The Island of Missing Trees(92)

If food was a delicate topic, sex was the next trickiest item on Meryem’s list. She could never broach the subject directly, preferring to tread around it in hazy circles.

‘Don’t you have friends at school?’

‘A few. Ed is a good friend.’

‘Is that Edwina?’

‘It’s Edward.’

Meryem’s brows snapped together. ‘Cotton playing with fire. Boys are not “friends” at your age. Maybe when they are old and feeble and have no teeth left in their mouths … But right now they think of only one thing.’

A flash of mischief crossed Ada’s face. ‘And what thing might that be?’

Meryem waved her hand. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

‘I just wanted you to spell it out,’ said Ada. ‘So boys want sex, but girls don’t. Is that it?’

‘Women are different.’

‘Different because we have no sexual desires?’

‘Because we are busy! Women have more important things to do. Taking care of our families, our parents, our children, our communities, making sure everything runs smoothly. Women are holding up the world, we don’t have time for monkey business!’

Ada pursed her lips, suppressing a smile.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You! The way you talk. You sound like you’ve never watched a nature documentary. Why don’t you have a chat with my father, he’ll tell you about antelopes, honeybees, Komodo dragons … You might be surprised to hear that females can be much more interested in sex than males.’

‘For babies, canim. That’s the only reason. Lady animals don’t care about sex otherwise.’

‘What about bonobos?’

‘Never heard of them.’

Taking out her phone, Ada showed her aunt a picture.

But Meryem did not seem impressed. ‘That’s a monkey, we are human.’

‘We share almost ninety-nine per cent of our DNA with bonobos.’ Ada put the phone back in her pocket. ‘Anyway, I think you’re expecting too much of women. You want them to sacrifice themselves for the happiness of others, try to accommodate everyone and conform to beauty standards that aren’t based in reality. That’s unfair.’

‘The world is unfair,’ said Meryem. ‘If a stone falls on an egg, it is bad for the egg; if an egg falls on a stone, it is still bad for the egg.’

Ada studied her aunt for a moment. ‘I don’t think we women need to be so hard on ourselves.’

‘Well, never say amen to an impossible prayer.’

‘It’s not impossible! Why can’t we be like Canada geese? The males and females look almost alike. And besides, most female birds don’t even have gaudy feathers. It’s usually the male that looks more colourful.’

Meryem shook her head. ‘Sorry, that won’t do. For us humans, the rules are different. A woman needs pretty plumage.’

‘But why?’

‘Because otherwise another female will swoop down and snatch her mate away. And, trust me, when a bird reaches my age, she does not want to be alone in her nest.’

Ada stopped asking questions then, not because she agreed with anything her aunt said but because she had sensed, once again, underneath all the spirited talk and assertive personality, how timid and vulnerable the woman really was.

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ said Ada. ‘So do you have any more cleaning tips?’





Ways of Seeing


London, late 2010s


Kostas sat typing away in his study – a former potting shed – his face thrown into sharp relief by the blue light from the computer screen. He had built a bolthole here for himself, his desk piled with documents, books and academic papers. Every now and then he glanced out of the window, allowing his gaze to settle on the garden. Now that Storm Hera was gone, there was something new in the air, the sense of a delicate peace that comes after a ferocious battle. In a few weeks, spring would arrive and he would unearth the fig tree.

The week Defne died, he had been in Australia on a research trip, leading an international team of scientists. After wildfires had devastated large swathes of forest, he and his colleagues wanted to understand whether trees that had endured drought or extreme heat in the past, or trees with ancestors that might have coped with similar traumas, responded to the present fires any differently to others.

They had carried out numerous experiments on perennial plants in ash-rich soil but were focusing primarily on the common species Eucalyptus grandis. 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?

He called Defne, excited to share his findings, but he was not able to reach her. He phoned again later in the day, and then he tried both the landline and Ada’s mobile, but each time there was no answer.

He couldn’t sleep that night, a tightness in his chest as if a serpent had wound its coils around him. At three in the morning the phone by his bed began to ring. Ada’s voice, almost unrecognizable, her gasps between words no less desperate than her sobs. Pushing its way through the heavy curtains, the neon sign outside his hotel room blinked orange and white, and back to pitch-black. In the bathroom as he washed his face, the eyes that stared at him from the mirror were those of a fearful stranger. Abandoning the experiment and the team, he took a cab to the airport and returned to London on the first flight.