It had a soft blurry edge to it with a sharp, focused centre. His eyes shifted with ease from the outer edge to the centre. The leaves whispered around him. Birdsong faded in and out. The humming felt stronger. He stayed with it, wanting to go deeper into their refuge – the nest of the black honeybees. And for a moment, his mind began to float. The intensity of the centre of the nest was expanding. His knowing was merging into theirs, into the wails from an unseen depth that surrounded him. Flashes began in the darkness. They came and went, on and off, like a steady drum beat on the waves of the humming. It was a drum beat that was not made by human hands.
It is the sound of truth, a law, dropped to the earth.
It is no accident.
All was as it should be. His whole life had been preparation for this. He was back with his awareness on the ground again. The black honeybees had allowed him a glance, a feeling of that intensity. He held out his hands; it was raining.
‘Come back when the rains stop,’ the beekeeper said.
Mir Saab went to Karachi again and Hassan came back to the jungle after a month, and then every day just as he had intended, to listen to the nature around him.
He wandered with the beekeeper, gathering information about the whereabouts of the different nests. He began to learn about the wild flowers and the herbs. He became used to his life combining two worlds, returning to his mother by night and, after school, visiting the forest, still lush, alive and fresh from the rains.
The sounds of the forest became louder than the thoughts inside his head and the spaces between the memories of Maryam grew large enough for him to listen for that sound that Baba knew too.
Hassan began to write poetry.
Mir Saab returned to Harikaya when the rains stopped and asked Hassan to come to the fort.
‘I gave the scholarship to Sami,’ Mir Saab said from behind his desk.
‘It’s the right decision – she’ll have more choices that way.’
‘I’m going to create more scholarships,’ Mir Saab continued.
Hassan nodded. More education would give the people stronger voices.
‘How is your mother?’ Mir Saab asked.
‘Her eyes are stable. Thank you for helping her.’
‘I thank you too, Hassan.’
‘For what?’
‘For bringing me back to what I was before I… before my…’ He brought his hands together in front of his face as if in prayer. ‘I was full of fear. In a mental prison. Stuck.’
They sat in silence together for a minute, maybe longer.
‘And Maryam, have you heard from her?’ Hassan asked.
‘Yes. She asks after you and I’ll be able to tell her now.’
Hassan took the pouch out of his pocket with the piece of honeycomb. ‘Can you send this to her?’
Mir Saab took it. ‘Easier than a hive,’ he said.
They both laughed again.
‘It was a strange time, wasn’t it, Mir Saab? I believed anything was possible.’
‘You and Maryam managed to get the people to march.’
The march had consisted of mostly women, with some men on the edges. They had walked through the rain, soaked by the downpour that had started as soon as Maryam had left. Hassan had walked alongside his mother.
‘The plans for the takeover are still going ahead, but it’s a beginning,’ Mir Saab said.
He was looking at Hassan hard.
‘Are the black honeybees letting you in?’
‘Yes. Sometimes I want to know why. Why me and not Baba… or you?’
‘That’s like asking what purpose the stars have. Is there a real need for an explanation?
Hassan shook his head.
‘Hassan, I’ve been thinking.’
‘Yes, Mir Saab.’
‘Take me to the beekeeper.’
Baba’s last poem
Here on the sand, I look to the line of ancestors staggered at my back
I hear the music that is still played by the very first one
and my vision trails through brother, father, grandfather
on and on – great-grandfather, great, great, great ones
great grandmothers too until there are blanks
and the stories that my grandfather told are mingled with other realms
* * *
of silken cloths made from worms brought over on a ship’s helm
to lands where fires burnt only at night and people sat,
singers, poets, people of the melodies that sung of their ranks
that go back to times when snakes first emerged from oceans
to follow trails set out by other creatures into the sun,
worms, lizards, and greater beings that became our birds
* * *
all of them with a line in time behind their backs – of ancestors
and I, who walk this beach and take a shell,
trace its spirals etched by each of the elements,
and sketched by mathematicians with incessant lacks
that drove them to discover the codes behind the patterns on each one—
shells, fossils, flowers, ferns, unfolding shapes, and most of all the blanks
* * *
the spaces between lines on the shell in my hand, unnoticed until I sink
myself, a clear product of the paths of all my ancestors,
and bound by the line of time that reminds me of where I am from,
until I sink myself into that sound beyond perception by any sense
that rises from the spaces between the lines, between the tracks
that the mathematicians explore with a finite number of sums
* * *
beyond which the sounds of stars and all the blanks—
the spaces in between one star’s light and that of the other ones,
reaches my ears having travelled through the cracks
on the waves of codes that came down so our ancestors
could perpetuate their generations, not only to stand behind time’s helms
but to obey these invisible laws that unfold under our sun
* * *
that help her plan from one generation to the next all those ones
born by the codes of unfolding, that also inform the spirals on this shell
which I put up to my ear and now thank
its etchings linked to the greatness of my grandmothers,
that will still exist even when time has slacked
* * *
I look to the line behind my back
time is not the keeper of these ancestors
it is the invisible code that is to thank.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to acknowledge and thank my editor, Bethan Morgan, for her finely attuned editing, dedication, and support; Lucy Bennett for the beautiful cover; and all the superb team at One More Chapter and HarperCollins for the welcome they have given me as my publishing home and all their support for me and The Last Beekeeper.
I’d also like to thank Christina Petrie for her encouragement and support, and also Molly and Chloe. And to all the others whose names I haven’t mentioned here but who have been there with me along the journey of writing this story. Thank you.
Thank you for reading…
We hope you enjoyed The Last Beekeeper!
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Be sure to follow Siya Turabi on Facebook @SiyaTurabiAuthor and check out her website at siyaturabi.com for all the updates on her latest work.
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Happy reading!
Siya’s passion for writing and storytelling began early on in childhood when she read and imagined stories for her siblings. From a family of poets and storytellers, she was born in Karachi and came to the UK as a two-year-old with her parents. She was brought up in Manchester and moved to London to study Biochemical Engineering, followed by Sanskrit at the University of Bonn, where she also taught English as a foreign language. A passion for understanding how the mind works led to a part-time degree in psychology back in London, all the while writing poems and short stories.
* * *
After a long winding path as a student, teacher and art therapist, she started her first novel, The Last Beekeeper, at the age of 40, when the idea for the book was born in a writing class that was a gift to herself after finishing her Master of Art Therapy.
* * *
She loves escaping into stories and being in the natural world, and is currently writing her second novel set in fifteenth-century Spain.
siyaturabi.com
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