The Taste of Absence

The region of Afrin, Syria, has long been famous for its olive trees. In 2018, violent conflict displaced a large part of the Kurdish population, thus disrupting the intimate bonds that connected people and trees. Through a focus on refugees from Afrin who now live in Germany, the article traces how humans strive to reconnect with the trees they left behind through three distinct modalities, namely remembering, consuming their produce, and continuing to care through ‘remote farming’. Time impacts these shifting interspecies relations, changing the rhythms that intertwine human and arboreal biographies. As the physical separation between people and their trees continues, practices of remote care and cultivation gradually lose their significance, while consumption becomes more prominent. This may, in turn, shape potential multispecies futures.