The Island of Missing Trees(26)

They heard customers arrive. The sounds of cutlery, idle chatter. Then a plate smashing, followed by a woman’s laughter. Someone began to sing in English.

So kiss me and smile for me,

Tell me that you’ll wait for me …



Others joined in. A spontaneous, loud, rowdy chorus. They were British soldiers, many of them just out of school, their voices rising and falling, hanging on to each other for support and camaraderie, a sense of home, belonging. Young men trapped in a zone of conflict, stuck on an island where they did not speak the languages, nor really understand the subtleties of the political landscape; servicemen fulfilling orders, knowing one of them might not make it to tomorrow.



Two hours later, Yusuf opened the kitchen door and quietly let them out.

‘C-c-come back. We don’t always get young lovers here, you’ll b-bring us luck.’

As they stepped into the evening breeze, they smiled at their host, suddenly shy. Young lovers! They had never thought of themselves in those terms, but now that someone had said it out loud, of course, they knew, that’s exactly what they were.





Fig Tree





And that’s how she came into my life – Defne.

It was a quiet afternoon. I was dozing off inside the tavern, enjoying a moment of calm before the evening rush, when the door opened and they strode in, slipping from the bright glare of sunlight into the cool shade.

‘A fig! Is that real?’

That’s what I remember Defne saying as soon as her eyes landed on me. The surprise on her face was unmistakable.

I perked up, curious to know the person who had made this remark. Vanity, perhaps, but I have always been interested in what humans see – or fail to see – in us.

I remember Yiorgos saying something about how I looked electrified at night. He used the word ‘magical’. I was pleased to hear that. It was true. In the evenings, when the staff turned on the lamps and lit the candles placed at various corners, a golden light reflected off my bark, glowing through my leaves. My branches stretched out confidently, as if everything around here was an extension of me, not only the trestle tables and wooden chairs, but also the paintings on the walls, the strings of garlic hanging from the ceiling, the waiters scooting back and forth, the customers who came from diverse parts of the world, even Chico flying around in a blaze of colours, all of it happening under my supervision.

I had nothing to worry about back then. My figs were juicy, plentiful, soft to the touch, and my leaves were strong and spotlessly green, the newer ones larger than the older, a sign of healthy growth. Such was my allure that I even uplifted the customers’ mood. The furrows in their foreheads relaxed, the edges in their tones smoothed out. Perhaps what they said about happiness was true, after all: it was contagious. In a tavern named The Happy Fig, with a blooming tree at the centre, it was hard not to feel hopeful.

I know I should not be saying this, I know it is wrong of me, unloving and ungrateful, but since that fateful afternoon many years ago there have been more than a few times when I’ve regretted meeting Defne and I wished she had never crossed our threshold. Maybe then our beautiful tavern would not have been consumed by flames, destroyed. Maybe I would still be that same happy tree.





Loneliness


London, late 2010s


The storm hit London in earnest in the small hours of the night. The sky, dark as a jackdaw’s breast, weighed down upon the city with all its load of steeled intensity. Bolts of lightning flashed overhead, expanding out in neon branches and shoots, like some ghostly forest that had been uprooted and swept away.

Alone in her room with the lights turned off save for a reading lamp by her side, Ada lay still in bed, the duvet pulled up to her chin, listening to the thunder and thinking, worrying. As scary as it had been to scream in front of her classmates, there was something she found even scarier: the realization that it could happen again.

During the day, distracted by her aunt’s presence, she had somehow banished the incident from her mind, but now it all came rushing back to her. Mrs Walcott’s expression, the students’ jibes, the confusion on Zafaar’s face. That gnawing sensation in her stomach. There must be something wrong with her, she reckoned. Something wrong in her head. Maybe she, too, had what her mother had, the thing they never talked about.

She thought she would not be able to fall asleep, yet she did. A shallow, fitful sleep in the middle of which she opened her eyes, unsure what had woken her. It was raining hard outside, the world engulfed in a torrential downpour. The hawthorn tree in front of her bedroom brushed against the window with each gust of wind, as if wanting to tell her something through the glazing.

A car drove by down the road; it must have been an emergency, out in this weather, its headlights sweeping over the blinds so that for a passing moment every item in the room came alive, rising out of the dark. Silhouettes sprang up like characters in a shadow play. And just as quickly, they disappeared. She remembered, as she had done countless times these past months, her mother’s touch, her mother’s face, her mother’s voice. Grief spooled itself around her entire being, tightening its grip on her like a coil of rope.

Slowly, she sat up in bed. How she yearned for a sign! For the truth was, no matter how frightened or sceptical she might be of ghosts or spirits or all those invisible creatures she suspected her aunt believed in, there was a part of her that hoped if she could only find a door to another dimension, or allow that dimension to reveal itself, she might see her mother one more time.