Shounak Reza

In my early 20s, I moved to New York and started going to a commuter college. I lived far from campus, so in order to get to school, I had to take a bus and then the subway, adding up to an hour of commute each way. My classmates all commuted from various parts of the city; some of them ran to work right after classes. Having been surrounded by friends all my life and not yet knowing how to enjoy my own company, I felt extremely lonely.

The people we meet in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees (Viking, 2021) are haunted by terrible tragedies from several years past, by a beautiful island divided into two.

I have evaded wreaths of venomous, moving flowers that have invaded the dilapidated manor, writhing and sliding up and down the walls like snakes, ready to strike any moment. I had to tread carefully down the corridors, staying as far away from the walls as possible.

Even though we moved out of our grandmother’s house in Dhaka more than a decade ago, my sister and I still associate the word “storm” with the smell of the unripe mangoes that the kalboishakhi would force down from the trees in her backyard. There are many other quirks we share, things that might seem insignificant to someone who was not a part of our lives back then. But to us, the house with its long corridors and leafy backyard, and a front yard that turned into a badminton court each winter, is nothing short of a wonderland, a place that nurtured us even as it introduced us to the harsher realities of life, a place that remains a living, breathing character in the many dreams and nightmares that we have.

“She is a feminist – a man hater,” an acquaintance says while talking about a certain person.

Knowingly or unknowingly, men enjoy these privileges in every sphere of life.

Why is it that there is a kind of hypocrisy among people when it comes to women smoking?

“If there is a women’s day, why can’t there be a men’s day as well?”