A Private Experience

The woman, who remains unnamed throughout the narrative, is Chika’s foil, highlighting both the ways they are different and similar. The information about the woman is filtered through Chika’s viewpoint, which changes as the two women spend more time together and share their private fears with one another. Chika initially describes her emphasizing her difference: “Even without the woman’s strong Hausa accent, Chika can tell she is a Northerner, from the narrowness of her face, the unfamiliar rise of her cheekbones; and that she is Muslim, because of the scarf” (44). The woman is impoverished; when she removes her green wrapper, her black slip with torn seams is revealed. Despite having less, she has a generous spirit, using her wrapper to provide a clean space to sit for both women. She has less growing to do than Chika, and she ends the story with this same action, giving Chika her wrapper to protect her leg wound.

Chika is initially disparaging toward the woman, describing her long pink and black headscarf as pretty but garish. When she tells Chika she lost her necklace, Chika supposes that it was made of plastic. However, the woman is clean, kind, and resourceful. She smells of soap, frequently washes her hands, washes before she prays, and moves the makeshift toilet outside the store after it has been used. Unlike Chika, she is quick-thinking, finding shelter and rescuing Chika during the chaos when Chika cannot get her bearings. Even though her people and Chika’s are clashing, the woman is compassionate toward Chika as an Igbo woman, showing that she is open-minded.

The woman is also earnest; there is no artifice in her communication, no attempt to elicit a particular emotional response from Chika. When she cries, it is without fanfare, a genuine outpouring of grief over her missing daughter. She is also sincere in her faith; when she prepares to pray, Chika sees her smile for the first time. However, she is not a flat depiction of virtue. She becomes irritated when she accuses Chika of not listening, and she wants to go outside before it is safe. She describes the senselessness of the violence, commenting, “Every time when they are rioting, they break market” (49). The riots destroy her workplace, a space that should be safe. While Chika assumes the woman is uneducated and cannot grasp the cause of the violence, the woman lives with these political realities every day. The fact that she lives within the confines of this violence without succumbing to it is a testament to her integrity, independence of thought, and quiet adherence to her private moral code.