June 12 Street

June 12 Street smelled like somebody's mother was cooking, and for a man who had not eaten in two days that was the same thing as a welcome sign.

It had taken AJ most of the afternoon to get there. He followed the container trucks east until the road turned to puddles and the puddles turned to a lake with a road somewhere under it, and then he saw it: a long, high wall with watchtowers, which had to be Kirikiri prison, and across the road from it a gate with a painted sign. Abraham Adesyan Estate. Outside the gate there were benches under a canopy, faded posters, and a parked police car with its windows down, playing the radio to nobody.

An officer with a clipboard and a face like a closed shop looked him up and down. "Welcome to the queue. Give me your story before you give me your smile."

AJ gave him the story. All of it, very fast, ending with a name: Chuks, who cooks. The officer's face did not open, exactly, but it unlocked. The name Chuks seemed to work at this gate the way passwords work in films.

Inside, two more officers were leaning on the barrier. One of them did not look up from his phone. "Look at the shoes," he said. "No laces. This one walked from Libya."

"I've never been to Libya," said AJ.

"That," said the officer, still scrolling, "is exactly what a Libya man would say."

AJ was too tired to argue. He would come to regret that.

He smelled the pot before he saw it. Halfway down June 12 Street, outside a busy canteen with soldiers eating at plastic tables, a big man in an apron stood over a coal pot, stirring with a long spoon and singing along, badly, to a radio. He was wider than AJ remembered and taller than seemed fair. He looked up, and the spoon stopped.

"AJ! Na you?" Is it you? "Come, come. I'm just turning this stew. Have you eaten?"

"Not since they let me out."

Chuks took one look at him, and his face did a lot of things at once. "Look at your arms. Those cell mosquitoes mapped you like Lagos traffic."

"Mosquitoes all night. Then the police beat me. Then the guys in the cell joined in."

"Because of the accent, abi?" Abi: right? isn't it? "Two weeks since London deported you, and suddenly you're a foreigner here."

"One of them kept calling me 'oyinbo.'" A foreigner, a white man. "I'm as Naija as he is." Naija: Nigerian, the way Nigerians say it.

"Forget them. You're home now. Sit down small, the rice is almost done."

AJ sat on an upturned paint bucket. Chuks's mother, it turned out, had told Chuks everything weeks ago, because Lagos mothers and London mothers share news faster than any government. Chuks had not known AJ was coming. He did not seem to need to know. He just put a plate in AJ's hands: jollof rice, the smoky tomato rice that every West African family insists their own mother makes best, with a piece of chicken on top and fried plantain at the side.

"I should call my uncle," AJ said, with his mouth full.

"Pastor? He's still in Benin?"

"Benin City. Edo State. He'll want to pray over me for an hour."

"Then eat first. Nobody prays well on an empty stomach."

AJ ate first. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. "I know," said Chuks, with great seriousness, and then looked pleased for a long time.

Room 3

Chuks took him to No. 3, Iloro House, a long, low bungalow with a veranda and a wooden bench out front. "Face-me-I-face-you," Chuks explained: a rooming house where every door looks straight across a corridor at another door, with one kitchen and one bathroom for everybody. Eight rooms. In Room 1 a mother and her children; in Room 2 a student bent over a textbook; in Room 4 a sewing machine rattling behind the door. Room 5 belonged to an old man who greeted AJ with a nod so formal it felt like a handshake.

Room 3 had a mattress, a window, a hook on the wall and a fan. AJ stood in the middle of it and found he could not speak.

"It's not London," Chuks said.

"It's got a door that's mine," said AJ. "That's better than London."

Chuks pressed ₦2,000 into his hand, "for water and pepper," and went back to his pot. That money lasted about forty minutes.

The door of Room 6, directly across the corridor, swung open, and a young man in a pressed shirt and a much better watch than the building could explain stepped out with a phone at his ear. "Abeg, give me one second... I'll call you back, boss." Abeg: please. He hung up and opened his arms. "AJ! The London man himself. Chidozie Nnadi, Room 6, right across the corridor. Everybody calls me Big Break."

"Big Break? So what do you do?"

"Economics graduate, second class upper. A job? No, my brother. Nine-to-five is how they keep a visionary small. I'm in opportunities."

"Opportunities. Right."

Dozie had several. There was BreakCoin, launching Friday: "The white paper is three pages, but the logo is extremely professional. Get in before the Americans hear." There were forex signals from a guy in Dubai. "Green arrow, I buy. Red arrow, I pray." By the end of the conversation AJ, who had been on June 12 Street for less than three hours, had lent Dozie ₦500 against a fortune that was, apparently, about to land.

"You're a real one," said Dozie. "Mark this day. When this one lands, I'll pay you back double. Maybe triple. Let's say double to be safe."

At eight o'clock exactly, the lights went out.

The whole street went dark at once, and then, one by one, the generators started, coughing and grumbling, until the night was full of their engines. AJ sat on the veranda bench in the hot dark, slapping at mosquitoes out of habit, and looked across the road. Over the trees, Kirikiri's wall lights were still burning, white and steady. The prison had better electricity than the free people.

Morning

He was on the bench again at half past six, because the mattress and his ribs had not agreed on anything. Across the street, at the gate of No. 5, a young woman stood with a white coat folded over one arm and a heavy textbook under the other, checking the road.

"Hiya," said AJ.

She looked at him for a while. "Start by saying hello properly. Then we will see."

He crossed the street and said hello properly.

"You're the new face at No. 3? I'm Funke, No. 5."

"AJ. Just got back."

"Welcome to June 12 Street. NEPA takes the light most nights around eight, so keep a flashlight." NEPA, he would learn, is what everybody still calls the power company, years after it stopped being called that.

"Noted," said AJ, who had noted it at one minute past eight the night before.

"And if Chuks offers you food, say yes. He's been cooking for the whole street since I moved in."

"I said yes twice."

"Good. Then you are not completely foolish." A teal-grey car nosed in from the north gate and stopped for her. She got in, and as it pulled away she looked back once, briefly, which AJ decided to count.

A shadow fell over him. Chuks, apron on, market bag on his arm, was watching him with enormous interest.

"Close your mouth," said Chuks. "Flies will enter. Eat your breakfast. Today I show you the bush."