How is war portrayed throughout the book?

War is portrayed in The Island of Missing Trees, as thrilling and intense. Page 154 is an excellent, specific portrayal of how war is portrayed throughout the book. "The soldier, weary and bedraggled, were patrolling the coast one afternoon,". "They didn't have much food left, they didn't have enough ammunition, and the further they trudged, the deeper the ground beneath their soaked and split boots sucked them in, like quicksand," (Shafak, 154).

What did war look like?

Ada's mother describes war from a soldier's perspective, "After a while one of them noticed an extraordinatry sight on the horizon: billows of smoke were drifting over the channel, of a colour so bright it seemed unearthly," (Shafak, p154). This image of war affected soldiers who saw it, ",their faces etched at first with surprise...The mysterious cloud could only be some type of poison gas, a chemical weapon, and urged on by the wind, it was swelling straight towards them," (Shafak, p 154).

How did this impact Kostas & Defne?

The island is split by the Turkish military invasion. Kostas and Defne were separated, as Kostas is sent to England and Defne was left behind to watch their hometown burn.

How can we relate this war that was occuring to modern day?

In the modern world, there are two most recent wars that come to mind that have affected hundreds of thousands of people. The Gaza-Israel war and the Russa-Ukranian war. I remember watching the news and seeing that Ukranian families had to separate across borders as parents would send their children to Poland and other countries for safety, then follow them later. It is immensely saddening that to this day, fighting and violence in politics causes innocent people to be affected.

Were there any casualties?

Yes, most notably, Yusuf Yiorgos Robinson. There were also many in The Island of Missing Trees that came from mosquitoes, until, as Shafak writes, a Scotish Doctor named Ronald Ross invented a pesticide, called DDT, to help keep humans malaria-free.

Could this have been prevented to make them stay in Cyprus?

Eventually, they might have been separated because of the family's disproval of a muslim-christian marriage.