When Nuri thinks about Afra he opines, "Inside the person you know there is a person you do not know." Why do you think he felt this way about his wife? Do you agree with the sentiment?

Twice over the course of the novel, when Nuri thinks about Afra he opines, "Inside the person you know there is a person you do not know." Why do you think he felt this way about his wife? Do you agree with the sentiment? Why or why not?

I think that is always the way it is with others, even those we love. We each have our interior lives that colors our emotions and responses. I think Nuri recognizes that Afra's blindness was an emotional response and one that she could not share with him. She had her own life inside the darkness that he could not penetrate, just as he had his own life within in his imagination that she could not access. I think he said it because he realized the truth of it and saw it as another loss. He had lost his wife to her darkness and the connection they once had when their life was whole, before tragedy struck and everything they'd had was taken from them.

Isn't that the truth! During times of extreme stress people will often act totally out of character.

It's funny, I think my husband and my two best friends really know me, but I feel like I don't really know them at all. I guess we all have this interior life going on - stuff rattling around in our heads - that people don't know at all.

I don’t think you can truly totally know another person, try as we might.

I do agree with his sentiment. I think he felt this way because of how closed off Afra was towards him. They had gone through several stressful situations that caused her to change. He had this memory of her and she just wasn't that person anymore.

I agree with the Scribbling Scribe that there is, inside each of us, a core of truth, emotion, and dreams, which cannot be known by others. Even in the closest of relationships, (I say this from the perspective of a 58 year long marriage), there is the unknowable in the other. Perhaps it is a way for us to preserve a private self where we can be whoever we choose to be.
In the case of Nuri and Afra, the pain of loss and despair have driven Afra deep inside herself. She has lost her vision, her child, her home and her hope for the future. In response, she retreats into her innermost self and refuses to engage with Nuri either physically or emotionally. It may be that Afra has "gone away" in order to find within herself a way to deal with her new reality and to process her grief. Her energy is focused on dealing with the necessary self-healing which must occur if she is to go on living.
Nuri has suffered some of the same losses. But, he copes by externalizing. He keeps his dream of apiaries in England and creates a substitute son to help him to continue moving forward through his own pain. His desire to share the journey to a different reality with his wife is understandable. It is also something of an underestimation of the agony his wife is enduring. When Afra comes out of herself and "sees" again, she may be the healthier of the two for having made a deep internal trip toward freedom.

Afra keeps a lot of her thoughts to herself, for whatever reason...some selfish, some respectful of her husband's pain. The unsaid thoughts are what keeps couples from truly knowing the other person. Her pain and sadness cannot become his and his pain cannot become hers. This separation keeps an unknown inner being from sharing their lives.

I so agree with that statement. We all show only a part of us to the world, even to our loved ones. We do have fears, memories and hopes that are ours alone.