Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences (PJSS)

Vol. 43, No. 2 (2023), pp. 203-215

Un-burying the Buried: Exploring Silence and Generational

Trauma in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees
Fariha Chaudhary
Assistant Professor, Department of English,
Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan
Email: [email protected]

Aneeqa Munawar
PhD Scholar, Department of English,
Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan

Abstract:
The paper aims at examining the interplay of silence and
intergenerational trauma and its effects in Elif Shafak’s latest novel,
The Island of Missing Trees (2021). It yearns to demonstrate the fact
that personal tragedy developing into collective tragedy is not limited
to one generation, rather passes to the next manifesting into many
subtle and obvious ramifications. Therefore, Intergenerational trauma
and silence as a strategy forms the theoretical underpinnings of the
study. The Greek-Turk enmity and the consequent division of the Island
in1947, forces the young couple, the Greek Kostas and Turk Dafne, to
flee to London. The horrors of division coupled with personal and
collective suffering is indescribable as both Dafne and Kostas seek
solace, comfort and escape in silence. However, as the study will
demonstrate, this silence along with integrational trauma seeps into
their daughter, haunting her present. The study significantly points to
silence as multifaceted strategy of survival which seems to cause more
harm than escape in the long run. It is only through breaking her
silence that Ada, the couple’s daughter, comes to terms with herself
and accepts her identity.

Keywords: Silence, Trauma, War Narratives, Migration, Displacement.

I. Introduction
“It makes you crazy, for something you know to be true, know from the
very core or root of you, to remain unspeakable.” –Mark Doty

WWII and the Holocaust made human beings conscious of the significance of
cultural and collective trauma. Dealing with and recovering from pain has been a subject
proper in psychological studies. However, as literature and other art forms reflect various
social and cultural realities, modern literature also abounds with themes of trauma. Since
Cathy Caruth’s ground breaking work (1991; 1996), trauma studies have gained
importance in the current landscape of humanities and cultural studies. The first instances
of transgenerational trauma were noted in the children of Jewish Holocaust survivors
(Sigal & Weinfeld, 1989; Adelman, 1995; Fossion et al., 2003; Alford, 2019). Kahane-
Nissenbaum (2011) has studied the effects of trauma in the third generation of Holocaust
survivors. Since then, intergenerational trauma and transgenerational trauma are being

Date of Acceptance and Available Online: 20 June, 2023

204 Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 2

studied in its various forms, e.g., refugee trauma (Sangalang & Vang, 2017), post-slavery
traumatic stress disorder in African-Americans (Hicks, 2015; Broussard, 2013) and
victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery (Evans et al. 2022), genocide
trauma (Schaal & Elbert, 2006), war trauma (Somasundaram & Sivayokan, 1994), and
domestic violence trauma (Johnson & Benight, 2003).

Fiction writers are actively exploring the inherent complexity and multifaceted
nuances of trauma as it shapes the lives of many characters. Elif Shafak, a renowned
Turkish-British writer, with twelve novels and six non-fictional works keenly explores
the idea of trauma through displacement, migration, domestic violence and racism. Her
novel, The Island of Missing Trees (henceforth referred as TIMT) is her most recent work
of fiction, dealing with the lives of a Cypriot diaspora couple and their daughter. The plot
of the novel is divided between the postcolonial Cyprus of the 1970s civil war, post-
division Cyprus of the 2000s, and London in 2020. The main protagonists of the novel
are Defne and Kostas. They meet clandestinely in a tavern named ‘The Happy Fig’,
named after a flourishing fig tree standing tall in the travel. Their union is highly unlikely
as Defne is Turk while Kostas is Greek. In an environment of mutual rivalry between
both nationalities, their love is forbidden. The story is told alternatively in third-person
narration and first-person narration by the fig tree. The tree serves as a meeting point
between the human and the natural world. The novel actively explores the effect of social
and political crises on people and their children. The ravages of war at home, existential
problems of diaspora and their inability to belong in the adopted country is also a theme.
This study therefore, will aim at unpacking the transmission of trauma from a war-torn
generation to the next generations as well as to see the use of silence in relation to post-
trauma experience.

