Grey Bees: A captivating, heartwarming story about a gentle beekeeper caught up in the war in Ukraine

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They just stayed put in their homes, grew vegetables in their garden, lived without electricity and sometimes watched shells whizzing past their houses. Eben dieses Beschäftigen des Autors mit den einfachen Bürger*innen, ihrem Leben und ihrem Umgang mit dem Krieg hat mich sehr berührt. He is ‘grey’ himself, after years of living in the grey zone – even his name sounds a little like the Russian and Ukranian words for that murky colour. De olyan is akad, aki marad - mert nincs hová menni, mert gondoskodni kell a házról, a méhekről, és hát amúgy is: nehogy már egy pitiáner háború mondja meg neki, mit csináljon!

Near the end of his trip, they even come and insist they have to inspect his bee hives, taking one of them with them for a closer look; the consequences of this are a nice last dark touch to the story. His experiences on the way to Crimea, and then in that Russian-occupied zone, are eye-opening in a variety of small ways, while also revealing how life goes on everywhere regardless, people making the adjustments to somehow get by, regardless of the conditions. Die Schüsse und Einschläge sind Hintergrundgeräusche im Leben der beiden Männer, sie haben sich damit arrangiert.

The character is of another time, another country, not even of flesh and blood, but we recognize something as true and relevant to our own lives.

And so it became with his wartime silence, in which military sounds suppressed and displaced peaceful, natural ones, but, in due course, also nestled under the wings of silence and ceased to draw attention to themselves.

His world has shrunk to the confines of his house and garden—and even the garden isn’t safe now, abutting fields under surveillance by snipers. He is someone that has ‘ taken no part’ in the war but has come to embrace its emptiness as his life.