Tequila Leila, a sex worker in her 40s, is the protagonist of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World and she is dead. Yet, it is anything but a dead-end (please forgive the pun)!
“Her name was Leila.”
Straight off the bat, Elif Shafak establishes that the protagonist of the story, Leila is dead and proceeds to tells us her story in vignettes of memories recalled by Leila as she lays dying – her body dead but mind still alive for another 10 minutes and 38 seconds. Each of these 10 minutes unveils a key moment in her life—from her birth in an orthodox Turkish family living in Van to her upbringing, family secrets, her arrival in Istanbul and her life in a brothel.
In these flashbacks, we are also introduced to her five friends who Leila knows will come looking for her even as she lays dying in a trash can on the outskirts of Istanbul in the early hours of the day.
Friendship is a key theme in the novel. Contrasted with the family one is born or married into and hence, not a matter of choice, friends are seen as the family one chooses. Shafak calls them blood and water families while laying out the comparison between the silent lies and hypocrisies that lubricate an outwardly peace in Leila’s family and the unbridled honesty and loyalty of her friendships.
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World is also a story about outcasts and how their unique perspective exposes us to the naked truth about our societies. Tequila Leila and her five friends with their varied backstories and distinctive names—Sabotage Sinan, Nostalgia Nalan, Jameelah, Zaynab122 and Hollywood Humeyra—are all outcasts in some way or the other.
Shafak tips her literary hat not only to friendship but also the illusory concept of Time in the epigraph with lines penned by Albert Einstein upon the death of his closest friend, Michele Besso,
“Now he has again preceded me a little in parting from this strange world. This has no importance. For people like us who believe in physics, the separation between past, present and future has only the importance of an admittedly tenacious illusion.”
Leila, relives the past with reminiscences that are replete with lyrical, sensory details—the taste of spiced goat stew to celebrate the birth of her brother, the scalding hot vats of lemon and sugar the neighbourhood women used to wax their legs while men attended prayers at the mosque and the fragrance of cardamom coffee shared with a handsome student. Shafak’s descriptions are masterful, engaging all five senses to immerse us in Leila’s world.
The novel’s unusual narrative structure creates the effect of Leila’s past standing beside the present, melding into one unpunctuated entity. Every now and then, the story’s underlying themes shimmer through the tapestry of Shafak’s evocative imagery. Sample this,
“Together they dangled strips of fabric from apple boughs laden with blossom, calling them ballerinas, took their sweet time to weave little baskets out of willow or crowns out of daisies; tied ribbons around the horns of the ram waiting to be sacrificed next Eid. Once they secretly cut the rope that kept the animal fastened… it returned to the same spot, finding the familiarity of captivity more reassuring than the strange call of freedom.”
The city of Istanbul which serves as a setting for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World embodies a sense of being a compound of disparate elements. Shafak’s Istanbul (complete with a map displaying all the relevant locations of the tale) is a concoction of past and present, conservative values and modern ideas, the East and the West and the conventional and the marginalised.
The city is both a setting as well as a character in Shafak’s novel, leaving its own indelible imprint on the story. Istanbul’s landscape, as it were, is painted in the bright hues of humour, as seen in the story about the haphazard evolution of Hairy Kafka Street, but also in shades of sepia-tinged sadness with lines like,
“Then there was the Istanbul of those who left long ago, sailing to faraway ports. For them, this city would always be a metropolis made of memories, myths and messianic longings, forever elusive like a lover’s face receding in the mist.”
In my opinion, the strongest part of the novel are the 10 minutes and 38 seconds that form Leila’s recollections, etching out her life and times. The writing of this section feels spirited and livelier, very much like Leila herself.
Read 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World for its concept, Leila’s characterisation and the vivid imagery. But most of all, I liked that it’s a story that addresses sadness, disappointment and alienation but celebrates survivors, friendship and courage.
Nicely analysed