The Thing Around Your Neck Chapter 3 Summary

Chika and her sister Nnedi are buying oranges in a Kano market when rioting erupts. Chika darts through a narrow street, climbs through a broken window into a dusty, deserted shop, and is let in by a middle‑aged Hausa Muslim woman wearing a pink‑black scarf. The woman shuts the shutters, tells Chika to stay quiet, and the two sit on a green wrapper on the floor. Their conversation reveals ethnic and religious differences: Chika is an Igbo Christian (she wears a silver rosary) and the woman is a Muslim Hausa (her accent and scarf reveal this). The woman recounts that rioters are targeting Igbo Christians, describing how violence began when a Muslim driver ran over a Qur’an, prompting a mob to behead the driver. Chika explains the chaotic market scene, the loss of her Burberry handbag, and that her sister Nnedi is now missing. The woman repeats “Nnedi” gently and shares that her own one‑year‑old daughter, Halima, was selling groundnuts at the market when the riot began and is also missing. She cries silently, then discovers a rusted tap in the back of the shop; brown, metallic water drips out. She washes her hands and face, kneels to pray toward Mecca, and offers Chika a wet scarf to bandage a deep cut on Chika’s calf caused by a broken piece of metal. The woman improvises a makeshift toilet with a metal container, producing a nauseating smell. Later, while the shop is dark, distant chanting is heard and Chika sees a freshly burned body on the street, feeling its heat. She runs back to the shop, receives another bandage, and the woman opens the window at dawn, describing soldiers, tear‑gas, and a vendor named Abu. The woman warns Chika that police may harass her, then leaves. Chika walks through streets littered with charred corpses, hears BBC commentary describing the riots as “religious with ethnic undertones,” and feels rage at the sanitized media narrative. She returns to the shop, thanks the woman, asks to keep the scar‑soaked scarf, receives it with a faint smile, and departs, still uncertain about Nnedi’s fate.