The Island of Missing Trees

A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference.

Cartography is another name for stories told by winners.

For stories told by those who have lost, there isn’t one.

“History is a most fascinating subject,” Mrs. Walcott was now saying, her brogues planted firmly behind her desk, as though she needed a barricade from behind which to teach her students, all twenty-nine of them. “Without understanding our past, how can we hope to shape our future?”

So many times in her past she had suspected that she carried within a sadness that was not quite her own. In science class they had learned that everyone inherited one chromosome from their mother and one from their father—long threads of DNA with thousands of genes that built billions of neurons and trillions of connections between them. All that genetic information passed from parents to offspring—survival, growth, reproduction, the colour of your hair, the shape of your nose, whether you had freckles or sneezed in sunlight—everything was in there. But none of that answered the one question burning in her mind: was it also possible to inherit something as intangible and immeasurable as sorrow?

Her voice cracked but persisted. There was something profoundly humiliating yet equally electrifying about hearing yourself scream—breaking off, breaking away, uncontrolled, unfettered, without knowing how far it would carry you, this untamed force that rose from inside. It was an animal thing. A wilderness thing. Nothing about her belonged to her previous self in that moment. Above all her voice. This could have been the shriek of a hawk, the soul-haunting howl of a wolf, the rasping cry of a red fox at midnight. It could have been any of them, but not the scream of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl.

I wish I could have told him that loneliness is a human invention. Trees are never lonely. Humans think they know with certainty where their being ends and someone else’s starts. With their roots tangled and caught underground, linked to fungi and bacteria, trees harbour no such illusions. For us, everything is interconnected.

Arboreal-time is cyclical, recurrent, perennial; the past and the future breathe within this moment, and the present does not necessarily flow in one direction; instead, it draws circles within circles, like the rings you find when you cut us down.

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.

Where there is trauma, look for signs, for there are always signs. Cracks that appear in our trunks, splits that won’t heal, leaves that display autumn colours in spring, bark that peals like unmoulted skin. But no matter what kind of trouble it may be going through, a tree always knows that it is linked to endless life forms—from honey fungus, the largest living thing, down to the smallest bacteria and archaea—and that its existence is not an isolated happenstance but intrinsic to a wider community. Even trees of different species show solidarity with one another regardless of their differences, which is more than you can say for so many humans.

When we left the tavern… the moon, the smell of your hair, your hand in my hair, your hand in my hand, after all the horror when we realized we had only each other to depend on.

You know what I’ve been thinking since? I’ve been thinking that you are my country. Is that a strange thing to say? Without you, I don’t have a home in the world; I am a felled tree, my roots severed all around; you can topple me with the touch of a finger.

“It’s been extremely hard for you. Maybe we give other names to grief because we are too scared to call it by its name.”

Ada’s eyes teared. She felt closer to this woman then than she ever thought was possible. Still, when she opened her mouth what came out was different. “I’ll never forgive you for not coming to my mother’s funeral, I want you to know that.”

“I understand,” said Meryem. “I should have; I couldn’t.”

They walked in tandem.

When they subjected survivors’ seedlings to high-intensity fires in lab conditions, they discovered that trees whose ancestors had experienced hardship reacted more swiftly and produced extra proteins, which they then used to protect and regenerate their cells. Their findings were consistent with earlier studies that showed how genetically identical species of poplars growing in similar conditions responded differently to traumas, such as dry spells, depending on where they came from. Could all this mean that trees not only had some kind of memory but, also, they passed it on to their offspring?

Much as he loved the arboreal world and its complex ecosystem, was he, in some roundabout way, avoiding the day-to-day realities of politics and conflicts? A part of him understood that people, especially where he came from, might see it that way, but a bigger part of him fiercely rejected the idea. He had always believed there was no hierarchy—or there should be none—between human pain and animal pain, and no precedence of human rights over animal rights, or indeed of human rights over those of plants, for that matter. He knew many among his fellow countrymen would be deeply offended if he voiced this out loud.

“The tree was being strangled by its own roots. Because it was happening under the earth, it was undetectable. If the encircling roots are not found in time, they start putting pressure on the tree and it just becomes too much to bear.”

Ada was silent.

“Your mother loved you very much, more than anything in this world. Her death had nothing to do with the absence of love. She was blooming and thriving with your love, and I’d like to believe with mine, too, but underneath, something was strangling her—the past, the memories, the roots.”