The Island of Missing Trees

Kostas returns to Cyprus for the first time in 25 years in the early 2000s. After arriving at the hotel, Kostas decides that he must try and find Defne that same afternoon. Over the years he had continued collecting information about her and knows she is an archaeologist, still unmarried and without children. Before leaving London, he had managed to find a contact who could bring him to Defne—an old colleague, David, who had been based in Cyprus for the past 10 months.

Kostas meets David at a bookshop, but before the latter arrives Kostas buys an ammonite from the neighboring souvenir shop. David tells Kostas that he knows Defne well and takes him where her team is at work to meet her. Defne and her team work with the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP), a group partnered with the UN, for whom David works, and made up of people of various professions, from archeologists and historians to geneticists and forensic specialists. Their work involves finding and identifying the bodies of people who went missing during the conflict in the late 70s.

Kostas is warmly greeted by the team; Defne is the last to greet him, and Kostas is taken aback by how she distant she sounds. She tells Kostas about her work and how they uncover bodies based on tip-offs from the locals, which is a difficult and long process since some deliberately mislead the CMP members. When Kostas inquires whether they’ve found Greek or Turk bodies, Defne sharply responds that “They were islanders,[…] like us” (206). David invites Kostas to join the team for dinner at the best tavern in town; when Kostas flinches in reaction, Defne tells him that it is not The Happy Fig, revealing that it closed years ago, and Yusuf and Yiorgos are among the missing they are searching for.

The fig tree reflects on how trees are “memory keeper(s).” When the writer Lawrence Durell began to dig up his backyard to plant cypresses there, he unearthed human skeletons. The fig tree does not think this unusual, for trees “sit silently in communion with human remains” (211), so people all over the world ought to approach trees for clues following times of war or conflict.

Kostas meets Defne, David, and another woman named Maria-Fernanda for dinner at a tavern that reminds him greatly of The Happy Fig. Maria-Fernanda is from Spain and works with exhumations in places that have seen conflict. She quotes examples of mass graves discovered after the Nuremberg trials helped people realize the widespread reach of violence during war as evidenced by “the acts of barbarity that happen off the battlefield” (213). Defne had heard about Maria-Fernanda’s work and wrote to her. Maria-Fernanda invited Defne to visit her in Spain, and then Defne invited Maria-Fernanda to observe CMP’s work in Cyprus.

Maria-Fernanda tells a story about her time in Burgos, Spain, which elicits a conversation about what each of them would do if they were confronted with someone who supported the mass murder of civilians. Kostas’s noncommittal answer seems to anger Defne, who remembers how Kostas was always “reasoned” and “logical.” David shifts the conversation to lighten the mood, asking Kostas about his work, and he tells the group about his work with fig trees and how they can support the biodiversity of the Mediterranean region. Defne comments on how butterflies feed on figs, revealing a tattoo of a painted lady on the inside of her arm.

Kostas notices that Defne seems to be drinking an unusual amount throughout dinner. Defne reveals to the group that she and Kostas were together when they were younger, but Kostas left her; Kostas defends himself, arguing that she is the one who refused all correspondence. Defne claims that it is water under the bridge now, and the four of them eventually leave the tavern, wandering the streets of Cyprus together.

The next day, Kostas visits the excavation site where Defne and her team have already begun work early in the morning. Kostas asks Defne why she never replied to his letters, to which she responds that there was nothing to say. Kostas reveals that a gynecologist from Cyprus, Dr. Norman, recently got in touch with him; he mentioned that in 1974 Defne had given him a note to pass on to Kostas if anything ever went wrong, but Dr. Norman unfortunately lost the note. However, Kostas had pieced together that perhaps Defne had been pregnant and had needed an abortion, which is why he returned to Cyprus to see her. He apologizes for not having known or been there for her, but Defne asserts that she doesn’t want to talk about what happened. Kostas starts to believe Defne wants to distance herself from him until at the end of the afternoon she asks him if they can spend the evening together, just the two of them.

