The Thing Around Your Neck

A woman waits in line outside the American Embassy in Lagos for a visa appointment. She is trying not to think of her four-year-old son Ugonna’s recent death. On the street a soldier begins to beat an older man with a whip. The people in line complain about General Abacha’s government and discuss tips for the student visa interview. The woman thinks about how only a few days before her life was normal, and now her son is dead and she had to smuggle her husband out of the country. She remembers the soldiers coming to look for her husband because of a story he had published in a newspaper and how when Ugonna ran to her, the soldiers shot him.

The man in line behind her offers her some oranges, which she refuses. She thinks of how the soldiers argued over whether they had to kill her too; while they argued, she jumped off the balcony. The man behind her in line offers advice about the visa interview. She wonders if he knows of her husband, a pro-democracy journalist. She thinks of how driven her husband was for his cause and how this was a kind of selfishness. Her husband’s recent story was picked up by the BBC, which is what led the soldiers to their door.