The Island of Missing Trees
In her classroom in London, the teenage Ada, child of a Greek father and a Turkish mother from the conflicted island of Cyprus, wonders whether it is “possible to inherit something as intangible and immeasurable as sorrow.”
Exiled from the warm Mediterranean climate, her widowed father tips a fig tree into a trench and buries it to ensure it survives the winter. The tree knows that “everything is interconnected…loneliness is a human invention.”
The loneliness suffered by Ada and her dad after her mother’s death isolates them both, alienating them from one another.
When Ada’s mother’s sister arrives from Cyprus for a visit, the girl is at first uninterested, even annoyed by the sudden appearance of this aunt whom she has never met. Gradually, Aunt Meryem’s home-cooked food, Cypriot superstition, and plentiful supply of aphorisms begin to help her build bridges.
In this book, we learn the destructive effects human activity — from asbestos extraction to ethnic conflict — has had on the flora and fauna of the natural paradise of Cyprus. As the fig tree tells us, “on an island plagued by ethnic violence and brutal atrocities,” humans did not suffer alone. “Trees, and animals too, experienced hardship and pain as their habitats came to disappear.” We learn in how diverse life forms - birds, bats, ants, mice, mosquitoes and honeybees - are part of the same intricately connected ecosystem.
A tree in a weakened state can be killed by a virus. Fanaticism, too, is a viral disease. From the wise perspective of the fig tree, “it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogeneous unit,'“ making it advisable “to keep some distance from all collective beliefs and certainties.”
The back story of Ada’s family touches on her mother’s work for the United Nations CMP, the Committee for Missing Persons, and we learn too about how the location and identification of remains of victims of civil war is done, and how and where it was learned. We learn that songbirds have long been eaten, and this has custom has led to large-scale trapping an a huge contraband trade of them around the world. Yet ammonites, also found on Cyprus, have survived three mass extinctions, and the world has produced in excess of 10,000 species of honeybees. Cyprus is blessed with so many amazing life forms, including many kinds of birds, odd insects like staghorn beetles, and a plethora of trees and flowers: bougainvillea, mimosa, cypress, magnolia and jasmine as well as the citrus fruit trees that are farmed.
This lyrical book, in spite of its sharp portrayal of current social and ecological challenges, still offers hope. Bridges appear when we are ready to cross them. And as Defne tells Kostas, “What we think is impossible changes with every generation.” In spite of the conflict that occurred there, the island, like islands in general, has a way of “deceiving people into believing that their serenity was eternal.” Perhaps Defne is being too pessimistic when she says “Tribal hatreds never die?”
As for the fig tree, it knows that the tempting fruit in the Garden of Eden was no apple. It came from a tree long held to be sacred in many parts of the world where it grows. That tempting fruit was, of course, a fig.