As the novel revolves around the Turkish invasion leading to the partition of the
island, drawing a historical background of the event is necessary. Its history has been rife
with colonisation and exploitation. The colonial legacies inherited by Cyprus made its
existence very challenging. There was excessive mistrust and rivalry between the Greek
Cypriot population and the Turk Cypriot population, with the latter wishing the island to
be ceded to Greece–forming Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston, EOKA, or National
Organisation of Cypriot Fighters, (Crawshaw, 1978)–and the latter wanting partition of
the island between Greek and Turkey–forming Turkish Resistance Organisation, TMT,
Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı (Isachenko, 2012). A radical leftist group had also taken shape
over the years. Meanwhile, the British hastily left the island in 1960, Cyprus was declared
a republic. All sides were actively striving to achieve their goals. Intercommunal hatred
flared up leading to unrest, riots, and violence (Ker-Lindsay, 2011; Varnava, 2019).

Foreign powers also partook in shaping the turbulent history of the island
(Hitchens, 2012) deciding to form the Green Line that divided the island in 1964. In
1974, after a coup sponsored by the Greek junta, Turkish forces invaded Cyprus
occupying the northern part of the island (Dodd, 2010; Borowiec, 2000; Asmussen,
2020). In these decades of bloodshed and violence, millions were dislocated and
disinherited from their land with violent memories that transformed their identities and
ideologies regarding the future.
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A. Trauma and Silence: Literary and Philosophical Theoretical underpinnings
Trauma can be defined as a state of distress and powerlessness resulting from
the individual’s experiences and subjugation to external atrocities or natural disaster
(Herman, 2015) or from “war, residential schooling, oppression and racism, natural
disasters and other events” (O'Neill et al., 2016). Caruth offers a general definition of
trauma as, “an overwhelming experience of sudden, or catastrophic events, in which the
response to the event occurs in the often delayed, and uncontrolled repetitive occurrence
of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena” (p. 181). Levine (2006) defines trauma
as the “antithesis of empowerment” (p. 4), while Herman (2015) has associated trauma
with terror and has called psychological trauma, “an affliction of the powerless” (p. 33)
resulting in loss of control, connection, and meaning. She has cited the common effects of
trauma from the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry as experiencing “intense fear,
helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation” (ibid.). The threat of annihilation
can cause certain reactions in the individual's body and mind, for instance, changes in the
person's arousal, attention, perception, cognition, memory, and emotion. These
manifestations can arise even when there is no clear memory of the event or when there is
no immediate threat to the individual. Hence, the individual can find herself/himself in,
“a constant state of vigilance and irritability” (34). The long-term effects can be,
“attachment disruption and resulting coping adaptations” (O Neill et al., 2016, p. 173).
The central dialectic of trauma is the conflict between denial and acceptance of traumatic
events (Herman, 2015).

Danieli (1998) has identified three main repositories of collective trauma: the
cultural, communal, and familial (cited in Tcholakian et al., 2019). Commenting on the
historical and collective nature of trauma, Cathy Caruth says that, “history, like trauma, is
never simply one's own” (Caruth, 1991, p. 192). The contagious nature of trauma has
been asserted by psychotherapists. The term intergenerational trauma refers to the
possibility of trauma to be passed down from one generation to another. This trauma can
have psychological as well as physiological manifestations. It has been established that
the effect of trauma can be transcribed on genes leading to alterations in an individual’s
genetic makeup (Erdelyi, 2022). In their research on genetic transformations occurring
due to stress, Stenz et al. (2018) note that intergenerational trauma and transgenerational
trauma are related but distinct terms. Several psychological, behavioural, and social
changes in the offspring can result when the mother receives traumatic stress during
pregnancy. When the epigenetic changes in DNA resulting from traumatic experiences
sequences are transmitted from the generation directly affected by trauma (named F0) to
the first filial generation (named F1), it is intergenerational trauma. When F1 transmits
the effects to the subsequent progeny (F2 or later), it is called transgenerational trauma.

