The Island of Missing Trees

“I wish I could have told him that loneliness is a human invention. Trees are never lonely. Humans think they know with certainty where their being ends and someone else’s starts […] trees harbour no such illusions. For us, everything is interconnected.”

The fig tree looks to reassure Kostas that she will not be lonely when buried underground during the winter, for trees do not feel loneliness. The tree’s explanation is rooted in how trees in general are aware of and experience a sense of connection with other beings in their ecosystem, even those not of the same species. This is in contrast to the anthropocentric lens that dominates the human experience and also points to the book’s theme of Nature and the Interconnectedness of Life.

“Human-time is linear, a neat continuum from a past that is supposed to be over and done with towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished. […] Arboreal-time is equivalent to story-time […] (it) does not grow in perfectly straight lines, flawless curves or exact right angles, but bends and twists and bifurcates into fantastical shapes…” 

The fig tree describes how trees experience time differently than humans, specifically in a non-linear, cyclical, and perennial manner, which she equates to how stories develop. This is paralleled in the narrative style of the book itself, with the plot unfolding in chapters that alternate across timelines and perspectives.

“Where do you start someone’s story when every life has more than one thread and what we call birth is not the only beginning, nor is death exactly an end?”

Echoing the book’s narrative structure once again, the fig tree reflects on the difficulty of starting a story that is invariably connected to so many others that start and end at different places. Furthermore, the specific references to birth and death point to two things: Firstly, the tree’s own experience of having been reborn, in a manner of speaking, in London while still retaining memories of its past life in Cyprus, and secondly, a foreshadowing Defne’s continuing connection with her family even beyond the human end-point of death through her spirit’s residence in the fig tree.

“‘C-c-come back. We don’t always get young lovers here, you’ll b-bring us luck.’”

Yusuf opens his heart and home to Kostas and Defne, inviting them back to the tavern with the assertion that the young lovers will bring luck to the place. This is an instance of ironic foreshadowing, as it is Kostas and Defne’s relationship that ultimately leads Yusuf and Yiorgos to meet their unfortunate end. It is in trying to protect a pregnant Defne about to undergo an abortion inside the tavern that Yusuf and Yiorgos are brought in contact and conflict with the homophobic group of men who eventually murder the tavern owners.

“At the end of the day, we all remember for the same reason we try to forget: to survive in a world that neither understands nor values us.”

The fig tree describes how trees learn from trauma they experience and how these learnings are passed down as adaptations across generations in a phenomenon of transgenerational trauma. In explaining this, it reflects on how one can respond to traumatic experiences by either erasing them from memory or actively learning from and making sense of them, which explains both Defne's and Ada’s respective approaches to their family history.

“Even trees of different species show solidarity with one another regardless of their differences, which is more than you can say for so many humans.”

The fig tree describes how trees communicate with each other, particularly to warn each other of danger, and that this communication extends to species of trees other than their own. This phenomenon reinforces the theme of Nature and Interconnectedness, especially when contrasted by human beings’ desire to only protect their own. This fragmentation and division are further emphasized by the context of the book with the story set against the backdrop of the Greek and Turkish conflict in Cyprus.

“The path of an inherited trauma is random; you never know who might get it, but someone will.”

The fig tree reflects on how it is difficult to predict how and where through generations trauma can trickle down; the only thing that is certain is that if left unresolved it will emerge at some point down the line. The randomness of this path of inherited trauma is seen in how Kostas and his three brothers are so different from each other and respond to the same instances of tragedy in vastly different ways. The surety that trauma will reemerge down the line is seen in the bouts of melancholy inspired by past trauma that eventually overpower Defne, and how despite this, Ada is determined to learn more about the past.

“In a land besieged with conflict, uncertainty and bloodshed, people took it for indifference, an insult to their pain, if you paid too much attention to anything other than human suffering,”

Kostas’s deep empathy for the animals and plants in his environment goes misunderstood and unappreciated by those around him, including his mother when he is moved to tears by the fruit bats that drop dead in Nicosia’s heat wave. Besides highlighting the non-hierarchical attitude toward the plight of all living beings espoused by Kostas, it also points to the theme of Nature and Interconnectedness.

