The Island of Missing Trees – E. Shafak; #familystories #immigrants #Cyprus

JDC

Nov 7

Oil painting of a setting sun over a deep blue sea. — *'Turquoise at Sunset, Paphos, Cyprus' by Pete Caswell; oil on canvas*

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.

One thing that draws me to Elif Shafak's books is the way she explores borderlands; physical, cultural, emotional, and memories. This novel is the story of a family living in London - Defne, Kostas, and their teenage daughter Ada, but as is the way with families, their stories are complicated and as it turns out, so is their family. Defne is a Turkish-Cypriot immigrant, Kostas is Greek-Cypriot immigrant, and they want Ada to be a British child, not burdened with their or their motherland's history. A year after Defne's death both Ada and Kostas are struggling. The Christmas holidays are rapidly approaching and Storm Hera is about to slam into town bringing with it subzero temperatures, snow, and ice. Unbeknownst to Ada her mother's older sister Meryem is coming to visit, someone Ada has never met.

Just before school breaks for the holidays, Ada's pent-up grief becomes too much for her and she lets the emotions out in the only way she can right then. Later, to her horror, she sees that a classmate recorded the incident and posted it on social media. Kostas is trying to reach out to his daughter, but his deep grief and habit of retreating into his work doesn't help, and there's an ever-widening gulf between them. Ada is very much like her mother in looks and temperament and she is not happy when she finds out about Meryem's visit, after all she's had no contact with any relatives on either side of the family and none of them attended her mother's funeral, which Ada finds difficult to understand or forgive. The only relative she even knows of is Meryem because of postcards she's sent the family over the years, but now for her to suddenly appear seems all wrong to Ada.

The novel is told through three timelines and various viewpoints; there's the story of Defne and Kostas in 1974, the early 2000s, and Ada's in the late 2010s. One of the storytellers is a fig tree grown from a cutting Kostas brought with him from Cyprus to London. As is fitting for a long-lived tree its narrative has a different timeframe and it has absorbed the stories surrounding it and gives background and perspective to other stories.

Arboreal-time is equivalent to story-time - and, like a story, a tree does not grow in perfectly straight lines, flawless curves or exact right angles, but bends and twists and bifurcates into fantastical shapes, throwing out branches of wonder and arcs of invention.

At first the rather prosaic voice of the fig tree surprised me, after all shouldn't its voice be more…unusual? It isn't until near the end of the book that a reader finds out why the tree has that particular voice.

To protect the immigrant fig tree from the coming storm, Kostas buries it. Tucked up snugly in the dark, memories of Cyprus and the story of Defne and Kostas are told and alternate with Ada's more recent story. In 1974 the young Defne and Kostas are newly in love and having to sneak around to meet each other; a romantic relationship between a Greek and a Turk is disapproved of by almost everyone. But not all and that introduces a special place in Nicosia, The Happy Fig, a tavern owned by partners Yiorgos and Yusuf that houses the original version of our fig tree storyteller. Unusually, it's a place everyone frequents, islanders and visitors, without any problems. Yusuf and Yiorgos play a key role in Defne's and Kostas's stories, which even extends to the later years in London. Bit and pieces of Yiorgos's and Yusuf's story are filled in by the fig tree.

The pivotal year of 1974 changes all of their lives though. Greece and Turkey both intervene in Cyprus, Turks flee to the north of the island, Greeks south, and Nicosia becomes a divided city patrolled by UN troops.

In London, Ada is ignoring her aunt and father as much as possible, hiding away in her room to study and scroll through her phone, but the kindly Meryem doesn't give up.

Slowly, she closed the door, leaving her aunt standing in the hall with her accessories and proverbs, fading like yet another family photo on the wall.

Ada eventually turns to her for the story of her parents and Cyprus, which they have taken care to keep from her in an effort to protect her. But silences can be damaging and Ada needs to have this one broken. A history assignment gives her the perfect way in to asking questions that Meryem is initially reluctant to answer, especially because she knows how much Defne wanted Ada to be free of the baggage she and Kostas carried with them when they left Cyprus. Defne in particular was heavily burdened with it.

Meryem brings an openness and warmth to the house that has been frozen with grief, much of it unexpressed, for the past year. She's a cross between an earth mother and a shopaholic, though the shopping might be a more recent way of expressing herself. Ironically, Meryem is not so different from Panagiota, Kostas's deeply religious mother. Beliefs and superstitions are important to them and though Meryem would probably have done her best to get along with the other woman (except in the kitchen where she's fiercely protective of what she has no doubts are Turkish dishes), Panagiota probably would have refused to have anything to do with Meryem.

On our island, members of either community, convinced that destiny is fickle and no joy is here to last, will keep spitting into the breeze without ever thinking that in that very moment, people on the other side, the opposite tribe, might be doing the same thing for exactly the same reason.

Memory and the natural world are bound closely together here, the fickle and short memory of humans has devastating impacts on everything around them, especially in a civil war zone. Defne, as an archaeologist, and Kostas, as a plant scientist, study the consequences of human actions or inaction through their own work. For Defne, memory is essential for what she is doing, but it's also the source of pain she's unable to forget. For Kostas nature has always been a comfort and a place he's fascinated by, but he takes it hard when it suffers.

Shafak writes wonderfully about the natural world and there is a lot of information about it packed into the novel, which probably borders on or even tips over into info dumping. I had the feeling Shafak was fascinated by what she was writing about and wanted to share that fascination. And depending on the reader, they'll either be annoyed by it or will be happy to follow along with Shafak. She also writes eloquently about immigrant life and about those who stay and those who go. Cyprus itself springs to life, a virtual paradise until hatreds tear it apart, but in the memories of those who left, it's a place that's unforgettable.