O'Neill et al.’s (2016) research on indigenous families in Canada found breaking

silences as a healing mechanism to break the pattern of historical trauma and suffering.
They have cited several studies revealing silence and isolation to be a chief result of
trauma. As trauma shatters a person's self-esteem and positive assumptions about the self,
the victim faces trust issues with other people and loses self-confidence. After
interviewing Holocaust survivors and their families, Danieli (1982; 1984) in his study on
the “conspiracy of silence” concluded that the survivors chose to maintain silent because
they received no understanding of their suffering either from people or therapists. The
silence is then transmitted and becomes a collective strategy. It is also referred to as
“intergenerational conspiracy of silence” (Nagata & Cheng, 2003). The silence and
206 Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 2

secretiveness surrounding trauma does not prevent it from being passed on (Byers &
Gere, 2007) rather served as “the most prevalent and effective mechanism for the
transmission of trauma on all dimensions” (Danieli, 1998, p. 66). The silence, although a
defence mechanism to prevent complete breakdown and collapse, is harmful and
destructive for the individual, the family, and the society at large because it is indicative
of the society's inability to integrate trauma in its common narrative. The survivors are
left without a vocabulary to narrate their suffering and the ability to cope with it. (ibid.)

Phillips (2015) has noted that violent traumas can silence us, “existentially,
neuropsychologically, psychologically, developmentally, interpersonally, and culturally”
(p. 70). The silence, however, is far from being effective in coping from trauma. It rather
intensifies the trauma and is harmful because it prevents the victim from achieving
“safety, remembering, grieving and connection” crucial for healing (p. 65). In one way or
the other, this “unspoken, unwitnessed and unclaimed trauma from violence 'outs itself' as
violence to self or others” (p. 66). and haunts the survivor (Caruth, 1996, cited in ibid.).
The study has shown using empirical evidence that violence begets trauma and trauma
begets more violence, causing a tragic “vicious cycle” (p. 66). The path to healing will
begin with shattering the silence and giving voice to the sorrow, mutual sharing,
community, and care. According to Sontag, “silence is not exclusively a choice, it is
dimension of language-whether that language is speech, dance or painting-that the artist
has to confront or acknowledge. In that confrontation, and only in its acknowledgment,
can silence take on the quality of dissonance” (pg. 84)

II. Literature Review

The current age is rife with various geographical, social, and political conflicts.
Resultantly, trauma and psychological damage resulting from such conflicts has become
an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Trauma and narration of traumatic experiences
have become a potent presence in modern and postmodern fiction. As the world is seeing
more conflicts in different parts of the world, more fiction dealing with the effects of war,
slavery, and other forms of domestic and social violence on individual and collective
mental health is emerging. Various forms and genres of literature have been employed to
represent the survivors’ testimonies and memories. However, not only literature, but also
painting, film, and other art forms have been created in response to and as representation
of traumatic experience (Stahl & Williams, 2010).

This section summarises a few notable works done in the perspective of

transgenerational trauma and the importance of breaking silence and paving way to
recovery. As the setting of Shafak’s novel is a conflict-afflicted island, Zackheos’s (2011)
study of trauma in island literature can be cited in connection with it. Using Cyprus,
Puerto Rico, and Sri Lanka as examples, the study has investigated the trends in
representations of the islands’ conflicted histories and their rejection of ideologies
hindering their recovery. The ideologies are related to nationalism, the construction of
idealised island space, and the monumentalising of trauma. Similarly, Rendell’s (2017)
study explores testimonies of the aborigines to explore patterns of colonial violence and
the resulting trauma Randolph Stow’s 1958 account titled of his visit to Forrest River in
western Australia, titled To the Islands. However, this study takes a verbatim account of
the massacre included by Stowe in the novel and pinpoints the moments of slippage in the
highlighting of colonial violence in the novel. In the same vein, Ciocia (2018) discusses
the psychopathological nature of the geographies of an island in trapping the inhabitants
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in its atrocious histories. The cycle of violence repeats itself, thereby condemning the
islanders to perpetual trauma. This idea is contrasted with the idea of personal
responsibility in confronting age-old patterns of persecution and dogma.

Various works of fiction have appeared in relation to Cyprus's war-torn history.

