10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

by Elif Shafak

As he almost closed his eyes, all the colour leached from the sky and the sea and the entire city, and for a moment everything was as black and white as Leila’s favourite films, except for a single hula hoop swirling, drawing circles in a bright, assertive orange, full of life.

How he wished he could have turned back time just like that. How he wished, instead of giving Leila the money for the bus journey that would take her away from him, he had asked her to stay in Van and marry him. Why had he been such a coward? And why was the price of not saying the right words at the right time so high?

He caught sight of the sky. Infinite, fearless, forgiving.

Leila descended into the void. She dropped over two hundred feet, fast and straight. Beneath her the sea shimmered blue and bright like an Olympic pool. As she fell down, a few folds of her shroud came undone, floating around and above her, like the pigeons her mother had raised on the roof. Except these were free. There were no cages to confine them. Into the water she plummeted. Away from this madness.

The ghastly and the graceful – everything was present around her, in rich abundance. Everything but pain. There was no pain down here.

She was happy to be part of this vibrant realm, this comforting harmony that she had never thought possible, and this vast blue, bright as the birth of a new flame. Free at last.

Far in the distance, beyond the roofs and domes, was the sea, shimmering like glass, and deep in the water, somewhere and everywhere, was Leila – a thousand little Leilas stuck to fish fins and seaweed, laughing from inside clam shells.