10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

Author:Elif Shafak
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780241979457
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-06-05T23:00:00+00:00

That whole week, galvanized by the upbeat mood, gazinos and nightclubs were full to bursting. On Friday, after the evening prayer, Bitter Ma sent Leila to a stag party at a konak by the Bosphorus. All night long, thinking about D/Ali and what he had said to her, she was assailed by a gloom she couldn’t overcome, unable to pretend and play along, her whole manner painfully slow, sluggish, as if dredged from a lake. She sensed the hosts were unhappy with her performance and would later complain to the madam. Clowns and prostitutes, she thought bitterly, who wants them around when they are sad?

On the way back, she trudged wearily, her feet throbbing from standing in high heels for hours on end. She was starving, not having eaten since lunch the day before. No one thought about offering her food on such nights, and she never asked.

The sun was rising over the red-tiled rooftops and lead-covered domes. The air had a fresh feel, the scent of a promise. She passed by apartment buildings still asleep. A few paces ahead she noticed a basket, tied to a rope that was hanging from a window on an upper floor. Inside were what looked like potatoes and onions. Someone must have ordered them from the grocer’s nearby and forgotten to haul the basket up.

A sound made her stop in her tracks. She grew still, straining to hear. A few seconds later, she caught a whimper so feeble that at first she thought she might have imagined it, courtesy of her sleep-deprived brain. Then she glimpsed a shapeless silhouette on the pavement, a heap of flesh and fur. A wounded cat.

Simultaneously, someone else had seen the animal and was approaching from the opposite side of the road. A woman. With her soft brown eyes that crinkled at the corners, pointy nose and stout frame, she resembled a bird – a bird that a child might have drawn, bubbly and round.

‘Is the cat okay?’ the woman asked.

They both leaned forward and saw it in the same instant: its intestines spilled out, its breathing slow and laboured, the animal was horribly injured.

Leila took off her scarf and wrapped it around the cat. Gently, she lifted it, cradling it in one arm. ‘We need to find a vet.’

‘At this hour?’

‘Well, we don’t have much choice, do we?’

They began to walk together.

‘My name is Leila, by the way. With an “i” in the middle, not a “y”. I’ve changed the spelling.’

‘I’m Humeyra. Spelled the normal way. I work in a gazino down by the wharf.’

‘What do you do there?’

‘Me and my band, we are on stage every night,’ she said, and added more forcefully, and not without a trace of pride, ‘I’m a singer.’

‘Oh, do you sing any Elvis?’

‘No. We do old songs, ballads, some new stuff too, mostly arabesque.’

The vet, when they were able to find one, was irritated at being woken up at this hour, but thankfully he did not turn them away.

‘In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like this,’ the man said.

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