And I am trying to remember the mission. I am trying to be remembering why we are downloading all these rememberings, and I am seeing the hard drives that the Enyemakas are transferring the information to, and it is these hard drives that we will give to people when we return to the city, and I am trying to think of my duty, but then Xifeng is holding me and not letting me move.

I am wanting to tell Xifeng thank you, but my tongue is not moving in my mouth, so I am just letting her hold me until my head is no longer paining me.

CHAPTER

7

“In the beginning,” Peter says around a mouthful of spaghetti, slurping a noodle so that it smacks his nose with sauce, “we were on the side of the government, and we were against the rebels. I was a child, so I didn’t know sides, but we had government stations broadcast on our BoTas and iFlexes.”

Amy sits to Ify’s left and twirls pasta around her fork. She leans toward Ify as though to whisper some conspiracy and says, quite loudly, “Peter’s father worked in the mining industry and was apparently very high up in the food chain.” She looks at Peter, and Ify worries she will wink at the poor boy. “On a first-name basis with the president, right?” When Peter nods, Amy nods too, satisfied with herself. “Tell Ify about the bakery.”

Peter turns his eyes to Ify. “When you’re a child, you don’t know what revolution is or what a regime is. You only know who puts suya in your wrapper on the street or who turns off the light to your room when you go to sleep.” He talks of these things to Ify as though she were oyinbo just like Amy and Paige. Like she hadn’t spent so much of her life in exactly the same place he is describing. But she grits her teeth because something is strange about this boy. “I had everything I could ask for. I wanted for nothing.” Where did this boy learn his English? His accent is gone. “Electronics, trips into town by rail or bus. We were wealthy. So wealthy that I would be brought to the front of the line when I went to the bakery to collect bread for my family. But then fighting came closer and closer to our village and we couldn’t go out and play as far as we would before.”