The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest doesn’t know this planet. I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world. – Pablo Neruda, Memoirs

we’re only just beginning to discover the language of trees. But we can tell with certainty that they can hear, smell, communicate – and they can definitely remember. They can sense water, light, danger. They can send signals to other plants and help each other. They’re much more alive than most people realize.’

Because that is what migrations and relocations do to us: when you leave your home for unknown shores, you don’t simply carry on as before; a part of you dies inside so that another part can start all over again.

listened to the low, resonant, steady rap-rap-rap, stone laid on stone, rising like a column to support the vault of heaven. Those who believe in such things say the sound represents the footsteps of a lost soul treading across the Bridge of Siraat, thinner than a strand of hair, sharper than a sword, straddling precariously the void between this world and the next. At every step, the soul jettisons yet another one of its innumerable burdens, until finally it lets go of everything, including all the pain stored within.

Fig trees, those who know us will tell you, have long been regarded as sacred. In many cultures spirits are believed to reside inside our trunks, some good, some bad and some undecided, all invisible to the uninitiated eye. Others claim that every genus of Ficus is, in truth, a meeting point, a gathering place of sorts. Under, around and above us they mass, not only humans and animals, but also creatures of light and shadow. There are plenty of stories about the way the leaves of a banyan tree, a relative of mine, can all of a sudden rustle in the absence of even the slightest breeze. While other trees remain motionless, when the entire universe seems to stand still, the banyan stirs and speaks. A thickening in the air like a premonition. It is a spooky sight, should you ever see it happen.

They imagine the sky in blue, the grass in green, the sun in yellow and the earth entirely in brown. If they only knew they have rainbows under their feet.

Plants can pick up vibrations, and many flowers are shaped like bowls so as to better trap sound waves, some of which are too high for the human ear. Trees are full of songs and we are not shy to sing them.

Wisdom consists of ten parts: nine parts of silence, one part of words.’

yes, carobs are strong. I give them credit for that. But, unlike us figs, they are devoid of emotion. They are cold, pragmatic and lacking in soul. There is a perfectionism to them that gets on my nerves. Their seeds are almost always identical in weight and size, so uniform that in the olden times merchants used them to weigh gold – that’s where the word ‘carat’ comes from.

Just as all trees perennially communicate, compete and cooperate, both above and below the ground, so too do stories germinate, grow and come into bloom upon each other’s invisible roots.

If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations. They ooze down slowly, a flow so slight as to be imperceptible, moving across time and space, until they find a crack in which to settle and coagulate.

At night, when the moon shone high above the lemon trees and there was a shiver in the air, of insects invisible to the eye or fairies sent to earth in exile, Kostas would sometimes catch his mother staring at him with a pained expression.

There was no need to fear mayhem and bloodshed because how could there be a civil war on such a pretty, picturesque island of blooming flowers and rolling hills? ‘Cultivated’ was the word they used repeatedly. These politicians and pundits seemed to assume that civilized humans could not slaughter each other, not against an idyllic backdrop of verdant hills and golden beaches: ‘There is no need to do anything about it. The Cypriots are … civilized people.

In those days, people who believed the different communities could live in amity and harmony as equal citizens often alluded to a native bird as their emblem: a type of partridge, the chukar, that built its nests on both sides of the island, heedless of divisions. That, for a while, became an apt symbol for unity. It wasn’t to last long. Political and spiritual leaders who reached out to the other side were silenced, shunned and intimidated – and some were targeted and killed by extremists on their own side. It is a small, charming creature, the chukar, with black stripes wrapping around its body. It likes to perch on rocks, and when it sings, it does so in shy, scratchy notes, as though learning to chirp for the first time. If you listen closely, you can hear it say chukar-chukar-chukar. The only bird that tenderly trills out its own name. Their numbers have dwindled significantly today for they have been hunted relentlessly all over the island – north and south alike.

Whereas green, used in mapping to mark pathways, seemed less contentious, a more unifying and neutral alternative. Green, the colour of trees.

