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While the village itself is not being directly shelled, there is shelling around and nearly everyone has left.
Akhtem’s wife invites him to make a home for his bees near Akhtem’s hives in the orchard, and he does. So what does a beekeeper, who lives in the middle of nowhere, in no-man’s-land, who is neither Russian nor Ukrainian, or who is probably both – what does this beekeeper do? You learn a lot about bees (all correct, beekeeper speaking here) but also about Ukraine, the population (that is not just white and Christian! His neighbour in the next street Pashka is very interesting too, and there are two women who make an appearance later in the book, Galya and Aisylu, who are fascinating.There are snipers around, and the occasional shelling, but, exercising some caution, the two remaining inhabitants manage to continue with their lives here -- if in fairly limited fashion. The town has mostly been destroyed and consists of only two roads, one named Lenin and the other after Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainian poet and symbol for Ukrainian nationalism. Heavy on symbolism without being heavy-handed, occasionally surreal, and filled with plenty of heart, Grey Bees is an excellent book. Those he encounters too are for the most part warm hearted and helpful, the Tatar family for instance, extending every hospitality despite their own continual and increasing troubles. I know the book was written without knowledge of the current war, and it is perhaps because of that the author could employ humour, but thanks to the creative spirit and inspiration of Andrey Kurkov, these people will not be forgotten.
Into this silence were woven the whisper of foliage, the breeze’s breath, the buzzing of bees—all tiny sounds that constitute the peaceful silence of summer. Into this silence were woven the whisper of foliage, the breeze’s breath, the buzzing of bees – all the tiny sounds that constitute the peaceful silence of summer.Favourite thing I learnt: That there are such things as bee beds—beds made over hives on which people lie down/sleep as bees’ vibrations have healing properties. It's about his weird solitary life in his near-deserted village, the few people he meets, his peculiar road trip, and of course bees--creatures who do a rather better job of communal living and cooperation than people. The Tatar family that takes him in becomes the real heart of the story, with their extreme hospitality contrasting with the Russian officials who find any excuse to drive them out, finding flimsy excuses to jail a member of the family.
We skim, fret, find the words to be just that, words, and we soon abandon the book, allowing it to gather dust. Megzörgeti a kerítést, hogy jó napot, szépöcsém, itt vagyok, nyomatékul pedig küld egy tüzérségi aknát a templomtoronyba. Only in his dreams does he catch glimpses of peace, as in one in which his frenemy shows up to let him know the war is over. Behind these recent deaths are previous wars and grievances: Afghanistan, World War Two, and mass displacement under Stalin.
I began Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees slowly, trying to get a sense of Sergey Sergeyich, the 49-year-old beekeeper who lives in the gray zone between loyalists and separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region. He seems to be apolitical, but then he spent a day tearing down the Lenin Street road signs and replacing them with his own made Shevchenko Street signs. The sense of nationhood and internal mistrust pervade the lives of all the characters he meets and come to infect one of his three precious hives. It is significant, however, that Sergeyich doesn’t attend the wake of a Ukranian soldier but does honour the death of a civilian whose nationality is not his own. He’s one of only two human inhabitants left in Little Starhorodivka, a two-street village in the grey zone between the Ukrainian and Russian lines.
The identity is also discussed at length in the book, or rather the perception of the identity in terms of how we do or do not identify ourselves contrasted with the way others perceive us depending on their own background. Sergey, like many real-life inhabitants of this frontline area, has barely travelled beyond his village where generations of his family have left their traces, their graves clustered together in the nearby churchyard. If this could happen to him, the Everyman of the story, it can happen to anyone, and is certainly happening to the marginalized groups. He has no quarrel with Russians, but as he is on the side of the village facing the Ukrainians, he befriends a Ukrainian soldier and comes to care for his well-being.Sergeyich is aware that Crimean Tatars have suffered a lot in the previous decades, especially during Stalin’s rule when 200 000 Tatars were forcibly deported which amounted to ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. It is the middle of the night, but Sergeyich packs up his bees and heads to the Crimea, now occupied by Russia. I really enjoyed reading this book and despite the heavy material it put me in a great mood while reading it. I had to strain at first not to lose sight of the beekeeper, not to mix him up with his rival, but then I read further to the next scene.
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