Summary

After the riots are over, Chika will search "the hospital mortuaries looking for Nnedi" (4). She will tape up photocopies of a picture of her and Nnedi around the market and the stores. In the photo, she and Nnedi are wearing matching dresses. Chika is smiling. Despite her efforts, Chika "will never find Nnedi" (4).

Suddenly she hears herself telling the woman she and Nnedi are on vacation from school, and came to Kano to visit their auntie.

The woman asks about school. Chika and Nnedi both attend the University of Lagos. She is studying medicine, and Nnedi "is in political science" (4). Chika wonders if she only mentioned school to ground herself in another reality outside the store, a reality in which Nnedi "is not lost in a riot" (4). She tries imagining Nnedi safe, talking insistently about foreign policy and British colonialism.

Chika tells the...