“‘I think it’s plausible they plan their moves beyond their lifespan – not within one generation, but across many.’

‘I like that. It also kind of explains what happened to us. You and Mum moved to this country, but we’re still migrating.’”

Ada likens butterfly migration to her own family’s experience of migration, where even though Kostas and Defne left Cyprus before Ada was born, Ada still feels unsettled, like she is in transit. Butterflies are an important symbol that recur throughout the book and signify a number of things. This specific aspect of butterfly migration also points to the theme of History and Identity.

“He no longer expected an answer from her, but he kept writing anyway; he continued sending his words southwards, like releasing thousands of migrating butterflies he knew would never return.”

Even after Defne sends word that Kostas ought to stop contacting her after he moved to London, Kostas continues to write to her, expecting no reply. The comparison of his letters to migrating butterflies points to another aspect of its symbolism: The butterfly as an image connects different members of Ada’s family to each other in multiple ways.

“I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease. […] it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit.”

The fig tree compares fanaticism to a viral disease that spreads among those existing within an enclosed unit. This reflection acknowledges the need for diversity within an ecosystem, an obvious truth to all other living things except human beings—thus, human beings continue to engage in conflict with each other to erase ideas, values, and beliefs different from their own, as evidenced by the clash between the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus.

“‘And the missing you’ve found here, were they Greeks or Turks?’

‘They were islanders,’ she said and there was a sharp edge to her voice then. ‘Islanders, like us.’”

To Kostas’s question of whether the bodies found by CMP are of Greeks or Turks, Defne harshly responds with the assertion that they were all islanders. Kostas’s question demonstrates how divisions and an in-group/out-group mentality are deeply ingrained in the human psyche; Defne’s response is a reminder of how war negatively impacts all those involved, uniting those across the borders in their suffering.

“Most of our volunteers are women.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? What we do here has nothing to do with politics or power. Our work is about grief – and memory. And women are better than men at both.’”

Defne offers her explanation for why most of the CMP volunteers are women, believing that women are better at dealing with grief and memory. Ironically, it is Defne who is unable to handle both later in life; overwhelmed by the grief she feels, Defne attempts to block out her own memories and deny her daughter access to them as well, succumbing to substance abuse alongside her bouts of melancholy.

“My mother used to say, even if the entire world goes crazy, Cypriots will remain sane. Because we washed each other’s babies. We picked each other’s harvests. Wars break out between strangers who don’t know each other’s names. Nothing bad can happen here.”

Meryam describes how her mother was among those who never believed that conflict could arise in a place as familial and interconnected as Cyprus. This is a belief that was echoed by powerful and educated experts and politicians as well, as the fig tree at one point recalls an English visitor at the tavern discussing how the British believed Cypriots too civilized to ever engage in violent conflict between themselves. The reality proved otherwise, underscoring the extremities to which fanaticism and socially constructed divisions can drive human beings.

“in real life, unlike in history books, stories come to us not in their entirety but in bits and pieces, broken segments and partial echoes, a full sentence here, a fragment there, a clue hidden in between.”

The fig tree reflects on how stories unfold unevenly and non-linearly in real life, echoing an earlier expressed idea of how “story time” is similar to arboreal time. This is complemented by the fact that the tree narrates how it received individual pieces of information about Yusuf and Yiorgos’s fate as well as that of Yusuf Yiorgos Robinson, Defne’s son, in a disconnected fashion. The readers, too, are presented with these pieces of the story in a similar, non-sequential manner.

“‘After all they have gone through, our families will only see this as a betrayal.’

‘It’s a different world now.’

‘Tribal hatreds don’t die,’ she said, holding the ammonite up. ‘They just add new layers to hardened shells.’”

Kostas believes it may be possible for their families to reconcile with the idea of their relationship, whereas Defne believes otherwise. Kostas’s belief is possibly a product of the fact that he has already had a chance to start anew in a new place, having spent the last 25 years in London; Defne, on the other hand, has remained in Cyprus throughout its conflict-ridden period and has participated in peace talks, witnessing firsthand the many hurdles that stand in the way of two communities resolving an age-old conflict.