Chatzianastasi's (2019) study on Ira Genakritou’s Beyond the Barbed Wire explores the
effects of borders and barbed wires on children as represented in the juvenile fiction by
Cypriot writers. The Green Line dividing the island left people torn by the dilemma of
staying put and avoiding dislocation or leave and suffer from all the predicaments
attending homelessness and diaspora. Those who chose to stay put were condemned to
living in enclaves. The children's literature emerging is rich in images of barbed wires.
The literature deals with themes of invasion and its sub-themes, "the coup, the invasion
and war, division, occupation, refugees, the enclaved, the missing and dead,
unemployment and economic migration, destruction of cultural heritage, and the need for
peaceful coexistence" (p. 178). In a study on Andrea Busfield's novel, Aphrodite's War,
(2017) Žindžiuvienė studies collective representation of trauma memory and the narrative
style of the novel. This novel also uses post memory as a motif, using the refrain "we do
not forget", the collective noun highlighting the collective nature of trauma. Apart from
literature, paintings and other art forms have been produced in the wake of the Cyprus
partition, on which Antoniou and Danos (2014) have conducted a study. Their work
studies the modernisation of Greek-Cypriot art, their representation and processing of
post-traumatic memory without overtly claiming to be about trauma. Drawing on Cathy
Caruth's on memory and trauma and Deleuze's work on affect, they explain how memory
of violent events become part of the collective subconscious and is manifested as
sensation through the figural and the abstract.

On the subject of art and intergenerational trauma, Waterman (2015) presents a

unique take on Sorayya Khan's novel Noor. The novel is written in the backdrop of the
1971 cyclone and war in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. He argues that the protagonist
Noor is a translator or "the passeur" of trauma from one form to another. Noor is
possessed by an uncanny insight into the individual and collective psyche of her mother's
generation. This clairvoyant perception combined with her artistic talent produces works
that retrieve memories of familial tragedies and bring them to the surface of
consciousness. It allows her family to confront and narrate their experiences. Their
corrosive effect is subdued by the intervention of art. Trauma in the novel is translated
into the medium of art across a generation.

The literature of South Asia abounds with themes of trauma in face of natural
and man-made calamities, disasters, and crises. Starting from the British partition of the
Subcontinent, a plethora of fiction has been produced that narrates personal and social
tragedies arising from this great divide. Saint (2019) traces the development of partition
narratives through time by delving into the writing of many notable writers, including
Khushwant Singh, Saadat Hassan Manto, Balachandra Rajan, Attia Hosain, Abdullah
Hussein, Rahi Masoom Raza, and Anita Desai. The early writings show a pervasive lack
of suitable language for the expression of the pain. Words and expressions were
borrowed from other situations and the metaphor of madness was extensively used. The
second generation of writers, however, deals with the memories of partition, seeking to
fill in the holes to create a collective memory. Kabir (2005) points out in her work on
Bapsi Sidhwa and Krishna how such incidents demand both remembrance and forgetting
208 Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 2

from their survivors, and the author's duty of having to negotiate between "traumatic
recall and narrative commemoration" (p. 178). These works suggest the conflicting need
to forget the agony following violence, and later the personal and collective need to
remember in order to commemorate those who lost their lives. Heriyati et.all (2020) in
their paper, ‘Speaking Through Silence: Trauma in Literary Work’ explores Kuswantin’s
Lasmi which centres on the female protagonist of the same name whose experience of
trauma are muted and narrated by Tikno, her husband. His selective narration highlights
the complexity inherent in narrating trauma as, “not all voices can be represented because
voicing some aspects might result in silencing other things” (pg. 169). Khan et.all (2022)
in their study based on Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden explore the relationship
between trauma and identity by analysing the how deeply traumatic experiences effect
and transform the lives of the characters in the novel. The study significantly illustrates
the recurring nature of traumatic experience that continues to haunt the main characters of
the novel, Rohan and Naheed thus forcing them to hallucinate between past and present.

III. Discussion
The novel overtly discusses the effects of war, dislocation and migration on the
people living in war-zones. It makes frequent references to the inheritability of parents'
pain to their children, and many subsequent generations.

