A murdered sex worker relives ten minutes of memories while her outcast friends steal her body back.
Who drives the story
A sex worker from Van, murdered in 1990 and left in a rubbish bin. In her dying minutes she reclaims every memory the world tried to erase, and in life she collected a family of outcasts who refuse to let her be forgotten.
A transgender woman and trans activist whom Leila defended with thrown stones in a park. She leads the search for Leila and insists on identifying her body when the morgue attendant wants to look away.
A handsome student who shared cardamom coffee with Leila in the brothel and dreamed of filmmaking. He returns years later to film a documentary, and at the graveside he speaks the line about being ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds from being forgotten.
A Somali woman who works as a cleaner and keeps a cramped apartment full of birds she believes are the souls of the dead. After the burial, she releases them.
A dwarf who works in the brothel and becomes the friends' unlikely key—her small size lets her sneak into the morgue and unlock the door. Afterward she leaves the brothel for good.
A singer among the five friends. She composes a lament in Turkish and Arabic for Leila's van ride to the cemetery and later records it.
The woman who took sixteen-year-old Leila in when she fled to Istanbul's red-light district. Years later she is the one who tells Nalan that Leila has been missing for two days.
Also in the story
Leila's parents in Van: a father who celebrates the birth of a son with sacrificed goat stew and beats his daughter with a belt, a mother who rubbed salt on baby Leila's gums to ward off evil.
How they are connected
A transgender woman and trans activist whom Leila defended with thrown stones in a park.
A handsome student who shared cardamom coffee with Leila in the brothel and dreamed of filmmaking.
She composes a lament in Turkish and Arabic for Leila's van ride to the cemetery and later records it.
The woman who took sixteen-year-old Leila in when she fled to Istanbul's red-light district.
Years later she is the one who tells Nalan that Leila has been missing for two days.
Haroun and BinnazTequila Leila
Leila's parents in Van: a father who celebrates the birth of a son with sacrificed goat stew and beats his daughter with a belt, a mother who rubbed salt on baby Leila's gums to ward off evil.
Go deeper
Who gets remembered · The family you choose · Memory as the senses · Outcasts and an illiberal country
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
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