Nnamabia steals his mother’s jewelry, is discovered, later implicated in campus cult violence, arrested, suffers brutal treatment in Cell One, and is eventually released with injuries. Nkem discovers that her husband Obiora has a girlfriend living in their Lagos home, confronts her housegirl Amaechi about it, confirms via a phone call that no other people are in the Nigerian house, and tells Obiora she wants to move back to Lagos at the end of the school year. Chika, a Lagos medical student, hides in an abandoned store in Kano with a Hausa woman during violent riots; her sister Nnedi disappears, she is injured, witnesses burned bodies, and eventually leaves with the woman's help. The retired professor encounters Ikenna Okoro, a sociology professor presumed dead since the 1967 war, who reveals he survived, escaped to Sweden via Red Cross, and has recently returned before retiring. The narrator learns of Ikenna’s wartime activism, his role in European Biafran fundraising, and his personal losses, including the death of his wife three years prior. The chapter also details the narrator’s ongoing pension struggles, his late wife Ebere’s memory, his daughter Nkiru’s life in America, current university decay, and issues like fake drugs. Kamara, a Nigerian immigrant, starts working as nanny for Neil and his partner Tracy, experiencing cultural tension, meeting Tracy in person, and reflecting on her strained marriage to Tobechi and ongoing immigration challenges. Ujunwa Ogundu attends the African Writers Workshop at the Jumping Monkey Hill resort in Cape Town, meeting organizer Edward Campbell and his wife Isabel, and joining a pan‑African cohort of writers. The workshop exposes Edward’s lecherous remarks toward her and spurs heated debates on literature, sexuality and African identity. In a parallel storyline, Ujunwa’s fictional character Chioma pursues a job at Merchant Trust Bank, works for an Ikoyi alhaji, and confronts family and gender tensions. The narrator wins the US visa lottery, stays briefly with a distant uncle in Maine, is sexually assaulted, then moves to a small Connecticut town, works as a waitress for manager Juan, sends remittances home, begins a fraught relationship with a senior university student, learns of her father’s death in Lagos, and grapples with cultural isolation. The narrator, a mother of a four‑year‑old son Ugonna, waits in the long line outside the American embassy in Lagos to apply for asylum after her son has been killed and buried. She recounts her husband’s perilous journalism against General Abacha’s regime, his arrest, torture, escape to Benin and then the United States, and his pending asylum claim. The embassy scene is marked by soldiers flogging civilians, men assaulting her, and the chaotic, overheated crowd. In the visa interview she tells the officer that her son was killed by government agents but cannot produce proof, leaving her asylum request uncertain.