The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

Today, I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease. Creeping in menacingly, ticking like a pendulum clock that never winds down, it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit.

‘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 … But you can’t say, “Sorry, I’m a poet, I’ll pass.” You don’t say that when there’s so much suffering, inequality, injustice.’

Wow

Because 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. In life, unlike in books, we have to weave our stories out of threads as fine as the gossamer veins that run through a butterfly’s wings.

fiction – a mixture of wonder, dreams, love, sorrow and imagination.