Defne takes Kostas on a long walk to the outskirts of the city, where they have a picnic atop a hill. She tells Kostas that there had, indeed, been a pregnancy; Yiorgos and Yusuf had helped her back then until they disappeared, and she plans on working with CMP until she finds out what happened to them. Meryam thinks Defne should visit a psychic, and Kostas tells her that if she wants to do so, he will come along with her. Defne and Kostas embrace, and she tells him she missed him, and Kostas knows for certain that he will not leave Cyprus again without Defne.

On Christmas Eve in 2010s London, Ada helps Meryam recover an app, which she has accidentally deleted, that digitally helps her ward off the evil eye. Ada thinks it’s a scam, but Meryam is revealed to have it back. Ada asks Meryam to help her with her history homework. She rejects Meryam’s suggestion that Ada first ask Kostas if it’s all right and refuses to go along to the exorcist unless Meryam tells her more about Cyprus and the past.

Two days after their picnic, Meryam takes Kostas and Defne to meet the psychic, warning them to be respectful. Meryam tells the psychic that Defne wants to know what happened to her friends Yiorgos and Yusuf, who went missing in the summer of 1974. The psychic calls on the element of water to help in their search, stating that in “Cyprus, most of the missing are hidden by a riverbed or a hill overlooking the sea or sometimes inside a well” (236). She claims to see a fig tree inside a room that resembles a restaurant and Yusuf and Yiorgos dancing and kissing. When she calls their names they disappear, and an infant boy named Yusuf Yiorgos appears. The psychic suddenly says “Oh, no! Oh, poor thing” (237), before opening her eyes and asking only Defne if she ought to continue.

Defne storms out of the session, upsetting Meryam, who believes Defne is belittling her. Meryam leaves, and although Defne feels bad, she invites Kostas to get drunk with her somewhere. However, Kostas confronts Defne about the young boy the psychic saw, realizing that he had mistakenly assumed Defne had had an abortion. He asks Defne what happened to their baby, claiming she had no right to keep the pregnancy from him. Defne defends her actions saying that she had been young, alone, and terrified. Kostas decides to call Dr. Norman the following morning to learn the truth about what happened.

Meryam takes Ada to the exorcist in London, making her promise not to tell Kostas, who would disapprove. The exorcist listens to Meryam’s description of Ada’s incident and is convinced that it is the work of the djinn. He asks Ada to concentrate and stare at a bowl of water, which will reveal the face of the djinni possessing her, as he performs an elaborate ritual. Nothing happens, and the exorcist explains that the djinni is too powerful. He calls upon his daughter Jamila with the intention of calling the djinni to possess her instead, asserting that Jamila is trained to deal with the creatures. Ada refuses to have her djinni transferred to someone else and walks out of the session. On their way home, Ada tells Meryam that she doesn’t think there’s a djinni possessing her; Meryam agrees, opining that “we give other names to grief because we are too scared to call it by its name” (247).

Back at his hotel on the night after the picnic, Kostas is unable to sleep and steps out for a walk. A little distance away from the hotel, he finds acacia trees laden with dead songbirds, caught in traps set for them set by poachers—a black market has sprung up for this Cypriot delicacy, and hunters catch and smuggle the birds out of the country, resulting in the death of two million songbirds every year.

Back at the hotel, Kostas leaves a message for Dr. Norman requesting to talk with him urgently before heading to the nearest police headquarters to report the songbird poaching incident. However, neither the police nor the clerk at the British Sovereign Base he visits afterwards do anything about it; the latter tells him that despite it being illegal, songbird poaching and smuggling is rampant, carried out by dangerous gangs for the big money it brings in.

Later that night, Kostas heads out to the trees and destroys every single trap he can find. When he goes back the following night, the poachers, who are lying in wait, catch Kostas and beat him bloody. The morning after he is beaten, Defne visits Kostas at his hotel; she is saddened but does not seem surprised to see his injuries. They make love that night, and Kostas tells Defne about the songbirds, prompting her to say that she can’t decide whether Kostas is “an unsung hero or a glorious fool” (255). Despite his injuries, having Defne in his arms again makes Kostas feel more alive than he has felt in a long time.