10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Content Warning: This section discusses death, exhumation of a grave, substance abuse, and mistreatment of sex workers.

After eating dinner, the friends reminisce about Leila’s love for birthday parties. Nalan tells the others about her plan for Leila: They will take Sabotage Sinan’s in-laws’ truck, drive to the Cemetery of the Companionless, dig up Leila’s body, and give her a proper funeral. The others are disturbed by the plan, but they reluctantly agree. They decide to lay Leila to rest next to her deceased husband, D/Ali, in a graveyard in Bebeck. Nalan tells Jameelah, who is ill, to stay at the apartment. Jameelah refuses.

The road that the five need to take is patrolled by police cars: Two patrolmen watch the road. The two patrolmen notice a 1982 Chevrolet Silverado racing past them, holding several people holding pickaxes. Humeyra loses her balance and accidentally drops her pickaxe.

The patrolmen radio into dispatch and report a suspicious truck headed toward Kilyos, where there is nothing but the Cemetery of the Companionless.

Kilyos is a quiet coastal town an hour away from Istanbul. Boats of asylum seekers sometimes capsize off the coast of Kilyos, and their bodies are pulled from the water and buried in the Cemetery of the Companionless.