10 Minutes and 38 Seconds
Bodrum Nightscape, April 2026
With such a view onto the Aegean Sea from a hilltop resort in Bodrum, one cannot help but feel inspired to take the pen back up. There has been no time I’ve entered this beautiful country without a copy of Elif Shafak’s words alongside me in some shape or form. This time brought her latest novel: 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World.
A particular set of words from the novel stand out at this moment, witnessing how extraordinary the sight is before me - “it seemed to Leila that human beings exhibited a profound impatience with the milestones of their existence.” How rushed we are to get to the next landmark. The tragedy that exists in missing the surreal view before us, the dream-like reality around us.
The magic that finds us when we don’t adhere to the mold. That when we step back and take in the farthest reaching sights, we see how inconsequential the external programming is. How it blocks the limitless reaches of our eyes. That once we begin to see this, we start to see other patterns as well. The look within the gaze of those around us eagerly trying to rush to the next milestone - hurried, but hesitant. Certain, but doubtful. Moving forward, yet glancing laterally. That somewhere along the way, the winds of doubt, if we allow them to take over, will fan out the essence of what makes us uniquely ourselves. The joy of the present moment before us, and the version of ourselves that existed authentically. Who we would have been before the world told us who to be. Before we realized there was an established mold.
The snapshot in time of us, before we knew.
Adele knew this feeling well when she sang, “let me photograph you in this light, in case it is the last time, that we might be exactly like we were, before we realized…”
How we shrink ourselves to triangulate into stenciled contortions deemed to be the way we should be, according to the established path presented to us. Stepping back from it all - gazing from the peak of a Bodrum hilltop - and realizing how stunningly limitless this life offered to us can be. That the hack to realizing this, as Elif pointed out, is not rushing the milestones of our existence. That the 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds she frames her novel around are based on the suggestion that there are 10 minutes and 38 seconds that the human brain continues to function after the heart has ceased beating. That in this brief blip of time, consciousness ebbs and flows. Like moonlight dancing on the currents of the Aegean Sea.
Wondering what sensory moments of our own lives will be brought to the surface in the last moments we still know what it is to be ourselves.
We do not know whether these 10 minutes and 38 seconds do in fact exist. But we do know that we have been accorded this life, with the power to shape an existence that would bring us to welcome - rather than dread - the possibility of encountering those 10 minutes and 38 seconds.
How even before that point, we can find moments where time stands still. Moments like this one in Bodrum, with Élise de Lune’s song La-bàs (Yonder) playing in the background:
Là-bas, le vent sentait le sol / Yonder, the wind smelled like the ground
Les murs parlaient sous le soleil / Walls spoke under the sun
Les voix des rues un peu irréelles / Voices in the streets, a little unreal
Chantaient nos rêves, nos merveilles / Sang of our dreams, our wonders
Là-bas, le temps s'arrêtait pour nous - Yonder, time stood still for us.
