53 pages • 1 hour read
Tola Rotimi AbrahamA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Bibike opens Part 3, jumping to 2006. She met her lover of the title’s chapter, Constantine, while she was waiting for the bus. She eventually starts calling him “Aba” after his hometown.
She describes feeling happy now that she is in love. Bibike places this in contrast with a memory of her as a child, feeling “sick with longing” (152). No one, not even her mother, understood how she could feel so ill because of it. While reflecting on this, Bibike thinks about being with Aba, mentioning the scar on his hip from two bullet wounds he’d received protecting the border. She feels that he has helped her discover new ways of being happy.
Another day, Bibike sees another woman wearing a t-shirt with Aba’s face on it that reads “Gone but not Forgotten” with birth and death dates. She follows the woman to where she works selling phones. Bibike pretends to be a customer and asks about the cost of a phone case.
Bibike then asks about the man on her shirt, and the woman mentions that it is her brother Constantine who was killed by smugglers because he was shot in the hip. The woman gets upset, and Bibike leaves.