The Island of Missing Trees

by Elif Shafak

The places where we were born are the shape of our lives, even when we are away from them.

As you aged you cared less and less about what others thought of you, and only then could you be more free.

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.

Where do you start someone’s story when every life has more than one thread and what we call birth is not the only beginning, nor is death exactly an end?

In all the myths and fairy tales, a woman who breaks social conventions is always punished. And usually the punishment is psychological, mental.

The moonlight reflected off the stone setts along the narrow street, forming rivulets of silver that shimmered in front of her as if she were coasting over water.

we only grasp bits and pieces, each of us, and sometimes your bits and pieces do not match mine and then what’s the use of talking about the past, it’ll only offend everyone.

a slight pressure weighing on the shoulder he had placed under the polished wood, the taste of silver lingering on his lips from kissing the cross, the smell of oil and dust in his nostrils.

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.