The Island of Missing Trees

Kostas tells the fig tree that he’ll come to talk to her every day when she’s buried. The fig tree is glad. Over this past year, without meaning to, the fig tree has found herself falling in love with Kostas, a feeling she finds embarrassing. She knows Kostas will never think of her the same way. But, the fig tree thinks, if someone expects love to make sense, that just means they’ve probably never been in love.

The tree recalls how Kostas first brought her to London: smuggled in a black leather suitcase on a plane from Cyprus. At Heathrow Airport, the fig tree was tense. She expected airport officials to search Kostas’s luggage at any point. Kostas’s wife, Defne, walked beside them, pregnant with Ada at the time. The tree hasn’t returned to Cyprus since then, but she still remembers the island. And her memories go back centuries. The tree wonders if her pessimism and melancholy stem from her inability to forget. “I guess it is in my genes,” the tree thinks.

Kostas prunes the fig tree before burying it. He rushes to finish the task before Ada comes home. He doesn’t want her to see another burial after they so recently buried her mom, Defne. After Defne fell into a coma, Kostas would come to the garden and cry beside the fig tree so Ada wouldn’t see how much he suffered. On those nights, the fig tree’s affection for Kostas grew. As he finishes burying the tree, Kostas tells the tree that when he puts her into the hole, some of her roots might break, but the ones that remain will be more than enough to keep her alive. Kostas then presses the tree down into the hole he dug. When he does, the tree hears cracking sounds from below. “If I were human,” the tree thinks, “it would have been the sound of my bones breaking.”