10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

“Time became fluid, a fast flow of recollections seeping into one another, the past and the present inseparable.”

Time and memory are motifs within the novel that help the author explore the way that different events in our lives shape us as people. By depicting time as something that is inseparable, the author further implies that people are who they are in the present because of their pasts.

“She would have to marry again—but there was no guarantee that her next marriage would be any happier or a new husband more to her liking, and who would have her anyway, a divorcee, a used woman?”

One of the themes that the author explores in this novel is the concept of gendered expectations. As Bennaz contemplates what would happen to her if her husband divorced her for not giving him a son, she depicts to the reader what her role as a woman is defined within this society. Women should not be unmarried, so she would have to marry a stranger regardless of her affection for him. She would also be seen as a “used woman”; the word “used” in this context displays the objectification of women within society.

“Everything new and interesting was in Istanbul, the child felt with a twinge of envy—a city of wonders and curiosities. One day she would go there, she told herself—a self-made promise she kept hidden from everyone, the way an oyster conceals the pear at its heart.”

As a child, Leila is fascinated with Istanbul as a land of new and interesting things. Her desire to go to Istanbul being a “hidden” promise foreshadows her eventual choice to run away to Istanbul in secret. The underwater imagery of the oyster and the pearl also foreshadows Leila’s soul’s final resting place.

“With heady perfumes and shiny trinkets, the Devil seduced women first, weak and emotional as they were, and then, through the women, he lured the men into his trap.”

The novel discusses themes of gendered expectations and discrimination and Violence Against Women within Turkish culture. The quote uses imagery to emphasize the way that women are viewed as being “weak and emotional” and easily led astray by material items. It also highlights the way that women are blamed for the transgressions of men, as they are responsible for “luring” them into making poor decisions.

“Just as the sour could hide beneath the sweet, or vice versa, within every sane mind there was a trace of insanity, and within the depths of madness glimmered a seed of lucidity.”

Dualities and multiplicity are motifs within the novel that help the author to show the similarities between different groups of people. As Leila eats the lemon sugar waxing mixture, she realizes that her aunt, who had been written off as being mentally unstable, may be telling the truth about secretly being her real mother. She depicts the “sane” and “insane” minds as being almost parallel and unable to exist without some form of the opposite.

“[H]uman memory resembles a late night reveler who has had a few too many drinks: hard as it tries, it just cannot follow a straight line. It staggers through a maze of inversions, often moving in dizzying zigzags, immune to reason and liable to collapse altogether.”

An allegory is a symbolic fictional narrative that portrays an underlying meaning. In the quote above, Leila uses the allegorical story of an inebriated person that staggers as they walk to depict the way that memory seems to exist outside of time. The allegory uses vivid imagery to help the reader understand the underlying meaning that it is trying to convey.

“Leila’s room was on the second floor, the first on the right. ‘The best location in the house,’ everyone said. Not because it offered any luxuries or a view of the Bosphorus but because, if anything were to go wrong, she could easily be heard from downstairs.”

Throughout the novel, the author battles preconceived notions about the sex work industry to depict it as something that is often dangerous and exploitative. The quote functions to remind readers that despite the fact that Leila is one of Bitter Ma’s favorite girls, she is still susceptible to danger. The quote also foreshadows the later encounter that Leila has with a client who throws sulfuric acid on her in Part 1, Chapter 11.

“The circle, the shape of captivity for an old Yazidi man, but a symbol of freedom for a young American model, thus becomes a sad memory for a girl in an Eastern town.”

The author uses the motif of duality to portray the binary between traditional values and Western ideology that Leila finds herself stuck in the middle of. The circle symbolizes how this constant back and forth between ideologies is cyclical and never ending.

“What she failed to see earlier she saw now: the doors were padlocked, the windows sealed, and Istanbul was not a city of opportunities but a city of scars.”

As Leila realizes that she is being trafficked, she becomes disillusioned with the concept of Istanbul as a place of opportunities. She comes to understand it as a “city of scars,” meaning that it is a place in which people are harmed repeatedly, becoming figuratively scarred, and forced to adapt to the violence against them.

“The number of asylum seekers had increased daily over the years. Among them were students, professionals, artists, journalists, scholars…But the only Africans mentioned in the newspapers were those who, like her, had been trafficked.”

Throughout the novel, the idea of media representation of sex workers and immigrants is repeated several times. Jameelah points out the fact that despite many asylum seekers becoming successful in other parts of society, it is only those who have been trafficked and sexually exploited that receive media coverage; this paints an image that, in this society, people believe that asylum seekers only become sex workers because that is the only media that they are exposed to.

“Because she’s impatient, that one. She wants life to run fast. But she’s resilient too; she can guzzle the sour and the bitter, like downing tequila shots. I gave her that name.”

Leilas’s nickname, Tequila Leila, is given to her by the madame of the brothel she works in. She uses a metaphor to describe Leila’s resilience as being akin to easily swallowing tequila shots.

“Yet hope is a hazardous chemical capable of triggering a chain reaction in the human soul.”

