Chika climbs through a broken shop window in a deserted, dust‑filled store in Kano after fleeing the market riot with her sister Nnedi. A Hausa‑speaking Muslim woman, wearing a cheap pink‑black scarf, pulls Chika inside, closes the shutters, and offers shelter. The woman explains she lost a necklace and trades onions in the market; she has a one‑year‑old baby named Halima. Chika learns the riots began when a Muslim driver ran over a copy of the Qur’an, prompting a mob to murder the Christian driver. Chika tells the woman that she and Nnedi are university students (medicine and political science) from Lagos. The woman comforts Chika, washes her hands at a rusty tap, and tenders her bleeding leg with a wet scarf, using the shop’s metal containers as a makeshift toilet. While they sit, they hear distant chanting and later see a freshly burned body on the street, its heat searing Chika’s leg. The woman cries, praying for Chika’s sister and her baby. After three hours, the woman decides the danger has passed and leaves the store. Chika emerges, navigates the silent streets, finds more charred corpses, and hears BBC reports of religious‑ethnic violence. She returns to the store, receives further first‑aid, and later walks back to her aunt’s gated estate, where the aunt, a secretariat director, mutters in Igbo about the tragedy. Chika grabs a blood‑stained stone as a souvenir, suspects Nnedi is dead, and thanks the woman, asking to keep the woman’s scarf for future bleeding.