10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

During the seventh minute after her death, Leila remembers Sabotage Sinan giving her a hula hoop. Leila secretly took it home. She put on some of her mother’s makeup and began to sing and dance. Her father caught her and yelled at her; he told her that she was “behaving like a whore” (103), and Leila never touched the hula hoop again.

In September 1963, Leila was forced to unenroll from school; her father’s sheik told him to keep Leila at home until the day she was married. Leila said goodbye to Sabotage Sinan and promised to see him again. When Leila returned home, she went immediately to the garden and began to eat the soil under an apple tree. When she reentered the house, Auntie asked why she had been eating the soil. Leila reminded her of the story she told about a woman who “ate sand, broken glass…even gravel” (105), revealing that Leila was pregnant and trying to trigger a miscarriage. Auntie stated that it was impossible for Leila to be pregnant because she had never seen a man naked; Leila asked if her uncle counted as a man.

The following day, Leila’s father told her that she should not make up lies.