Mikhail’s The Beekeeper was a totally arresting piece of writing. Putting aside the horrific accounts and shattering poetry of the book, I was curious about how it portrayed the role of information within this conflict.
We see firsthand the consequences of lacking information. Villagers such as Elias, not knowing the state of the conflict and being unable to assess the chance of danger to themselves, wavered on whether to leave their house or stay and wait out the conflict; when deciding to leave, Elias was then confronted with the decision of which direction to travel in to reach the top of the safe mountain (e.g. 83). Whether or not to trust Daesh officials often depended on more information than villages had; they were told never to trust the fighters, but when they showed up and made promises, local individuals seemed unable to do anything but take them at their word, even when doing so led to their death. At its most extreme, this appears to be the outcome of a lack of information, which compounds on lack of political or military power that left localities totally merciless at the hands of Daesh.
The information made available with cell phones seems to be a powerful mediating force through the chapters we read. Women are bought and sold via Telegram, and then escape by obtaining access to cell phones that they can use to call for outside help. The internet creates the platform for a universal medium of exchange for slavery: physical markets act as secondary mechanisms as Daesh fighters first encounter women through their cell phones from wherever they are. At the same time, it also acts as a universal means of escape from that system, rendering space relatively meaningless once internet connection is established. If one is lucky, one can enter an internet cafe down the street and find a way to arrange one’s escape. And, of course, satellite imagery available through GIS systems serve as an open-access tool for Abdullah to plan how to free captive women, even when he cannot visit the places of captivity themselves. This de-territorializing of terror and liberation makes boundaries in this book feel strangely open considering the circumstances: in theory, and in practice in some of the cases we read about, an avenue to freedom exists even within enemy territory by walking out on the street and making a call. I suppose this underscores the lack of Daesh’s control of the area, but I do think technology in this case acted as an additional destabilizing force.
On another note, I both grated at and appreciated Mikhail’s restraint at providing context. We are so often taught to ensure that the reader is never lost, that they must be told all the context needed to understand the story and be oriented at all times. The book doesn’t spell out events such as the Iran-Iraq war, or even the history behind Daesh’s invasion, putting the responsibility on the reader to put in the work to research gaps in their knowledge on their own. The reader almost had to earn the right to understand the context behind the stories of the book in their full complexity, and they gained the motivation to make this effort by the emotional intensity of its prose. This approach does have the downside of breaking immersion, and I would like to discuss how to evaluate this tradeoff more in class.
