“What are you doing here?”
“We live here.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.”
“But how?”
“We survived.”
The black car moved slowly through the streets of Lagos.
In the back seat, Amara Okafor sat with her legs crossed, her face turned toward the window, but she was not really seeing anything. Not the traffic. Not the buildings. Not the woman selling plantain chips by the roadside.
She was looking at the city the way someone looks at something that used to belong to them but no longer does.
Amara was twenty-eight years old. Her cream-colored suit fit perfectly. Her red-soled heels were spotless. Her briefcase, sitting beside her, was filled with contracts, land surveys, and development proposals. Her phone had not stopped vibrating since six that morning.
To the world, she had everything.
Money. Power. A company that carried her family name. A face that had appeared on business magazines before she turned twenty-seven.
But if anyone had looked closely into her eyes, they would have seen something else.
Something empty.
Something like a beautiful mansion with every light turned off.
“Ma, we’ll be there in twenty minutes,” her driver, Mr. Solomon, said from the front seat. “Traffic is light today.”
“Good,” Amara replied.
She did not smile. She rarely smiled anymore.
She was going to inspect an old house.
Her old house.
The house where she had once lived with her husband before everything fell apart. The house she had not seen in seven years.
A development company wanted to buy every property on that street. They planned to demolish the houses and build a shopping complex. Amara would receive more than two hundred million naira for her old home.
It was good business.
Smart business.
That was what she told herself.
But deep inside, her stomach tightened as if something in her body already knew what she was about to find.
The car passed the glass towers of Victoria Island, the expensive restaurants, the boutiques, and the smooth roads. Slowly, the city began to change. The buildings became shorter. The walls became stained and cracked. The roads grew rougher. The air filled with generator fumes and the smell of frying oil.
Amara sat a little straighter.
She knew this area.
Ajegunle.
