I write now for all who keep their lives outside. Clothes are like a trace on paper—they tell of their owner’s trajectory. And what trajectory is visible in these photographs of clothes hanging outside, absent of their owners?

My dear Alheri, let us sit together at this table, you and I. Do you remember the first time we met? It was in Uyo, at the NYSC Camp—everyone from everywhere in the country, poured together into the same pot. It was inevitable: you, boisterous, a full Northern woman and I, curious, a man from the South. Oh, those heady days.

I. Once, in Maiduguri, I visited a photo studio. It was 2016 and Boko Haram had eaten deep into the city. Buildings were half blown up, charred, taken over by the military. Streets were deserted and under close watch by the Civilian Joint Task Force. The owner of the studio—a young man in his 30s—had come from Jos about 7 […]

It is election year in his country. The things he remembers—things he wants to forget—wake him up at the other end of the ocean.