The Thing Around Your Neck

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2009

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“A Private Experience”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“A Private Experience” Summary

A young woman named Chika and another, unnamed woman are hiding in an abandoned store to escape a riot in the marketplace in the town of Kano in Nigeria. Chika immediately notices that the woman is from the North, that she is Muslim, and that she is poorer than Chika. Chika is from the South, a Christian, and well off. She expresses her appreciation for how the woman led her away from the riot, stating she wouldn’t have known what to do without her. The narration reveals that the riot is between Hausa Muslims and Igbo Christians.

The two women quietly watch the window until two people come by, then quickly shut it. Chika thinks of the chaos of the riot’s start, and the narration reveals that the riot started when an Igbo Christian man accidentally ran over a copy of the Koran, and a Hausa Muslim man cut off his head and carried it through the market. The woman invites Chika to sit, and Chika tells her she was separated from her sister Nnedi. The woman tells her that Nnedi will be in a safe place, and she begins to ask Chika questions. Chika tells her that she and Nnedi go to the University of Lagos and that she is studying medicine. The narration reveals that Nnedi will not be found after the riot. Chika says she can’t believe the riot is happening, and the other woman says it is the work of evil. The woman tells her that she sells onions, and that every time a riot breaks out the market stalls are destroyed.

The woman asks Chika to check her breasts, as her nipple is burning. Chika tells her that her nipple is dry from breast feeding and advises her to moisturize it, inventing a fictional story about her mother experiencing the same problem to comfort the woman. The woman tells Chika that she was looking for her oldest daughter, who was selling groundnuts when the riot broke out. The woman cries quietly, then washes her hands to pray. A few hours later Chika says she believes the riot has ended and says she will go get her aunt’s driver to come and bring the woman home. Chika sees a body and injures her leg running back to the abandoned store. The two women peacefully pass the night together, despite not sleeping much. The next day when danger has passed the two separate, and Chika asks to keep the woman’s scarf she used to wrap her leg.

“A Private Experience” Analysis

This story emphasizes the disparity between political events as they are portrayed publicly and political events as they are experienced by the individuals affected by them. Chika notes from the first moments of her and the woman’s time together that, though the riot is between groups that they are on opposing sides of—her being an Igbo Christian and the woman being a Hausa Muslim—they care about and are empathetic toward each other. Chika also recognizes that it is due to the other woman’s kindness that she survived and made it to a safe place. This is a meeting that could not have occurred under different circumstances—Chika repeatedly note the differences between their lives, the poor quality of the woman’s clothes, and the fact that these riots are a normal part of her life. The heightened circumstances both manage to cast sharp contrast between the two women into more heightened relief and reject those contrasts as less important than their kindness to each other.

This experience of kindness and connection, and Chika’s recognition of how her lived experience differs from that shown in reports of the event, emphasizes The Rejection of Societal Expectations, such as the socially encouraged violence and anger between these two groups. While the news emphasizes the violence, Chika “will stop to remember that she examined the nipples and experienced the gentleness of a woman who is Hausa and Muslim” (50). Chika and the woman hold no obligation toward each other and, as Chika observes, are visibly from different sides of the conflict. Yet they continually make sacrifices to ensure the other is safe or cared for, an experience not reflected by the news’ portrayal of the event. The story also paints the strangers’ connection as serendipitous: Chika and her sister were only visiting, and they had no obligation to be at the market that day. The experience these two women share is positioned as both remarkable because of how unlikely it was to happen and mundane because of how easy it was for the two to care for each other.