10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

As the rainstorm around them intensifies, the five head back to the truck, wheeling Leila’s body in a wheelbarrow. Nostalgia Nalan spots a police car stationed near the cemetery gates, and the group abandons the wheelbarrow, Nalan carrying Leila herself to create less noise. She recalls one night from her past, when she, Leila, and D/Ali ate at one of their favorite restaurants, drinking and discussing the world. D/Ali claimed the biggest difference between Western European cities and “their” cities was in the cemeteries. He told them that in the West, death was kept at a distance, with the cemeteries organized outside of city walls. But in Istanbul, death was visible everywhere.

At that same dinner, Nalan told Leila and D/Ali she thought she’d be the first of them to “snuff it,” and D/Ali gave her a look suggesting he knew she’d be wrong. Though she’d planned to confront D/Ali about why he never brought his comrades around the five, suspecting he was secretly ashamed of his wife and her strange friends, Nalan stayed silent. She understood that in their unstable, precarious world, all that mattered was the present moment. Just as the five finally reach the truck, relieved to have evaded the policemen, the car radio suddenly blares Whitney Houston, alerting the officers to their presence.