The Island of Missing Trees

In the late 2010s, 16-year-old Ada Kazantzakis attends the last class of the school year before the Christmas break is to begin. She is distracted by the worsening weather visible through the classroom window; there is a storm predicted to hit England over the next few days. Unlike her fellow classmates who are excited for the holidays to begin, Ada has nothing to look forward to, as her introverted father, Kostas Kazantzakis, will be working the whole time. An evolutionary ecologist and botanist, Kostas has always preferred the company of trees to people and has been drifting further away from Ada ever since her mother Defne’s death.

The history teacher, Mrs. Walcott, announces a holiday project, which involves interviewing an elderly relative and writing an essay. Ada wonders what to do, as she has never met anyone from her parents’ families or even been to Cyprus, where they are from. Although her name is derived from Defne’s language and means “island,” Ada speaks neither Defne’s Turkish, nor Kostas’s Greek. Ada believes that this estrangement from her country and culture is because her parents’ marriage was not approved by either of their families.

Mrs. Walcott calls upon Ada to answer a question, but she fumbles the answer. When Mrs. Walcott asks her to sit back down, however, Ada finds herself paralyzed to the spot and unable to comply.

On the same afternoon, the fig tree describes how Kostas digs a hole in the back garden to bury the tree to protect her from the approaching storm. Burying fig trees underground during harsh winters and unearthing them when spring arrives is a common practice among numerous cultures in the Mediterranean region, including the Cypriots. However, the tree worries that Kostas will forget to unbury her in time. Kostas talks lovingly to the tree as he digs, and the tree remembers how Kostas has always cared for her.

In the classroom, Mrs. Walcott once again asks Ada to sit down, but she still does not comply. Rooted to the spot, from the corner of her eye she sees the butterfly she had been doodling escape the paper and flit around the classroom. She hears her classmates make mean comments about her, even as she is unable to respond to her teacher’s queries of what is wrong. Suddenly, a scream erupts forth from her, and despite her classmates’ shock and her teacher’s attempts to calm her down, Ada continues screaming without a break for 52 seconds. As she screams, she remembers her mother, and for the first time since her death, thoughts of Defne do not bring tears to Ada’s eyes. Eventually, Ada collapses silently into her chair as suddenly as she had started, spent and drained. A shocked Mrs. Walcott asks Ada if she is all right, even as Ada hears a sound in her head and thinks about how, somewhere outside, “someone’s bones were breaking” (29).

Kostas continues to dig, assuring the fig tree that he will visit her even while she is buried. The tree remembers how Kostas smuggled her into London in a black suitcase, accompanied by Defne, who was then pregnant with Ada, unbeknownst to the couple. Kostas hurries to prune the tree and finish the burial, and the tree knows he is rushing to be done before Ada is home; Kostas does not want Ada to witness another burial so soon after Defne’s, who died months ago after falling into a coma she never woke from.

The tree confesses to the reader her love for Kostas, embarrassed as she is to be “besotted” by a man who will never reciprocate the same kind of feeling. She knows she is not as attractive as some other trees, such as the Japanese cherry or the bougainvillea, but takes pride in her “mystery and inner strength” (31) and her presence in multiple creation stories across cultures.

Kostas finishes the pruning and digging and pushes the tree down into the ground. The roots snap and the tree lands in the ground, paralleling the sound of someone’s bones breaking.

Later that night, Ada watches Kostas from her window as he completes the burial, which had been interrupted when he received a call from her school. Ada had been mortified by her classmates’ expressions at her outburst just as much as the surprised concern displayed by the headmaster and her teacher, both of whom had met with Kostas to discuss the incident.

Ada joins Kostas in the garden, who explains that he is burying the fig tree to protect her from the cold. Ada offers to help, and Kostas is surprised, especially because of the distance that has crept into their relationship after Defne’s death. As they work, Kostas explains that fig trees can be monoecious or dioecious and that theirs is a parthenocarpic female, capable of bearing fruit without the presence of a male tree nearby. Ada confesses that the tree gives her the “creeps” because she feels like the tree is always listening to them. Kostas assures her that’s not possible, even as he proclaims how special this tree is: “your mum always called her a warrior” (43).

