The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

Nicosia,

Bryophytes

miasma

hadiths,

they know with certainty where their being ends and someone else’s starts. With their roots tangled and caught up underground, linked to fungi and bacteria, trees harbour no such illusions. For us, everything is interconnected.

with some trees – you can’t help feeling that they must be much older than their chronological age?

mastic

knew had a calming effect on grown-ups. Once you uttered it, they always left you alone. Except it did not seem to work on her aunt. If anything, she seemed upset. ‘Why would English schools do this? Look at you, locked up in your room like a prisoner at such a young age. Come, forget about homework. Let’s go and cook!’ ‘I cannot forget about homework, you are supposed to encourage me to study,’ Ada said. ‘And besides, I don’t know how to cook.’ ‘That’s fine, I’ll teach you.’ ‘I don’t even like it.’ Meryem’s hazel eyes were inscrutable. ‘That can’t be true. Come, give it a try. You know what they say, if you find a happy village, look for the cook.’ ‘Sorry,’ said Ada flatly. ‘I really need to go.’ Slowly, she closed the door, leaving her aunt standing in the hall with her accessories and proverbs, fading like yet another

misanthrope,

nationalisms

Everything in life should be evoked in such detail, she had thought, rather than being given abstract names, a random combination of letters. A bird should be ‘a feathery thing with a song’. Or a car, ‘a metallic thing with wheels and a horn’. An island, ‘a lonely thing with water on all

djinn.’

passerine

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.’

detritus of yesterday. My figs, bursting with flavour, remained unplucked

‘S’agapo,’ Chico would croon in Greek, I love you, something he had heard Yiorgos

ammonite

Cavafy

Kostas to come back, a honeybee I had known for some time paid me

day this pain will be useful to you.

your parents’, or your grandparents’, this fucking pain becomes part of your flesh. It stays with you and marks you permanently. It messes up your psychology and shapes how you think of yourself and others.’

into fresh vegetation. 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.

people stand in front of a tree and the first thing they notice is the trunk. These are the ones who prioritize order, safety, rules, continuity. Then there are those who pick out the branches before anything else. They yearn for change, a sense of freedom. And then there are those who are drawn to the roots, though concealed under the ground. They have a deep emotional attachment to their heritage, identity, traditions

again in the cobwebs of anxiety that she was

erudite