If families resemble trees … family traumas are like thick, translucent resin
dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations. They ooze down slowly, a
flow so slight as to be imperceptible, moving across time and space, until they find a
crack in which to settle and coagulate. The path of an inherited trauma is random; you
never know who might get it, but someone will…. Sometimes family trauma skips a
generation altogether and redoubles its hold on the following one. You may encounter
grandchildren who silently shoulder the hurts and sufferings of their grandparents. (TIMT,
p.121)

The story explores the continuity of tradition, pain, and familial stories through
generations, and the need to break away from persistent age-old traumas in order to grow
and make one's place in the world. The novel also emphasises, “the redemptive power of
stories” (Ünlüönen, 2021) to combat the coercive forces that silence survivors and
victims of injustice and violence. The silence is adopted on Defne’s volition, who thinks
that the pain and suffering had better be suppressed and not passed down to the children.
Despite these measures to save children from the parents’ pain, they inadvertently
transfer their predicament to the children. She had observed the importance of silence as
during the partition riots people on both sides of the Island suffered yet were silent as,
“people on both sides would hate it if you said that aloud” (TIMT, P.112). This silence is
kind of denial signifying terror, helplessness and pity that the people experienced.

A Migration and Displacement: Kostas

Kostas’s character is that of a quiet, introverted and tender-hearted man. From
early childhood we see him crying over cooking, birds and lamenting the ravaging of
trees. He sees the natural and human world as a whole, their lives as inorganically linked
with each other. The Fig Tree is a representative and spokesperson for Kostas’s soul. She
(it is a female, Kostas asserts) experiences the pain of both Defne and Kostas. It sees the
island battered by violence and also suffers the trauma of displacement when it migrates
to London with Kostas. It speaks of that which the characters find difficult to express or
 209
have wilfully suppressed. It is uprooted from its home soil because its trunk is infested
with disease. To prevent its certain death, Kostas cuts its branch and plants it in his
London home. This relocation, however, does not sit so well with the tree. It grows
melancholy over the years, carrying with it, “the shadow of another land” (TIMT, p.174).
The cold, alien environment is in stark contrast to the warm, tropical air of its homeland.
It will take seven years for it to bring forth fruit. Even then it will be unable to completely
acclimatise to the London air and has to be buried underground during harsh winters.

That is what migrations and relocations do to us: when you leave your home for
unknown shores, you don’t simply carry on as before; a part of you dies inside so that
another part can start all over again”, the Tree says, speaking wistfully of home (TIMT,
p.54).

Kostas undergoes the same when he is forced to leave Cyprus and immigrate to
London. In the beginning, he is in constant anxiety about the country because the
situation has worsened since his departure. He tries to drown his worries in ceaseless
work and reading about trees. Listening to news of bloodshed and violent clashes at home
and being away from home increases his consternation. His character can be likened to
the image of millions of migrating butterflies passing through Cyprus, a mass of colourful
splendour, “trying to take off into the air and flutter freely across the Mediterranean, but
weighed down, each time, by its wings encased in broken bones” (TIMT, p.203).

Kostas’s trauma lies in his abandonment of the island and Defne at the most
critical moment of her life. His elder brother was a radical revolutionary, opposing both
Greek and Turk elites, believing that it is they who are the real enemy. He was killed by
EOKA for betraying their cause. The younger brother, upset by the brother's murder,
leaves home and joins the nationalist party. As Kostas is the only remaining son of his
mother, she becomes fearful of his safety when tensions escalate in the summer and sends
him to her brother in London. Hopeful of returning within a week or two, Kostas leaves,
not knowing that his stay will be prolonged indefinitely. Like the island itself, Defne and
Kostas are torn apart.

Kostas is unaware that when he left, Defne was pregnant with their child. He
only finds it out later from a fellow refugee from Cyprus. Defne points out that those who
left and those who stayed can never be the same. She says that, “a chasm opens between
those who go away and those who stay”, to which Kostas replies, “The ones who stayed
dealt with the wounds and then the scars, and that must be extremely painful, but for us
… we never have a chance to heal, the wounds always remain open” (TIMT, PP.206-
207). Kostas tries to assert here that the migrants receive no sense of closure for their
separation from the homeland and their loved ones and not being able to help them in
their suffering. Their different experiences have shaped their destinies, their
consciousness is on different planes.