“You think you can leave your native land because so many people have done it, so why shouldn’t you? After all, the world is full of immigrants, runaways, exiles … Encouraged, you break free and travel as far as you can, then one day you look back and realize it was coming with you all along, like a shadow. Everywhere we go, it’ll follow us, this city, this island.”

Defne does not ascribe to Kostas’s belief that they will ever truly be able to leave Cyprus and the past behind, even if they travel to London. This assertion is, in retrospect, an assertion of Defne’s own fears, compounded by the bouts of melancholy she has always experienced. Thus, even in London, it is Defne who tries the hardest to erase their past, and it is also she who succumbs to substance abuse as a way of coping with the pain she cannot escape.

“Some days she was full of confidence and expectation, others she managed just fine, but then there were days, and especially nights, when she would hear, somewhere in the distance, ticking as steady as a metronome, the approaching footsteps of a familiar sense of melancholy.”

Even after arriving in London and starting a new life, Defne is dogged by the past. However, this particular passage also points to the idea that different people respond to the same trauma in different ways. The fact that the sense of melancholy was familiar to Defne indicates a longstanding tendency toward the same, one that is missing in Kostas despite his sensitive nature. It also explains why Defne was unable to overcome her melancholy, as she attributed all her pain to something external, i.e., her past experiences, which she tried to escape by running from the memories. However, a good portion of her struggles seem to have emerged from within her, from an inherent proclivity for melancholy.

“Some day this pain will be useful to you.

I hoped he was right and that one day, not too far in the future, all this pain would be useful to future generations born on the island, to the grandchildren of those who had lived through the troubles.”

The fig tree reflects on the line from one of Ovid’s works that the mouse chewed through, hoping its message will hold true for future generations of Cypriots and that they learn from the pain of their ancestors. There is a hint of this possibility in Ada’s own story, where she is able to begin processing the pain of her mother’s death by learning more about Defne’s past and the circumstances that shaped not only who Defne was but how she raised Ada.

“Ada let the grown-ups hug her, and she felt their love enfold her, soft but strong like a cloth woven from the fibres of sturdy plants.”

Ada embraces Kostas and Meryam on New Year’s Day, able to sense the love they have for her. The analogy used here is representative of the language used throughout the book, as Shafak consistently uses imagery and figurative language based around plants and animals in keeping with the theme of Nature and Interconnectedness that runs throughout the story.

“How strange that in families scarred by wars, forced displacements and acts of brutality, it was the youngest who seemed to have the oldest memory.”

Defne reflects on how it is the youngest generation in families that have experienced violence and trauma related to war and displacement that is most insistent on revisiting and preserving the past. This is reflected in Ada’s attitude toward her family’s history and is also made possible by the fact that the youngest generation is removed from the lived pain brought about by these experiences, thus retaining the ability to look at the past and learn from it with a more objective and non-judgmental lens.

“In the most surprising ways, the victims continued to live, because that is what nature did to death, it transformed abrupt endings into a thousand new beginnings.”

Kostas reflects on how even the bodies of people not found by the CMP will still be honored and taken care of by nature, even if just by the fact that the soil the bodies decompose into will see new life spring from it. Once again, this passage highlights Kostas’s equal empathy and regard for all beings in nature, and points to the theme of Nature and Interconnectedness; it is also a nod to how, even in the case of Defne’s death, nature helps transform the occasion into a new beginning, albeit in an unusual way.

“‘Your mother loved you very much, more than anything in this world. Her death has nothing to do with the absence of love. She was blooming and thriving with your love, and I’d like to believe with mine, too, but underneath, something was strangling her – the past, the memories, the roots.’”

Kostas reassures Ada that Defne’s melancholy and eventual death was not brought about by an absence of love, using girdling as an analogy. Besides being consistent with the plant-based figurative language used throughout the book, Kostas’s explanation further points to the powerful interaction of Defne’s inherent temperament with her specific experiences. It highlights the theme of History and Identity, but also identifies that the same past experiences and cultural influences can shape people differently based on their individual temperaments and proclivities.