10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

by Elif Shafak

The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us. Now that, she had always thought, was terrifying.

Her heart protested, Don’t be silly. Why stay in a place where nothing ever happens? It’s boring. Why leave a place where nothing ever happens? It’s safe, her gut said.

Just because you think it’s safe here, it doesn’t mean this is the right place for you, her heart countered. Sometimes where you feel most safe is where you least belong.

Cry, my dear. Never be ashamed of your tears. Cry and everyone knows you’re alive.’

Nations became civilized in three fundamental ways, they said: science, education and beauty contests.

Little did she yet understand that the end of childhood comes not when a child’s body changes with puberty, but when her mind is finally able to see her life through the eyes of an outsider.

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.

Leila had come to understand that feelings of tenderness must always be hidden – that such things could only be revealed behind closed doors and never spoken about afterwards. This was the only form of affection she had learned from grown-ups, and the teaching would come with dire consequences.

But human memory resembles a late-night reveller who has had a few too many drinks: hard as it tries, it just cannot follow a straight line.

She regarded her memory as a graveyard; segments of her life were buried there, lying in separate graves, and she had no intention of reviving them.

One cannot change geography, he’d say, but one can trick destiny.

Everyone seemed a little lost, vulnerable and unsure of themselves, whether they were educated or not, modern or not, Eastern or not, grown up or a child.