The Islands of Missing Trees- My Impression
The works of Elif Shafak always elicit a deeper thought-provoking assessment, callback to memories, experiences, and the brutal truths of life. In her 12th novel, Shafak succinctly details how a beautiful, majestic, and beautiful island — CYPRUS became a hotbed of racial, cultural, and societal conflicts, deeper trauma, and segregation.
The Islands of Missing Trees is a detailed expose of loss of love, separation, conflicts, pains, emotional balance, and bond between the fellow islanders. Also, interweaved is the story of how humans think they are the only species capable of thoughts, pains, traumas, and enduring experiences — good, bad, and in-between.
I especially loved her storytelling, where she juxtaposes the telltale of stories by a fig tree, and the stories concerning what happened in Cyprus in 1974, and what is happening in London in the late 2010s. The experiences, activities, and emotions of the major characters Ada Kazantzakis, Kostas, and Defne Kazantzakis, the lone fig trees in London (that have to be buried and unburied every winter fall), Yusuf and Yiorgos (two males in deeper love with one another), Meryem, David, etc. all play a crucial role in the story.
I was able to grasp the sentiments, loss, grief, and emotional ups and downs of the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, who lost their beautiful land and social camaraderie to religious -ethnic conflicts, the pain of partition, and segregation of pre-existing bonds and territories. Along with human pains and traumas, the book also clarifies how plants and animals are also capable of suffering from emotional ups and downs, tensions, stress, and anxiety as well as how they all mourn deaths, griefs, and pains in their own ways.
The book also touches on the topics of social conflicts-cohesion-comprehension, cultural facets and facades, family ties and relationship dynamics, gay love, superstition, bondings, etc. The most significant is the portrayal of the painful trauma, and wartime scenario (especially the way neighbors turned on one another during the civil war on this island, deaths of babies, mass cremation of lost lives, the message of the deceased widows requesting to be buried alongside their deceased better halves — if ever found, the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) quest for digging out the bodies during exhumations of the lost lives, separation, and division of diverse relationship, young military youths coming from other nations in the missions, etc). The arboreal perspectives of storytelling through a fig tree as both narrator and character is intriguing for the readers.
The tumultuous history of Cyprus has been magnificently described in the book, wherein we, become a part and parcel of the story and find ourselves immersed deeply, as well as act out as characters. All in all, the book is a slight deviation from Shafak’s other note-worthy works, yet has a soul of its own — — that calls out and describes the emotions, pains, and sufferings of all humans, plants, and animals, on this planet.
Another significant part of storytelling is linked to the emotional magnitude suffered by Kostas when he sees the deaths of fruits bats at a younger age and the devastation of his thoughts; (and the subsequent reason for him to become an expert in plants). Also, the illegal poaching and large-scale trafficking of exotic birds by violent gangs for money have been described well.
Also, the lives of those humans, who are forced to leave their motherlands, and find life abroad in other cultures post-traumatic war, and separation is gracefully reflected here. Also, while reading the book, I imagined the lives of those recast migrants eking out a livelihood and trying to carve a piece and niche for themselves in other nations. The victims of the recent wars and conflicts in Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Israel, Palestine, and even those displaced by the decade-long insurgency in Nepal and Sri Lanka, came to mind. Not to forget the communication and lack of communication and clarity between Kostas and his daughter Ada shows how the inter-generational differences and a web of acceptance, rejection, pride, comprehension, and clarity as well as differences of ideas, opinions, and perspectives play out variably.
Lastly, this book doesn’t seem to be fictional work at all, as stories, scenes, and events described artfully here are primarily based on research and analysis of real-life conflicts in Cyprus. And, the works of Shafak don’t disappoint at all. But Instead, makes the readers lost in deep thoughts and cornucopia of emotional -intellectual — philosophical ups and downs. I also adore the way of dividing up the chapters as How to bury/unbury a tree, roots, branch, trunk, and ecosystem.
