Opening Lines
The novel opens with the use of imagery. This imagery is focused primarily on the protagonist’s narrative description of his wife’s eyes. She is an artist who has been blinded as a result of the civil war violence ripping their homeland of Syria apart:
“I am scared of my wife’s eyes. She can’t see out and no one can see in. Look, they are like stones, grey stones, sea stones…Look at the folds of her stomach, the color of desert honey, darker in the creases, and the fine, fine silver lines on the skin of her breasts, and the tips of her fingers with the tiny cuts, where the ridges and valley patterns once were stained with blue or yellow or red paint. Her laughter was gold once, you would have seen as well as heard it. Look at her, because I think she is disappearing.”
Beekeeping
The beekeeping telegraphed in the title of the book could be merely metaphorical. Or, at least, intended to be more symbolic than literal. But that is not the case. Beekeeping is an essential component of the narrative, explored in ways both literal and figurative:
“The bees were an ideal society, a small paradise among chaos. The worker bees travelled far and wide to find food, preferring to go to the furthest fields. They collected nectar from lemon blossoms and clover, black nigella seeds and aniseed, eucalyptus, cotton, thorn and heather. I cared for the bees, nurtured them, monitored the hives for infestations or poor health. Sometimes I would build new hives, divide the colonies or raise queen bees – I’d take the larvae from another colony and watch as the nurse bees fed them with royal jelly.”
The War
The civil war in Syria is the background for the text. It is the root cause for everything which happens to the narrator and his family. There is nothing new or striking or unusual about the imagery depicting the consequences of battle. And that is the whole point:
“There was a huge crater in this room; the far wall and part of the ceiling were missing, leaving an open mouth into the garden and sky. The jasmine over the canopy caught the light and behind it the fig tree was black and hung low over the wooden swing, the one I’d made for Sami. The silence was hollow though; it lacked the echo of life. The war was always there.”
Big Sky Country
As far as this story goes, Big Sky Country is nowhere even close to the American Midwest. It is, instead, a place where they have cafes and travel via the metro. Even so, it is really more of an idea—a wish-fulfillment of sorts—than it is necessarily a literal geographical pinpoint on a map:
"‘This is the biggest sky I have ever seen!’ a young boy said to the girl beside him. They both looked up and so did I. There were no clouds that day and no wind, the sun was strong and the area gleamed with green and yellow, a taste of the summer months to come; and through the leaves, far beyond, the sky was big and blue and bright, almost as big as the sky above the desert, and for this boy it held promises… And like a little boy, I made a wish to the blue sky. I wished to make it to England.”
