HOME AGAIN

I GREW UP IN A QUIET neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, quiet enough to play on the streets. There were about 30 houses in the walled estate. There was only one entrance, a gate manned by security guards. They weren’t armed, but they were gruff with outsiders.

“Yes? Who are you here for?” they would ask drivers without a residence permit. The guards would pop open visitors’ trunks and peer into their backseats.

There was no traffc in our estate, no noise, almost no crime. Although there were loops of barbed wire around my house, we left our gate ajar sometimes. To step outside the estate was to step into ’90s Nigeria—a military dictatorship, political assassinations, petrol scarcities, university strikes—but inside our bubble, we were mostly safe. We were ferried to school and ferried home again. We never stayed out late. Unless we were visiting someone in