B Violence and Silence: Defne

When she is young, Dafne is shown as an independent, assertive, headstrong,
and courageous girl. She does not want to be dominated by anyone. Her free-spiritedness
can be exemplified by her defying the family rules and cultural and traditional values by
being in love and that with a Greek boy. She is a year older than Kostas and likes to
maintain her individuality. On their first clandestine meeting, she refuses to take Kostas's
210 Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 2

coat despite cold. These traits are carried into her personality even in later life, but with
certain modifications. Her independent and strong personality is shattered by the tragedy
around her. The last straw is the episode in the tavern when Yousuf and Yiorgos are
forcefully taken to an unknown place. She regrets not having gone out and helped them.
There is the personal pain of losing her lover, having a child and seeing him die,
estrangement of her family for having a child out of wedlock, and then the collective
tragedy of her island suffering as a whole. Experiences of death and violence have lent a
grief to her strength. She channels her grief into social work for the islanders. Digging up
mass graves and finding the identities of the dead gives her solace. Her trauma is
assuaged by listening to others like her.

Defne's case is suppression of trauma. Her strength of character prevents her

from accepting and acknowledging the intensity of her pain. She openly acknowledges
the need to be open about trauma in order to heal, yet she masks it in an aura of rage and
hardness, while inside she is breaking continually. Her repeated refusal to talk about her
dead child to Kostas and the episode with the clairvoyant are suggestive of her rising
reserve in relation to her loss and trauma. Her trauma is augmented when she leaves
Cyprus for London, accompanying Kostas. She meets Cypriot immigrants there in order
to learn their stories and form a community with them, only to be shockingly rebuffed.
She realises that collective traumas never leave a family. “How strange that in families
scarred by wars, forced displacements and acts of brutality, it was the youngest who
seemed to have the oldest memory” (TIMT, p.289). Despite Kostas’s disapproval, she
resolves never to discuss the past with her daughter.

Defne’s alcoholism in later part of her life is an indication of her worsening

mental condition. She had taken to smoking and drinking when in Cyprus and quit during
pregnancy. Her married and professional lives are as good as she could want. Kostas’s
utmost efforts to keep her afloat fail as she drowns in the dark waters of her sorrow.
Demons from her past keep haunting her and she succumbs to them. She tells Kostas that,
“people from troubled islands can never be normal”. No matter how much progress they
make in life, the ground that feels rock hard to others is choppy waters for [their] kind”
(TIMT, p.64). It is her drinking that claims her life in the end. This leaves a lasting scar
on Ada’s mind.

C. Transgenerational Trauma, Loss, and Post-traumatic Growth: Ada

Although much of the novel tells us the story of Defne and Kostas in the 1970s,
it is Ada in whose hands the strings of the future are. Ada in Turkish means island. The
choice of the name indicates the couple's attachment to their homeland. When she carries
the name to which they are inextricably bound and yet which is reminiscent of the pain
and suffering, she is also bound to the spirit connecting it to her parents. When they fly
from Cyprus to England, they bring with them small parts of the island, the branches of
the withering fig tree and their daughter already conceived, both planted in the strange
soil, both carrying with them the “curse of memory” (TIMT, p. 31). In Ada, it is latent,
inscribed on her genes or unconsciously transferred from her mother as a contagion.
Shafak makes it clear in the beginning that she has inherited the melancholy of her
mother, which she strove so hard to keep from Ada. This unbidden and unexplained
sorrow sometimes makes her wonder if she is carrying the sadness of someone else
within her. “So many times, in the past she had suspected that she carried within a
sadness that was not quite her own” (TIMT, p. 171).
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Ada’s ethnic background creates a barrier between her and her classmates. The
troubles of teenagers any young person can face is magnified by her strange background
and her ability to empathise with people. She is acutely aware of sadness in the air and,
“could smell [it] the way one animal could smell another of its kind” (TIMT, p.11). A
possible explanation for this sensitivity is that she developed it at an early age by seeing
her mother quietly suffering. However, it is implied in the phrase “another of its kind”
that it is her own sadness that recognises its kin. An additional scar that she bears is of her
mother’s death. Already a reserved person, the death has made her draw inwards. She
was aware of her mother’s drinking habit and being in the dark about Dafne’s past, she
considers Dafne’s death a betrayal. It makes her question her mother’s love for her.