Kostas felt a sense of loneliness so acute it was almost tangible. After that day, he would no longer talk about fruit bats and how important they were for the trees of Cyprus, and hence for its inhabitants. 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.

I can tell you one thing about humans: they will react to the disappearance of a species the way they react to everything else – by putting themselves at the centre of the universe.

Humans are strange that way, full of contradictions. It’s as if they need to hate and exclude as much as they need to love and embrace. Their hearts close tightly, then open at full stretch, only to clench again, like an undecided fist. Humans find mice and rats nasty, but hamsters and gerbils sweet. Doves signify world peace, whereas pigeons are nothing more than carriers of urban filth. They proclaim piglets charming, wild boars barely tolerable. Nutcrackers they admire, even as they avoid their noisy cousins, the crows. Dogs evoke in them a sense of fuzzy warmth, while wolves conjure up tales of horror. Butterflies they look on with favour, moths not at all. They have a soft spot for ladybirds, and yet if they were to see a soldier beetle, they would crush it on sight. Honeybees are favoured in stark contrast to wasps. Although horseshoe crabs are considered delightful, it’s a different story when it comes to their distant relatives, spiders

The rusty nails she sticks inside flowerpots to chase away the djinn make soil alkaline. Similarly, the wood ash left from the fires she burns to remove a hex contains potassium, which can be nourishing. And as for the eggshells she spreads around in the hope of attracting good fortune, they, too, are an enriching compost. I just wonder how she continues to carry out these old rituals without realizing that they originate from a deep reverence for us trees.

The human mind was the strangest place, both home and exile. How could it hold on to something as elusive and intangible as a scent when it was capable of erasing concrete chunks of the past, block by block?

‘There are moments in life when everyone has to become a warrior of some kind. If you are a poet, you fight with your words; if you are an artist, you fight with your paintings …

Thousands of eyes peered from the leaves, eyes made up of tiny light detectors, discerning different wavelengths, clashing realities, reminding Kostas that the world humans saw was only one of many available.

‘It’s only humans that do this,’ said Kostas. ‘Animals don’t. Plants don’t. Yes, trees sometimes overshadow other trees, compete for space, water and nutrients, battle for survival … Yes, insects eat each other. But mass murder for personal profit, that’s peculiar to our species.’

Their findings were consistent with earlier studies that showed how genetically identical species of poplars growing in similar conditions responded differently to traumas, such as dry spells, depending on where they came from. Could all this mean that trees not only had some kind of memory but, also, they passed it on to their offspring?

He had always believed there was no hierarchy – or there should be none – between human pain and animal pain, and no precedence of human rights over animal rights, or indeed of human rights over those of plants, for that matter.

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.

When you have something precious to give to the universe, a song or a poem, you should first share it with a golden oak before anyone else.

If you are feeling discouraged and defenceless, look for a Mediterranean cypress or a flowering horse chestnut. Both are strikingly resilient, and they will tell you about all the fires they have survived. And if you want to emerge stronger and kinder from your trials, find an aspen to learn from – a tree so tenacious it can fend off even the flames that aim to destroy it. If you are hurting and have no one willing to listen to you, it might do you good to spend time beside a sugar maple. If, on the other hand, you are suffering from excessive self-esteem, do pay a visit to a cherry tree and observe its blossoms, which, though undoubtedly pretty, are no less ephemeral than vainglory. By the time you leave, you might feel a bit more humble, more grounded. To reminisce about the past, seek out a holly to sit under; to dream about the future, choose a magnolia instead. And if it is friends and friendships on your mind, the most suitable companion would be a spruce or a ginkgo. When you arrive at a crossroads and don’t know which path to take, contemplating quietly by a sycamore might help. If you are an artist in need of inspiration, a blue jacaranda or a sweetly scented mimosa could stir your imagination. If it is renewal you are after, seek a wych elm, and if you have too many regrets, a weeping willow will offer solace. When you are in trouble or at your lowest point, and have no one in whom to confide, a hawthorn would be the right choice. There is a reason why hawthorns ...