Bekir Mustafayev

Bekir Mustafayev is the twenty-year-old son of Akhtem and Aisylu, introduced through the practical errands and family responsibilities that connect Sergey Sergeyich to the household. After his father’s death, Bekir’s use of Akhtem’s blue four-wheel-drive becomes both an ordinary means of helping his family and, later, a point of legal vulnerability. His arrest over church candles deepens the family’s bereavement and exposes the pressure exerted by the authorities in occupied Crimea: the detective treats the car, too, as evidence of an offense, despite Sergeyich’s insistence that it belonged to Bekir’s dead father.

Identity and Family Setting

On Sergeyich’s third visit to Akhtem’s home, the narrative clarifies that the house is, more precisely, Aisylu’s home. Bekir has driven up in his father’s blue four-wheel-drive to tell Sergeyich that Aisylu is expecting him for dinner. The invitation is delivered not by Akhtem, who is absent, but by his son; the family’s everyday arrangements now proceed around that absence. At the table, Bekir and his sister Aisha remain politely silent while their mother talks about household matters and neighbours. Bekir’s presence is quiet, but his driving makes him the person who brings the beekeeper into the family’s domestic space.

The car carries a complicated history without ceasing to be a practical family vehicle. Bekir has been driving it for two years, and he regards it as his father’s car. When the detective later invokes the absence of formal permission, Sergeyich protests that Akhtem was Bekir’s father and has been killed. The authorities’ account reduces that relationship to registration and authorization; Sergeyich’s reply restores the human circumstance that the legal description leaves out.

Help and Everyday Practicality

When Aisylu again mentions the Black Sea, Bekir responds decisively. He promises that they will go after the weekend, with Sergeyich accompanying the family while Aisha stays behind to look after the house and animals. The plan offers Aisylu a chance to visit the beach, something she says she has not done for five years, although the promised trip is not shown taking place in this evidence. Bekir’s assurance makes him an organizer of the family’s ordinary future, even as his father’s absence shapes the invitation.

The conversation then turns to beekeeping. Sergeyich asks whether it is time to extract the honey, and Bekir says it must be done during the coming week. He offers to extract Sergeyich’s honey as well. When the beekeeper explains that he has run out of jars, Bekir replies that the family has plenty. His offer is specific and useful: labor and containers are made available to a displaced neighbour through the household’s own harvest. In this exchange, Bekir’s care appears less as a declaration than as the readiness to include Sergeyich in the work already planned for the week.

At Akhtem’s Funeral

The next morning, Sergeyich approaches Aisylu’s house as people gather for Akhtem’s funeral. The yard is busy, the door stands open, and guests enter and leave speaking softly in Tatar. Sergeyich hesitates between the gate and the house, too frightened to approach or go inside, until he sees Bekir at the threshold. He calls out, and Bekir turns and hurries toward him. The threshold briefly becomes a point of contact: Sergeyich, uncertain how to enter the family’s mourning, seeks out the son who had earlier brought him to the house.

Bekir’s movement between the house and its visitors places him within the immediate work of the funeral, while Sergeyich remains an anxious outsider to its gathering. The scene does not give Bekir an extended speech or explain his private response to his father’s death. Instead, his appearance at the doorway and his prompt approach establish his presence amid the family’s public mourning. Later, after the funeral, the household will face another loss of security when the authorities take him away.

Arrest and Legal Pretext

When Sergeyich returns to Aisylu’s home, the street has emptied: the Berkut officers and vehicles that had been there are gone. Aisylu leads him into the living room and tells him that Bekir has been arrested. She says the detective accused him of robbing the church and stealing candles. The accusation is especially painful in the room where a different candle burns before the mirror, which remains draped in mourning. Aisylu explains that someone had left the candles at the family’s door during a power outage and that Bekir was away in Qarasuvbazar that day. Her account contradicts the charge and places the candles in a context of unexplained delivery rather than theft.

Sergeyich goes to the detective and tries to secure Bekir’s release, offering to drive him home. The detective refuses to treat the arrest as a matter that can be settled by a ride. He calls Bekir brazen, cites his alleged disrespect toward the authorities, and points to his use of someone else’s car for two years without official permission. Sergeyich answers that the car belongs to Bekir’s father and that Akhtem was killed. The detective acknowledges that the vehicle is registered to the father, but says Akhtem never officially authorized his son to drive it, and therefore Bekir has been violating Russian law.

The exchange turns a familiar act of using a dead parent’s car into a separate basis for keeping Bekir in custody. The detective does not finish explaining the case; he cuts off the conversation and declines to say more. Sergeyich asks what he should tell Aisylu, but receives no account of when Bekir might be released or what will happen next. Instead, the detective returns Sergeyich’s blue Ukrainian passport and warns him that, as a foreigner, he must leave Russian territory within eleven days or be brought back to a cell. The investigation thus reaches beyond Bekir: Sergeyich’s effort to help the family also exposes him to a direct threat.

Relationships and Narrative Significance

Bekir’s relationship with Sergeyich is built through concrete assistance rather than long conversation. He repeatedly drives the beekeeper to Aisylu’s home, offers to take him to the sea, and volunteers to extract his honey and provide jars. At the funeral, Sergeyich’s instinct is to seek him out before entering the house. These moments make Bekir a practical bridge between the solitary beekeeper and Akhtem’s bereaved family.

His arrest reverses the direction of that assistance. Sergeyich, who has accepted Bekir’s help with transport and beekeeping, now tries to help him by speaking to the detective and offering a ride home. That attempt fails, and the family’s already existing grief is compounded by uncertainty about Bekir’s fate. Through Bekir, the narrative links intimate domestic life—the father’s car, the candles at the door, the jars for honey—to the mechanisms of occupation and legal control. The ordinary details remain ordinary to the family; the authorities make them grounds for suspicion and punishment.