Book: 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world. Page 1

Hyumeira believed that there is something in common between obesity and a tendency to melancholy. In both cases, society blames the patient himself. No other disease is treated like that. People with other ailments receive at least a bit of sympathy and moral support. But not overweight and not those who are prone to depression. You can restrain your appetite ... You can control your thoughts ... But Hyumeira knew that neither weight nor habitual despair depended on her.

Even as a child, her blood boiled when she saw that someone - no matter who - was being treated cruelly and unfairly. And if you compare this share of dignity with a tiny piece of land that belongs to you, and only to you, it is you who will sow the seed of your hope. This tiny embryo will one day sprout and bloom. According to Nalan, it is this tiny seed that should be fought for.

Death didn’t really scare her. Yes, and in life after life she did not believe - all the excesses of this world cannot turn into grace in that one. As the only openly atheist among Leila's friends, Nalan believed flesh, not abstractness, like an eternal soul. Its molecules penetrate the soil and fertilize plants, these plants are eaten by animals, and animals by humans, so that, despite the assumptions of most, the human body is immortal and is on an endless journey through natural cycles. What else to demand from the afterlife?

Non-blooded relatives appear at a later age and, for the most part, on your own initiative. Yes, it is difficult to replace a loving, happy family, your relatives, but if there are none, non-blooded relatives will help wash away the pain that gets stuck inside with black soot. Therefore, friends can have a special place in their hearts, much more than all their blood relatives put together. However, those who have never felt the contempt of their own relatives will not understand this truth. They will never know that in some cases the seventh water is much thicker than the same jelly.

Grief is like a swallow. One day you wake up and think that it has passed, but it just flew into the warm regions to warm your feathers. Sooner or later it will come back and again sit on your heart, as if on a cornice.

Subsequent studies have shown that more than a thousand genes continue to function in bodies even a few days after death. Perhaps a person's thoughts live longer than his heart, dreams - longer than his pancreas, and desires - longer than the gallbladder ... If this is true, maybe people should be considered half-alive, while the memories that made them themselves are still sway, disperse in circles and remain in this world?

If there is a God up there, He probably bursts out laughing at people who were able to create atomic bombs and artificial intelligence, but are still worried about their own death and do not know what to do with the dead. How wretched it is to endure death on the periphery of life when it is at the center of everything!

Layla never told her friends, at least in such detail, but they were her airbag. Whenever she stumbled or even fell, friends would be there, supporting and softening the force of the blow. On those nights when clients treated her too cruelly, she found the strength to hold on precisely because her friends were a potion for her scratches and bruises by the very fact of their existence, and on those days when she indulged in self-pity, they put her on her feet and breathed her into her lungs.

Leila never thought that you can have more than five friends. Having one is a great happiness. If you are very lucky, there will be two or three, and if you are already born under a lucky star, then a quintet is more than enough for a lifetime. It is unwise to strive for more, so as not to jeopardize those on whom you count.

Once, my mother told her that childhood is a big blue wave that lifts you up, carrying you forward, but disappearing from sight as soon as you begin to think that this will always be the case. You can't run after it, and you can't get it back either. However, before it disappears, the wave leaves you a gift on the shore - a rapana shell. She has the sounds of childhood inside her. And even now, if you close your eyes and listen carefully, Jamilya could catch these sounds: the laughter of younger brothers and sisters, dad's words when he broke the fast and ate three dates, the singing of his mother, who cooked food, the crackle of an evening fire, the rustle of acacia sheets standing near the house ...

For those who are in love and who are in its very center, the world ceases to be the same, from that moment the globe begins to spin faster.

As a rule, people who use the word “natural” too often have no idea about the nature of mother nature. If you tell them that snails, worms and Black Sea perch are hermaphrodites, that the male seahorse can give birth, the clown fish in the middle of life turns from a male into a female, and the male cuttlefish is actually a transvestite, they will be terribly surprised. Anyone who has studied nature will think twice before calling something natural.

Her memory was a kind of graveyard - fragments of her life were buried there, they lay in separate graves, and Leila had no desire to revive them.

And remember: in the desert of life only a fool travels alone, smart - with a caravan.