The first call Bonja received the morning after he returned from France came from his only surviving sibling’s spouse.

​“Brother,” she had begun in a voice that sounded terrified, “my husband is very sick.” She concluded the last statement with a low wailing sound. Bonja asked her to calm down and tell him what happened.

Bonja looked at his watch and noted that the representative from Triang Square should be in his office in five minutes. He thought of sending a quick text to his latest mistress, but immediately decided against it. She had a habit of calling him each time he texted her.

A work of creative nonfiction based on the night of April 15, 2014, when armed men suspected to belong to the Boko Haram terrorist group abducted several female students from a Federal Government Secondary School in Borno state, Nigeria.