The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

We are scared of happiness, you see. From a tender age we have been taught that in the air, in the Etesian wind, an uncanny exchange is at work, so that for every morsel of contentment there will follow a morsel of suffering, for every peal of laughter there is a drop of tear ready to roll, because that is the way of this strange world, and hence we try not to look too happy, even on days when we might feel so inside.

Ada said, ‘You make it sound as if we should judge a culture not by its literature or philosophy or democracy, just by its baklava.’

And then they were silent once again, drifting back to the painful place they both shared but could only occupy separately.

Defne held the letter so tight it crumpled around the edges. Her gaze fell on the tomato plant again as her eyes welled up. Kostas had once told her that long ago in Peru, where tomatoes were believed to have originated, they used to call it ‘a plum thing with a navel’. Defne had liked that description. 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 sides’.

‘But not everyone needs to be a warrior, my dear. Otherwise we’d never have poets, artists, scientists …’ ‘I disagree,’ said Defne into her wine glass. ‘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

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

The cruelty of life rested not only on its injustices, injuries and atrocities, but also in the randomness of it all.

Some day this pain will be useful to you.