The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference.

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.

You don’t fall in love in the midst of a civil war, when you are hemmed in by carnage and by hatred on all sides. You run away, as fast as your legs can carry your fears, seeking basic survival and nothing else. With borrowed wings you take to the sky and soar away into the distance. And if you cannot leave, then you search for shelter, find a safe place where you can withdraw into yourself because now that everything else has failed, all diplomatic negotiations and political consultations, you know it can only be an eye for an eye, hurt for hurt, and it is not safe anywhere outside your own tribe. Love is the bold affirmation of hope.

I love this. The past few books I've read have had this same thread through them; that love will save us. Love stands in direct opposition to all of humanities ills. It's our common grace.

good advice is always annoying and bad advice never is.

This is what life is. Boredom, frustration, trying to get out of things, longing for something better.

It must all be written in history books, though each side will tell only their own version of things. Narratives that run counter, without ever touching, like parallel lines that never intersect.

Maybe we give other names to grief because we are too scared to call it by its name.’