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“Do you want some bread?” Ugwu asked.

“Yes, my brother. Dalu. Thank you

.”

Ugwu did not look to see how deep the knife wound on his head was. He poured the tea and held out the bread. He would not remember this man tomorrow because he would not want to.

“Do you want some bread?” Ugwu asked another man nearby, who sat hunched. “I choro bread?”

The man turned. Ugwu recoiled and nearly dropped the flask. The man’s right eye was gone, in its place a juicy-red pulp.

“It was the soldiers who saved us,” the first man was saying, as if he felt he had to tell his story in exchange for the bread he was eating dipped in tea. “They told us to run to the army barracks. Those madmen were chasing us like runaway goats, but once we entered the gates of the barracks we were safe.”

A rickety train pulled up, so full that some people held on to the outside of the coaches, clutching at metal bars. Ugwu watched as tired, dusty, bloody people climbed down, but he did not join those who rushed over to help. He could not bear to think that Olanna was one of those limping and defeated people, and yet he could not bear to think that she was not, that she was still behind, somewhere in the North. He watched until the train emptied out. Olanna was not there. He gave the rest of the bread to the one-eyed man, then turned and ran. He did not stop until he got to Odim Street and past the bush with the white flowers.

11

Olanna was sitting on Mohammed’s veranda, drinking chilled rice milk, laughing at the delicious cold trickle down her throat, at the stickiness on her lips, when the gateman appeared and asked to speak to Mohammed.

Mohammed left and came back moments later, holding what looked like a pamphlet. “They’re rioting,” he said.

“It’s the students, isn’t it?” Olanna asked.

“I think it’s religious. You must leave right away.” His eyes avoided hers.

“Mohammed, calm down.”

“Sule said they are blocking the roads and searching for infidels. Come, come.” He was already heading indoors. Olanna followed. He worried too much, did Mohammed. Muslim students were always demonstrating about one thing or the other, after all, and harassing people who were Western-dressed, but they always dispersed quickly enough.

Mohammed went into a room and came out with a long scarf. “Wear this, so you can blend in,” he said.

Olanna placed it over her head and wound it round her neck. “I look like a proper Muslim woman,” she joked.

But Mohammed barely smiled. “Let’s go. I know a shortcut to the train station.”

“Train station? Arize and I are not leaving until tomorrow, Mohammed,” Olanna said. She almost ran to keep up with him. “I’m going back to my uncle’s house in Sabon Gari.”

“Olanna.” Mohammed started the car; it jerked as he took off. “Sabon Gari is not safe.”

“What do you mean?” She tugged at the scarf; the embroidery at the edges felt coarse and uncomfortable against her neck.

“Sule said they are well organized.”

Olanna stared at him, suddenly frightened at how frightened he looked. “Mohammed?”

His voice was low. “He said Igbo bodies are lying on Airport Road.”

Olanna realized, then, that this was not just another demonstration by religious students. Fear parched her throat. She clasped her hands together. “Please let us pick up my people first,” she said. “Please.”

Mohammed headed toward Sabon Gari. A bus drove past, dusty and yellow; it looked like one of those campaign buses that politicians used to tour rural areas and give out rice and cash to villagers. A man was hanging out of the door, a loudspeaker pressed to his mouth, his slow Hausa words resonating. “The Igbo must go. The infidels must go. The Igbo must go.” Mohammed reached out and squeezed her hand and held on to it as they drove past a crowd of young men on the roadside, chanting, “Araba, araba!” He slowed down and blew the horn a few times in solidarity; they waved and he picked up speed again.

In Sabon Gari, the first street was empty. Olanna saw the smoke rising like tall gray shadows before she smelled the scent of burning.

“Stay here,” Mohammed said, as he stopped the car outside Uncle Mbaezi’s compound. She watched him run out. The street looked strange, unfamiliar; the compound gate was broken, the metal flattened on the ground. Then she noticed Aunty Ifeka’s kiosk, or what remained of it: splinters of wood, packets of groundnuts lying in the dust. She opened the car door and climbed out. She paused for a moment because of how glaringly bright and hot it was, with flames billowing from the roof, with grit and ash floating in the air, before she began to run toward the house. She stopped when she saw the bodies. Uncle Mbaezi lay facedown in an ungainly twist, legs splayed. Something creamy-white oozed through the large gash on the back of his head. Aunty Ifeka lay on the veranda. The cuts on her naked body were smaller, dotting her arms and legs like slightly parted red lips.

Olanna felt a watery queasiness in her bowels before the numbness spread over her and stopped at her feet. Mohammed was dragging her, pulling her, his grasp hurting her arm. But she could not leave without Arize. Arize was due at anytime. Arize needed to be close to a doctor.

“Arize,” she said. “Arize is down the road.”