how they spoke to one another, he followed paths deep into the mountains to find the source of their journey and sat in the shade of the trees and watched as they collected nectar from eucalyptus and cotton and rosemary.
Mustafa’s grandfather was a strong man, with huge hands like Mustafa, a sharp eye and a sense of humour – he encouraged Mustafa to be curious, to have adventures with nature. He liked it when I came to visit and would cut up tomatoes