This feeling of alienation, nostalgia for a home she has never seen, can be the
foundation of a strong life. Shafak seems to endorse the famous adage “what doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger”. In the same vein, Kostas tells Ada that saplings possess “some
kind of ‘stored memory’, like they know about the traumas their ancestors have gone
through. That’s a good thing because the saplings can adjust themselves better” (TIMT,
p.162). The Fig tells us the rings of a tree’s bark reveal not only its age but also the
shocks it has endured, the fires it has survived. Each circle on the bark is “an unhealed
scar” (TIMT, p.43). Psychologists have found empirical evidence for it and termed this
concept as post traumatic growth. Tedeschi (1998; 2004), who coined the term after his
experiments with trauma survivors, describes it as growth and positive psychological
effects resulting from encounters with highly challenging events in life. In such cases,
trauma can be a highly fertile ground for personal growth and gives one a fresh lens to
view life. Though Ada never experienced traumatic events herself, her knowledge of her
family's history gives a new meaning to her life. The past has been concealed from her
and the revelation of her parents’ silent suffering gives her courage to face challenges in
her own life.

D. Representation of Silence in the Novel

The novel presents a multifaceted representation of silence. Ada is aware of the
conscious silence adopted as a shield to protect her from the traumatic past. This
conscious ‘absenting’ of the past only works to make Ada more aware of its presence.
When she confronts her Aunt Mariam regarding the missing pieces of her parents’ life,
the silences carefully maintained over the years and only occasionally broken by her
drunken mother, her aunt quotes a famous cultural saying, “Keep your tongue in your
mouth as a prisoner. Wisdom consists of ten parts: nine parts of silence, one part of
words” (TIMT, pg.115). Here, silence is presented in the novel, as a shield from the
possible harm, both psychological and emotional, it may cause Ada on learning the illicit
love affair of her parents, the death of her unborn sibling, the separation, pain, misery and
trauma both Dafne and Kostas had to go through before they were able to finally marry
and move to London. The difficulty inherent in explaining the long-gone scenarios can be
understood from the following quote of the novel, “There is then in words a residue of
silence: somethings always remain to be said” (TIMT, pg. 76). This indicates that whilst
breaking the silence, especially in relation to trauma, is important to move on yet the
question arises can the silence be broken completely? The silence that Ada grew up with
continued to traumatise her both consciously and unconsciously. At the beginning of the
novel during a class room discussion Ada is asked to contribute her view regarding
family traditions and memories. Ada’s lack of knowledge about her family background
and history makes it difficult for her to respond. Consequently, the humiliation of being
212 Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 2

exposed before the class results in Ada’s most strange reaction of screaming at the top of
her lungs while the teacher and the students watch in amazement and horror. This scream
appears to be a symbolic verbalisation of repressed trauma, the silences maintained and
the family secrets carefully guarded from her. Ada feels excluded both from the family
history and traditions as well the British society she is growing up in. This
marginalisation and exclusion stems from the fact that she is unable to relate with her
past, her mother and father’s homeland due to lack of any narrative. Her parents never
spoke to her about the Island they belonged to. The silence surrounding her history and
roots augments and hurls her into an identity crisis and she uses a scream to let out the
silences that were unbearable for her to contain any longer.

The surprise visit of her aunt, Meriam (mother’s sister) and her discussions with
Ada regarding her mother and her life finally works to reconnect Ada with her parents’
past. Her aunt serves the role of a surrogate mother who heals Ada by ‘speaking’,
narrating, introducing, explaining and thereby slowly filling in the holes left in the fabric
of Ada’s life. She is able to move on with her life and breaking the silence regarding her
past enables her to connect with the present.

IV. Conclusion
Trauma caused by war, migration and exile leaves indelible marks oh human
souls and mind. Consequently, individual, collective, cultural and familial silence is often
taken as a strategy of survival. Both Defne and Kostas experience personal as well as
collective silencing of the painful experiences as a way to cope, forget and move on in
their lives. Ironically, trauma is able to seep into the next generation, as Ada feels
traumatised by the unexplained silences around her family history. It is only through
breaking the silence that she is able to lessen the effect and feeling of trauma and
reconnect with the past as well the present.

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