You describe your rubber tree as the protagonist of your piece. Could you tell us more about how you’ve come to see this plant as a central character in the life of your family?

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It would be too much to say that the rubber tree is a central character in the life of my family. My grandfather certainly was. The tree has somehow acquired his centrality, mostly due to distance – the distance that comes between the living and the dead. There is solace in caring for this living being, for whom he also had cared. It is, in a way, continuing his legacy. The rubber tree is a generous collaborator in this effort. He reciprocates love and care.​

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That’s also why I use ‘he/him’ pronouns for the plant in the story: not because I am assigning a gender (and, in Turkish, pronouns are not gendered), but to imply personhood in English.​​

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In what ways do the characteristics of the rubber tree represent or help to carry the legacy of your grandfather?

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My grandpa’s rubber tree is a person, though not in the way we typically think of people. It is a plant-person, with its own vegetal needs and preferences. For me, it also embodies my grandfather – not just as a memento, but as a living, breathing being that carries his legacy, continues his journey, and roots itself in different soils. My grandpa was the humblest person I’ve ever known. He owned very few possessions and, as far as I know, had no desire for more. He seemed content. The easy-going, carefree nature of the rubber tree reminds me so much of him. Furthermore, the plant’s mobile trajectory mirrors my grandpa’s migration history and helps me with my own process of rooting in Germany. It reaffirms what my research participants often tell me: one can also root with someone else’s roots.

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Your essay appears in the Homeliness issue of Otherwise. Can you speak to the significance of caring for plants in the process of building a home, particularly in the context of migration?

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This has been the focus of my research with Turkish and Kurdish migrants in Berlin over the past three years. Plants play a variety of roles in the process of migrant home-making: some become companions in navigating the challenges of displacement and settling into a new place, while others serve as mementos of past lives. Some plants act as living connections to other people, and, crucially, they provide a language through which migrants can make sense of their situation. People often ‘plantify’ themselves when describing their experiences of moving, suffering, and trying to create new lives – or struggling to do so. With living, photosynthesizing plants to observe closely, these metaphors become even more poignant and precise.

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Can you tell us about your decision to share this story and the process of recapturing the trials and tribulations of growing your grandfather’s plant in writing?

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This is an ode to a beloved human and a beloved plant, but I believe it’s not a singular story. In the accounts of my research participants, I’ve heard many echoes of such connections, as well as the painful failures in nurturing a plant to thrive. By focusing on a story I can narrate in detail, I also aim to honour the stories I know only in fragments.

 

 

How does your journey with this rubber tree speak to the possibility of an Otherwise?

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My journey with the rubber tree opens up the possibility of an Otherwise by challenging the idea that personhood belongs solely to humans. This should be seen as a very mundane point. Anyone who has a substantial relationship with an animal or a plant would tell you that. Yet then our grasp of this rather obvious fact and our tools for its articulation are very limited in social sciences. There is a huge, and often justified, fear about anthropomorphising, but the real issue lies in human exceptionalism and our understanding of personhood as a bubble with very clear, impenetrable boundaries. In contrast, my grandpa’s rubber tree is a multitude – a person beyond the biological, a plant that holds the essence of a beloved human. Together, they are a person in multiple forms, just as all persons truly are.