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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.
The woman sighs, and Chika imagines that she is thinking of her necklace, probably plastic beads strung on a piece of string. Even without the tribal marks ingrained in deep, curving lines on the woman’s face, Chika can tell she is Hausa, from the narrowness of her face, the rise of her cheekbones. And that she is Muslim, not just because Chika is aware that most Hausa are Muslim, but also because of the scarf. It hangs around the woman’s neck now, but it was probably wound loosely around her face before, covering her ears. Modesty. A long, flimsy, pink and black scarf, with the garish prettiness of cheap things. Chika wonders if the woman is looking at her as well, if the woman can tell from her accent and the crucifix hanging on a gold chain around her neck that she is Igbo and Christian. Later, Chika will learn that Hausa Muslims are hacking down Igbo Christians with machetes, clubbing them with huge stones, as she and the woman are speaking. But now she says, “Thank you for calling me. I might have been running to danger. Thank you.”
