She was to be Leyla Afife Kamile, full of virtue, high in merit. But years later, after she had turned up in Istanbul, alone and broke; after she had seen the sea for the first time, amazed at how that vast expanse of blue stretched to the horizon; after she had noticed that the curls in her hair turned to frizz in the humid air; after she had awoken one morning in a strange bed next to a man she had never seen before and her chest felt so heavy she thought she could never draw breath again; after she had been sold to a brothel where she was forced to have sex with ten to fifteen men each day
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