Throughout the novel, the characters battle with coming to terms with the hopelessness of their own situations, feeling trapped in their various circumstances. Zaynab122 uses a metaphor to explain that hope is something that is dangerous and can lead to a “chain reaction” of different thoughts and desires within a person.

“[H]er home was not where she was born but where she chose to die.”

One of the central themes of the novel is the idea that family is not limited to blood relations. As Zaynab122 prepares to leave home, she realizes that the place that she calls home must be the place she chooses to live; this emphasizes the idea that the life we choose and the people we surround ourselves with can be our family and our home regardless of blood relation.

“D/Ali seemed to perceive the world through flavors and scents, even the abstract things in life, such as love and happiness. Over time it became a game they played together, our currency of their own; they took memories and moments, and converted them into tastes and smells.”

Dramatic irony occurs when the narrator reveals information to the reader that the characters are not aware of themselves. In this case, this quote describes how Leila and D/Ali play a game where they describe their memories as smells and tastes. This functions as dramatic irony because the reader knows that during Lila’s 10 minutes and 38 seconds of awareness after her death, each new memory begins with a smell or a flavor. This also demonstrates her continued connectedness to D/Ali.

“She had never told her friends this, not in so many words, but they were her safety net.”

Family and the idea that it can be more than defined by blood is a major theme throughout the novel. Leila’s friends act as her family, comforting her and offering her a sense of security that her relatives by blood could not. The use of the metaphor of the “safety net” emphasizes this by making readers picture someone falling and being caught safely within the net.

“In just a few months’ time, with no marker or stone, the woman’s grave would fully blend in with its surroundings. In less than a decade, no one would be able to locate her whereabouts. She would become yet another number in the Cemetery of the Companionless, yet another pitiable soul.”

The tone of Part 2, Chapter 1 is very clinical and detached; this is reflective of the setting, as the chapter takes place inside of a morgue. The apathetic description of Leila’s fate and the prediction of what will happen to her grave in the Cemetery of the Companionless reminds readers of society’s view that sex workers are lesser people.

“The friends of a streetwalker could only be other streetwalkers, people he would probably see here one day, lying on the same steel table.”

Social hierarchies, and the way they encourage damaging stereotypes, are a recurrent theme throughout the novel. In this quote, the mortician uses a derogatory term for sex workers and states that only other sex workers could be friends with each other. He also claims that they would likely share the same fate as Leila, displaying the severity to which sex workers face violence and discrimination in their everyday lives.

“All these Istanbuls lived and breathed inside one another, like matryoshka dolls that had come to life.”

Dualities and cognitive dissonance are motifs in this novel that help to highlight the fact that people have many things in common despite being from different social spheres. The quote personifies the city of Istanbul to show that every section of the city—the sex workers, the clients, the revolutionists, the wealthy, etc.—are all intimately a part of each other’s lives and are collectively what make up Istanbul.

“Their deaths shed light on the little known fact that the homicide rate for Istanbul’s sex workers is eighteen times higher than for other women.”

Violence against women is a theme discussed throughout the novel. In an article written after Leila’s death, it is revealed to readers that sex workers are facing disproportionate violence in Istanbul. The choice to include this statistic within an article provides the characters the opportunity to react to it, deepening the stakes for the characters within the novel and for sex workers in Istanbul in general.

“These murders were not randomly committed. One particular group, without exception, was targeted. All the victims were streetwalkers. Normal female citizens have no need to worry about their safety.”

In another article, a journalist uses harmful rhetoric to reinforce stereotypes and condemn sex workers as lesser people. By using the term “normal female citizens” as a way to purposely exclude sex workers and label them as “other,” the author displays the way that mainstream society has put women into a harmful hierarchy that places sex workers below other women.

“After each murder, they added another porcelain doll to their collection of angels. For that is what they did, he believed. They turned whores into angels.”

Leila’s murderers use the symbol of the angel to juxtapose against what they believe sex workers represent. The angel, symbolizing purity and chastity, functions in two ways. First, the angel represents the actual death of the sex workers; by killing them, the murderers believe they are turning them into angels through the act of sending them to heaven. Secondly, they believe that they are “cleansing” the sex workers of their perceived transgressions and purifying them by killing them.

“Truth could be corrosive, a mercurial liquor. It could eat holes in the bulwarks of daily life, destroying entire edifices.”

Secrets are a motif throughout the story that functions to emphasize the complexities of the human condition. In this quote, the truth is viewed as something that could be more harmful than good. Sabotage Sinan explains his reasoning for not telling Leila about his feelings through a metaphor that compares the truth to a corrosive liquid. He implies that the truth could have eaten away at his friendship with Leila, but in the end, he regrets never telling her the truth.

“The evil and the good, the cruel and the merciful, had been planted six feet under, side by side, in row after godforsaken row.”

The use of the duality of “good and evil” is challenged through the Cemetery of the Companionless’s indifference toward these different hierarchies. In this case, the author is saying that when it comes to death, none of these labels used in everyday life truly matter.