10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

by Elif Shafak

Like all the unclaimed dead, she, too, would be consigned to the Cemetery of the Companionless. No Islamic burial rituals would be performed for this woman. Nor of any other religion, for that matter. Her body would not be washed by the next of kin; her hair would not be braided into three separate braids; her hands would not be placed gently over her heart in a gesture of eternal peace; her eyelids would not be closed to make sure that from now on her gaze was turned inward. In the graveyard, there would be no pall-bearers or mourners, no imam leading the prayers and not one professional weeper hired to cry and wail louder than everyone else. She would be buried the way all the undesirables were – silently and swiftly. Afterwards, she would probably have no visitors. Perhaps an old neighbour or a niece – one distant enough not to mind the shame brought upon the family – would show up a few times, but eventually the visits would cease. 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 whose life echoed the opening of every Anatolian tale: Once there was, once there wasn’t …