A cross-generational memoir about a woman's search for her late grandfather, Egyptian beekeeper and poet Ahmed Zaky Abushady, and the figures in his circle who left their own marks on history.
The Bee Kingdom, the title of my grandfather's eponymous bee science journal published in Cairo in the 1930s, is also a metaphor for my family's story: a collection of characters with no unifying narrative, a swarm in search of a hive and a home.
A cross-generational memoir, an artist's coming-of-age, and a family detective story about the lost world of a prominent Egyptian family​, The Bee Kingdom ​follows Joy Amina Garnett's lifelong search for ​her late maternal grandfather, Dr. Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892-1955), polymath, beekeeper, and one of Egypt's most influential romantic poets.
A young Arab American struggling to become a visual artist in the 80s and 90s, Garnett retraces the tribulations of her embattled forbear, whom she sees as caught between cultures, wars, and nations-much like herself. Shedding light on a tumultuous period in Egypt's modern history from the 1920s to 40s, Garnett weaves together themes of unrequited love, exile, and resilience as she unearths long-buried secrets in her search for family and self. Her journey takes her to Cairo, Alexandria, Montréal, Paris, and New York City-with the help of archival academic papers, hidden diaries, and a compendium of family photographs-and she finds herself telling the stories of not just her grandfather but the many marginal figures who orbited his circle: the forgotten women, tragic lovers, and charming scoundrels who left their own indelible marks on his life and on history.