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People always assumed that a corpse was no more alive than a fallen tree or a hollow stump, devoid of consciousness. But given half a chance, Leila would have testified that, on the contrary, a corpse was brimming with life.
She wished she could go back and tell everyone that the dead did not die instantly, that they could, in fact, continue to reflect on things, including their own demise.
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.
because people always gave simple names to the complex things that frightened them.
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.
Her aunt said that storks – unlike humans – were loyal to their memories. Once they had made a place ‘home’, even if they found themselves miles away from it, they always returned.
I always believe you!’ ‘You sure? It’s a serious thing to believe in someone. You can’t just say it like that.
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.
In a world they could neither fully understand nor prevail in, music was the only joy that was free of charge.
Asking ‘Why me?’ was another way of saying, ‘Why not someone else?’ and she hated herself for that.
But the boy thought one should be even gentler with the living than with the dead, because, after all, they were the ones struggling to make sense of this world, weren’t they?
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.
He, for one, always felt more comfortable next to people who were not perfect in any way.
Just because you think it’s safe here, it doesn’t mean this is the right place for you.
Yet hope is a hazardous chemical capable of triggering a chain reaction in the human soul.
Make friends, good ones. Loyal ones. No one can survive alone – except the Almighty God.
And remember, in the desert of life, the fool travels alone and the wise by caravan.’
‘And I don’t know who’s normal in a system so crooked.’
The world is no longer the same for the one who has fallen in love, the one who is at its very centre; it can only spin faster from now on.
She wondered whether, just as too many cooks spoiled the broth, too many revolutionaries could ruin a revolution, but once again she kept her thoughts to herself.
How pathetic it was to try to relegate death to the periphery of life when death was at the centre of everything.
Researchers at various world-renowned institutions had observed persistent brain activity in people who had just died; in some cases this had lasted for only a few minutes. In others, for as much as ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds.
‘Grief is a swallow,’ he said. ‘One day you wake up and you think it’s gone, but it’s only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.’
Istanbul was an illusion. A magician’s trick gone wrong.
Mr Chaplin longed for a comforting pat on the head. He longed to be upstairs in his flat with a bowl full of mackerel-and-potato pâté – his favourite food. As he stretched and arched his back, he wondered where on earth his owner was, and why Tequila Leila was so unusually late today.
People always told her to fight depression. But I have a feeling that as soon as we see something as our enemy we make it stronger. Like a boomerang. You hurl it away, it comes back and hits you with equal force. Maybe what you need is to befriend your depression.’
You are not your depression. You are much more than what your mood is today or tomorrow.’
She lived with an endless commotion inside.
All the victims were streetwalkers. Normal female citizens have no need to worry about their safety.’
Love danced a fast tango with youth.
‘It’s different over here. This city belongs to the dead. Not to us.’
Why insist on designing the future or remembering the past when we were all slipping and sliding our way to the final exit?
Sabotage Sinan had many, many regrets in life, but nothing compared to the regret he felt for never having told Leila that since they were children in Van, walking together to school every morning as the sky above them cleared to blue, finding each other during break times, skipping stones on the edge of the great lake in summer, cradling mugs of steaming salep in winter as they sat side by side on a garden wall and studied pictures of American artists, ever since those long-lost days, he had been in love with her.
Istanbul was a liquid city. Nothing was permanent here. Nothing felt settled.