The fig tree, who has overheard the conversation, is offended that Ada finds her creepy. She knows Ada can sense there is more to the tree than meets the eye but thinks Ada’s label of “creepy” stems from human beings’ general lack of desire to know more about plants. The tree believes that humans avoid exploring trees and plants more because the discovery of all the things trees can do would be unsettling to them, such as how a tree’s rings reveal not only its age but also all the trauma it has endured or how some plants can recognize “kith and kin” (44) and feel touch, among other things. The tree reflects on how, although she will be buried for a few months, it does not seem like a long time. “Human-time” and “arboreal-time” are different, the former being linear, while the latter is “cyclical, recurrent, perennial” (47), similar to how time works in a story.

Accompanied by illustrations, this chapter details the 10 steps involved in burying a fig tree, from digging a trench around it and pruning its branches, to bending the tree into the trench, covering it with organic matter and securing it in place, and finally whispering “some soothing words to (the) fig tree, trust(ing) in her and wait(ing) for spring” (49).

The next morning, Ada overhears Kostas speaking to someone on the phone, extending an invitation to their home. Ada thinks Kostas is speaking to a secret girlfriend, but Kostas reveals that it was Defne’s sister Meryam. Kostas reassures Ada that he does not have a girlfriend, but Ada questions why Meryam wants to visit them now when she did not even turn up for Defne’s funeral. Kostas requests a resentful Ada to meet with her aunt at least once and see what she has to say; although still displeased with Meryam’s impending visit, Ada concedes.

The fig tree overhears that Meryam is to visit and reminisces about her own past in Cyprus, where she last heard Meryam’s voice. Back then, the tree inhabited a popular tavern that was built around and named after it: “The Happy Fig.” Long after Cyprus was partitioned and the tavern had been abandoned, Kostas took a cutting from the tree and smuggled it into London, where he replanted it in the garden. The tree eventually adapted to the vastly different London climate, though it took seven years before she could bear fruit again. Although she was 96 years old when she last remembers herself in the tavern, she is also just 16 years old with respect to her time in England.

Meryam arrives on Saturday evening, engulfing a still-wary Ada in a hug. Ada avoids being alone with her aunt, rushing to join her father in making tea. Ada presses Kostas to ask Meryam why she is here, and Kostas promises to do so, requesting Ada to be patient and give Meryam a chance. When Ada brings the tea out, she finds Kostas and Meryam together in the garden, where Meryam is performing some kind of ritual beside the buried fig tree, singing in a language Ada cannot understand.

The fig tree clarifies that Meryam is performing a ritual for the dead, a ceremony that is traditionally performed under a fig tree. The tree recollects how fig trees, and trees of the Ficus genus in general, have long been considered sacred across multiple cultures and recounts numerous ceremonies and rituals across religions that involve Ficus trees.

The next morning, Ada wakes up to mouthwatering smells and finds that Meryam has prepared a breakfast banquet consisting of a host of traditional foods from Cyprus. When Ada insists that it is too much, Meryam counters this, saying that “An eagle doesn’t feed on flies” (67). Kostas is out in the garden, talking to the buried fig tree, and Meryam reveals to Ada that he brought the tree to England all the way from Nicosia.

Ada refuses to eat, professing that she is not hungry, and the moment Kostas comes back in, she interrogates Meryam as to why she is visiting them. Meryam reveals that her mother has recently passed away, and she was bound by a promise to her parents that while they were alive, she would not visit Defne. Angered by this and the fact that none of Defne’s relatives attended her funeral, Ada storms off. Kostas apologizes for his daughter’s behavior, but Meryam asserts that she has every right to be angry. To Meryam’s question about how much Ada knows about her parents’ past, Kostas admits that Ada knows very little. Define had not wanted her to be burdened by “a history that caused us nothing but pain and distrust” (71).