Chika climbs in through the store window first and then holds the shutter as the woman climbs in after her. The store looks like it was deserted long before the riots started; the empty rows of wooden shelves are covered in yellow dust, as are the metal paint containers stacked in a corner. The store is small, smaller than Chika’s walk-in closet back home. The woman climbs in, and the shutters of the window squeak as Chika lets go of them. Chika wants to thank the woman, for stopping her as she dashed past, for saying, in Pidgin English, “I saw people running from that direction.” But before she can say thank you, the woman says, “I lost my necklace when I was running; I didn’t even know.”

“I dropped everything,” Chika says. “I was buying oranges, and I dropped the oranges and my handbag as well.” She does not add that the handbag was an original Coach, that her mother bought it on a recent trip to New York.