The Island of Missing Trees

By Elif Shafak

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.

Which choice offers the best chance of healing from trauma for individuals and societies? To “let the past be the past” and continue moving forward, or to rebuild our stories one gossamer vein at a time? To explore the past, unearth the trauma, recognize it in our personal and collective consciousness with an intent to heal? To welcome the memories which can be as elusive and wispy as tufts of wool dispersed in the wind?

That’s the question Elif Shafak explores in her latest book The Island of Missing Trees.

Talking about the book during an interview at the Hay Literary Festival, Shafak said:

I am always fascinated by this dilemma between memory and collective amnesia. But I think memories are important if we want to repair what has been broken.

In this book Shafak crafts a universal dilemma recognized by anyone who chooses love in the face of trauma. Shall I just carry on? Or would there be sweet mercy in tending to the wound, bringing it into the light, cleansing it with the hope of healing?

The setting for this novel is the idyllic island of Cypress during the tragic conflict between the Greek and Turkish people living there in the 1970’s. It’s a bit of a Romeo and Juliet story as the two main characters, one Greek, one Turkish, fall in love. But that’s where the similarities end as Shafak invites the reader to move back and forth between the present-day (2010’s) family of this union, and the disturbing history that, as survivors, they were invited to negotiate.

In the same way that trauma can have a person flipping back and forth between the present moment, and reliving the traumatic story, Shafak takes us back and forth from the generation beyond the trauma, living in the present, to the generation who experienced it. She invites questions about the pain of past generations, and whether it is passed down through their children, like some type of emotional DNA. She is also willing to entertain the question What’s the use of talking about the past when the past is so complex and hurtful?

These are the questions, she seems to be telling us through this story, that surviving generations are invited to explore. She goes on to say:

Even though she [her main character] doesn’t know the stories of her ancestors, she has a feeling that there are things she hasn’t been told. She does feel the absences — the silences, and those silences actually shape us. They shape our psychology.

Even though we might not know exactly what lies behind them, we still feel their weight on our shoulders.

Shafak’s character says it this way:

It doesn’t go away, Kostas. Once it’s inside your head, whether it’s your own memory or your parents’, or your grandparents’, this fucking pain becomes part of your flesh. It stays with you and marks you permanently. It messes up your psychology and shapes how you think of yourself and others.”

In her interview, Shafak reminds us:

We all contain multitudes. But society does not want us to be that, wants to put us in a box.

She says of the results for both survivors and refugees:

Those who stay behind are the ones who deal with the wounds, the scars. But maybe those who leave are never really healed. Those of us who left, maybe our wounds are always open. A sense of absence, sense of melancholy, is something immigrants will always carry.

And I realize that I am only three generations away from the immigrants in my family. And I know very little about why they came to the United States, what burdens they were fleeing which I am still carrying somewhere in my psychological being. I don’t think Shafak is suggesting that we take on some kind of emotional archaeology project to unearth every story. But I do think she is encouraging us to allow the stories to surface when they want to.

And I believe we get to decide how much pain we are willing to lean into, and how much pain we must turn away from in order to survive.