Why do you think Nuri finds it so difficult to make physical and emotional contact with his wife?

Why do you think Nuri finds it so difficult to make physical and emotional contact with his wife?

I think he fears that she will perceive his distress and weakness, when he wants to be seen as strong and resilient. I don't think he's necessarily conscious that he fears this, but I think it's there.

Even more than wanting to be strong and resilient for her, I think he is deeply afraid of her fragility and doesn't want to make her worse.

I think his reluctance has to do more with bearing the loss of his son in silence than with Afra. His heart is broken and it is difficult to love another and risk when there is so much left to lose. Her blindness and retreat into herself only heightens the risk. It is only when he can come to terms with his own loss and guilt that he begins to see her again and her concern.

because they had both been through so much with the loss of their son and the tragedy of their countries state, sometimes that kind of stress just makes a wedge between people. Nuri probably realized there was nothing he could do to take away Agra’s pain and in a way blamed himself for every bad thing that had happened to them. Most men don’t know how to articulate how they are feeling and many times put up a wall to ease their own pain.

I think many times he does not know how she will respond.. sometimes she rejects him. Also I think he is haunted by memories of how she was and the contrast is unbearable for him.

First of all, I believe that Nuri was in a state of shock. The city he loved was in shambles, a bomb fell in his backyard, his life was threatened for refusing to join the fight, his son was killed, his beehives were set on fire, and finally, as if he could endure one more injustice, Nuri was ashamed of himself for forgetting the key to the room in Athens, which led to Afra being raped by the man who was arranging their trip out of Greece. If Nuri had allowed one small crack to appear, it might have been enough to completely drive him over the edge.

His sense of deep loss and shame at being powerless to save or protect his family, may have caused him to feel unloveable. He shut down, perhaps, to protect himself from being rejected by Afra. I also think he needed to protect himself from feeling more vulnerable in order to do what he needed to go to get his family to England. He closed himself off so he could focus on the journey to safety and reunification with Mustafa.

I think that he felt incredibly guilty for not remembering the key that ultimately led to Afra's rape, and felt that he had failed to keep her safe, which is what he had been trying to do their entire journey. I think the emotional distress of that particular moment, along with everything else they experienced before arriving to London, caused him to pull away from Afra because of his own mental state, as well as his concern over Afra's.

I think the comment that Nuri as well as Afra were suffering from emotional shock relating to almost everything in their lives. The loss of their son, their city, their livelihood, their home and even their personal privacy. Nuri is a study in the trauma visited upon refugees.

For Nuri, Afra had changed so much after the death of Sami and her blindness. Nuri said more than once "Inside every person you know is a person you don't know." Afra had become someone he didn't know anymore and he struggled to connect with her. The Afra he knew was no longer there. But he also had changed, so they were like two strangers.