10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 8

Part 1, Chapters 9-18

Part 2, Chapters 1-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-19

Part 3-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 3-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “The Soul”

Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Bridge”

Content Warning: This section discusses death and gun violence.

As the five drive to the Bosphorus Bridge, Humeyra, who took several different anxiety medications before the trip, falls asleep. She has a nightmare, and Jameelah sings her a lullaby, calming everyone. They realize two police cars are following them. Zaynab122 gets out of the truck to distract the officers by pretending to be injured. Nostalgia Nalan stops to let Zaynab122 out of the truck and then drives toward the bridge at top speed.

Halfway across the bridge, Nostalgia Nalan stops the car and jumps out. Sabotage Sinan helps her grab Leila’s body. The pair begin to push Leila’s body over the railing when they are stopped by the voices of the two police officers. Another police car pulls up, and Nostalgia Nalan apologizes for getting everyone involved. Despite the police officers’ orders, Sabotage Sinan decides to lurch forward and push Leila’s body off the bridge; he thinks about the hula hoop he gave her when they were children and how much simpler things were back then. One of the police officers shoots Sabotage Sinan in the shoulder, and Leila’s body plummets into the water below.

Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Blue Betta Fish”

As Leila plummets toward the water below, she feels content and light. Once she lands in the water, she sees the blue betta fish that was released into the creek in Van on the day of her birth. The betta fish shows her a world filled with treasures both ancient and new; she feels free and happy.

Epilogue Summary

Back at Leila’s old apartment, Nostalgia Nalan asks where Sabotage Sinan is one evening; she thinks about how Sabotage Sinan lost everything—his wife, job, and home—by helping with her plan. Humeyra states that he’s probably stuck in traffic. The five now live together in Leila’s old apartment; they hold onto each other to keep steady in an ever-changing city like Istanbul.

Part 3-Epilogue Analysis

Sabotage Sinan’s choice to help lay Leila’s body to rest at the expense of his family is ironic given that his nickname includes “sabotage,” and he is aware that this decision may sabotage his life. He also reveals that he has been secretly in love with Leila since they were children. Secrets are a motif that illustrate The Complexity of Family and tend to hurt people who are hidden from the truth. Sabotage Sinan’s secret leads him to lose everything, including his family.

The five’s struggle to give Leila a burial she wished for requires teamwork, quick thinking, and risk. In choosing to live together in Leila’s old apartment, they also carry on her legacy and, in ways, her life. The Violence Against Women that she faced at the end of her life is balanced by the intense, unwavering love of her friends, who safely see her to the afterlife.

Once Leila’s body is laid to rest in the sea, the betta fish from her birth finds her soul and pulls it into a new world in which the past and present seem to occur at the same time. In this moment, the dualities of life and death and past and present are evident. Many of the dualities in this novel function to depict how similar each side of the binary truly is. In Leila’s death, she finds a new life where everything exists at once, and she is free from the world of “treacherous words and conscientious beliefs” (304), a society created from the conflict of Traditionalism Versus Modernism. Leila, with the help of her friends, is finally free, and her death has united the five more than ever.