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.

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.

within every sane mind there was a trace of insanity, and within the depths of madness glimmered a seed of lucidity.

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.

If there was a God up there, He must be laughing His head off at a human race capable of making atomic bombs and building artificial intelligence, but still uncomfortable with their own mortality and unable to sort out what to do with their dead. How pathetic it was to try to relegate death to the periphery of life when death was at the centre of everything.

‘Poor thing, may Allah forgive whatever sin she might have committed.’ The medical examiner smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Might? That’s a funny thing to say, considering who she was. Her entire life was full of sin.’ ‘Well, perhaps that’s so … but who knows who deserves heaven more – this unlucky woman or the zealot who thinks he is the only chosen of God.’

‘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.’

but the absolute lack of justice in everything. Life was unfair, and now she realized death was even more so.

but she believed that everyone had a right to a certain share of dignity. And inside your dignity, as if it were a patch of soil that belonged to no one else, you would sow a seed of hope. A tiny germ that one day, somehow, might sprout and blossom. As far as Nostalgia Nalan was concerned, that small seed was all there was worth fighting for.

Years later now, it seemed to Nalan that religion – and power and money and ideology and politics – acted like a hood too. All these superstitions and predictions and beliefs deprived human beings of sight, keeping them under control, but deep within weakening their self-esteem to such a point that they now feared anything, everything.

We must do what we can to mend our lives, we owe that to ourselves – but we need to be careful not to break others while achieving that.’

The teachings that warmed her heart and brought her close to all humanity, regardless of creed, colour or nationality, could be interpreted in such a way that they divided, confused and separated human beings, sowing seeds of enmity and bloodshed. If she were summoned by God one day, and had a chance to sit in His presence, she would love to ask Him just one simple question: ‘Why did you allow Yourself to be so widely misunderstood, my beautiful and merciful God?’

There was something strangely comforting in the way different cultures had arrived at similar customs and melodies, and in how, all around the world, people were being rocked in the arms of loved ones in their moments of distress.

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.

They were more vulnerable on their own; together, they were stronger. 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.

The pessimists were the first to flee the area, probably; the optimists would have chosen to wait and see how things would turn out. Nalan thought that one of the endless tragedies of human history was that pessimists were better at surviving than optimists, which meant that, logically speaking, humanity carried the genes of people who did not believe in humanity.