The Island of Missing Trees

The morning after they spend the night together, Kostas is awakened by a phone call from Dr. Norman, who is sympathetic but refuses to disclose confidential information about Defne’s pregnancy and what happened to it. Defne realizes who Kostas had been talking to, and Kostas begs her to tell him what happened. Defne reveals that the baby was adopted by a British couple, who even let Defne visit often; however, as she describes that the baby died, Defne finally breaks down and tells Kostas everything.

Upon discovering that she is pregnant in 1974, Defne tries everything she can to naturally induce a miscarriage but fails. Desperate, she visits Dr. Norman, a British doctor, and begs him to perform an abortion; although initially reluctant, he finally relents but tells her it is too risky to perform the procedure at the clinic. Yiorgos and Yusuf help transform the back room of The Happy Fig into a safe place instead, where Dr. Norman meets Defne the next day. However, Defne is unable to go through with the procedure, and Yusuf and Yiorgos promise to help her raise the baby in secret. Just as they are comforting her, a car pulls up outside the tavern. When Yusuf and Yiorgos go to investigate, they find a group of men outside armed with sticks and clubs. Yusuf notices a can of paint in their car, which is the same color as the paint stains that had been present on the menacing note he had once found stuck to the tavern door.

The fig tree recounts meeting a mosquito in August 1976, the only creature she has ever regretted meeting. The mosquito tells the tree about how she has been infected by the malaria parasite, which is how the tree realizes that there has been a recent surge of malaria cases in the Mediterranean region. The mosquito narrates how she repeatedly bit one particular baby: Yusuf Yiorgos Robinson. When he eventually succumbed to malaria-induced respiratory distress, he was buried in the military cemetery, alongside the hundreds of British babies that mysteriously died in Cyprus in the previous decade.

Defne describes the rest of the story to Kostas: She stayed inside the tavern with Dr. Norman while Yusuf and Yiorgos went outside to investigate. The sounds of a scuffle forced her and the doctor to stay hidden in the tavern; the situation outside seemed to escalate rapidly, eventually ending in a gunshot. When Defne and Dr. Norman eventually went outside to investigate, Yusuf and Yiorgos and the other men had disappeared. Defne believes that the men, aware of Yusuf and Yiorgos’s relationship, had been casing the tavern for a while, intending to destroy it. Defne and Dr. Norman searched far and wide for the tavern owners. Defne continued to visit the tavern every day for a month, waiting for them to return and bringing Chico the parrot some food until the parrot also disappeared one day. Ultimately, Defne decided to have the baby despite the consequences; she and Meryam decided to tell their parents that Defne was pregnant with Yusuf’s baby, and they had been planning to get married before Yusuf’s mysterious disappearance. Defne’s parents were mortified, believing her to have dishonored the family name, and her father refused to look at her or speak to her anymore; her mother, in turn, called Yusuf’s family and accused their innocent son of things he had never done. As she finishes her story, Defne invites Kostas to visit the military cemetery with her.

The fig tree describes how Chico the parent fell into a deep depression after Yusuf and Yiorgos’s disappearance. A yellow-headed Amazon parrot native to Mexico, Chico arrived in Cyprus as part of an entourage of parrots owned by an American actress who took a fancy to Cyprus and decided to live here for a while. As she got busy with work over time, she left her housekeeper in charge of her parrots’ care. The other eight parrots were partnered off, and a lonely Chico, missing human love and attention, flew out the open window one day all the way to Nicosia, where he was found by Yusuf, who took him in. Upon Yusuf and Yiorgos’s disappearance, Chico became convinced that they wouldn’t return and that human beings were selfish and untrustworthy, though the fig tree tried to convince the parrot otherwise. However, over time, as it becomes clearer that the men may not return, the parrot succumbs to melancholy, plucking out its feathers and chewing its skin while repeating the word “aglama,” the Turkish work meaning “don’t cry,” To itself.

After visiting their son’s grave, Kostas and Defne drive up to the castle of Saint Hilarion and spend the night in the open wilderness. Kostas proposes to Defne with the ammonite he bought at the souvenir shop, confessing that he has always loved her and asking her to come to England with him. Despite both of them realizing that it will be a difficult and lonely life ahead without either of their family’s support, they decide to marry; however, before they leave the island for good, Kostas wants to pay The Happy Fig one last visit.

The fig tree describes how a colony of ants sets up home amongst its roots the year that Kostas returns to Cyprus and recollects the story narrated to the tree by the queen ant. The queen ant had been born and raised near an old well near the tavern but had had to flee her home when one side of the well collapsed, causing water to seep out and kill a number of her colony. She describes how, when the wall collapsed, they had also discovered the corpses of two men lying at the bottom of the well. Upon realizing what had really happened to Yusuf and Yiorgos, the fig tree falls ill, and her strength and immunity decline. Among the number of infections that begin to befall her, a large stag-horned beetle lays its eggs near the base of the tree’s trunk. The damage from this particular beetle is irreparable for fig trees, and the tree knows she is dying.

Kostas and Defne arrive at The Happy Fig and find the tavern completely dilapidated. Kostas approaches the fig tree and realizes it is dying; he tries his best to clean and treat it but is unsure whether it will survive. Defne wishes they could bring the tree with them, and Kostas remembers that fig trees can grow from cuttings. He decides to come back the next day and take a cutting from a healthy branch to carry with them to England.

As the fig tree eagerly waits for Kostas to return the next day, she is visited by a honeybee. The bee describes how she had gotten accidentally trapped inside a building housing a CMP laboratory the previous day. Here, she overheard one of the scientists, a woman named Eleni, call and talk to Defne on the phone; Eleni tells Defne that she may have found a DNA match for Defne’s missing friends. Defne arrives shortly after, where she learns that Yusuf and Yiorgos were found buried together at the bottom of a well after having been assumedly murdered; the bodies had been chained together to keep them from romcing. Eleni also gives Defne the pocket watch they found in the well. As an overwhelmed Defne opens a window to get some air, the honeybee makes her escape.

Kostas returns to The Happy Fig and manages to secure one single healthy cutting from the tree, which he smuggles into England. He plants it in a ceramic pot in his little flat, the same place they find out that Defne is pregnant. While both of them are thrilled, Defne is also wary of things going wrong; she continually feels “the approaching footsteps of a familiar sense of melancholy” (301). The cutting of the fig tree sprouts leaves, and Defne takes its resilience as a good sign; in her mind, the fate of the tree and her unborn child become intertwined. Eventually, Kostas and Defne move to a new house, where the growing fig tree is transplanted in the garden. Ada is born a couple of months premature in the winter, and the fig tree, too, needs extra care and insulation in the harsh, cold months; however, by the summer, both child and tree are healthy and thriving.

The last animal to visit the fig tree before it leaves Cyprus is a mouse that had been born and bred in the Ledra Palace, a luxury hotel in Nicosia. It, along with a host of other rodents and insects, had thrived there after the hotel had been attacked and evacuated in the summer of 1974. Years later, however, the ground floor of the hotel had begun to see activity again when Turkish and Greek Cypriots began to meet there under UN supervision in an attempt at peace and reconciliation. CMP meetings were held there, Defne among the attendees, laying relationship groundwork before excavation work could start in their search for the missing people. The mouse tells the tree about the last book it ate through before it left the hotel: a work by Ovid, containing the line, “Some day this pain will be useful to you” (307). The tree feels this will hold true for future generations of Cypriots as they learn from the pain of their parents’ and grandparents’ pasts.