The following version of this story was used to create the guide: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. A Private Experience. The Guardian, 2008.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's third person short story, A Private Experience, is written in the present, past, and future tenses, and employs an atypical narrative structure. The following summary adheres to the present tense, and a linear form.

While on vacation from university, sisters Chika and Nnedi travel to Kano to visit their auntie. Curious to explore the city beyond their auntie's gated community, the sisters venture into the marketplace. While Chika is shopping for oranges, Nnedi wanders off in search of groundnuts. Shortly thereafter, a riot breaks out in the streets. People begin running and screaming, and the market fills with smoke. Chika cannot find her sister anywhere. She does not know who is who, nor why the fighting has begun.

Suddenly a woman calls out to her. She tells Chika she is running towards the danger, and leads her away from the chaos. Chika follows her out of the market and into an abandoned shop. Once inside, Chika notices the woman's accent, facial structure, and dress, identifying them as signs that she is a Hausa Muslim. Meanwhile, Chika wonders if the woman is noting her rosary ring and pale complexion as obvious signs that she is an Igbo Christian. The more the women talk, the more determined Chika is to prove how different they are from one another. This is the first time Chika has ever been to Kano. She is educated, and comes from money. She does not want Kano, its people, culture, or history to have anything to do with her. She does not want to believe that riots like the one in the marketplace have the power to threaten her secure reality.

As the hours pass, Chika learns that she is not the only one who has lost a loved one in the chaos. The woman says that her young daughter, Halima, has also gone missing. She begins to cry, and Chika notices her humanity. The woman also complains about discomfort from breastfeeding, and Chika examines her. The moment creates a shift in Chika's emotional center. Suddenly she wants to connect with and relate to the woman. She lies, and says that her mother has also had six children, and suffered from the same pain.

Shortly thereafter, the woman discovers a rusty tap in the corner of the shop. Though all of the shops on the street have been slated for demolition, abandoned for months, the tap miraculously produces water. The woman uses the water to wash, and begins praying. Chika has never believed in God, but is filled with a sudden longing for faith. She wishes some divine entity might deliver her, and return her sister.

After the woman finishes praying, Chika decides to leave. Out in the street, she prays that some magical or supernatural power will undo everything that has happened. Then she sees a burned body in the road, and becomes overwhelmed by terror. She races back to the shop, where she and the woman notice a cut on her leg. The woman cleans the wound and wraps it in her headscarf.

When dawn comes, the woman speaks with someone through the window. The riot has ended, and they must leave before the soldiers come. Chika asks the woman to keep the scarf, in case her wound continues bleeding.

Chika walks all the way home to her auntie's, where she finds her auntie pacing and cursing herself for ever having invited Chika and Nnedi to Kano. They then travel the city with a policeman in search of Nnedi. Throughout the drive, Chika sees the burned bodies in the streets, the burned skeletons of cars, and considers what has been lost. Later, she pastes photos of her sister around the market and stores. Her family holds a series of Masses, desperate for Nnedi's return. Nnedi is never found.

No matter what Chika hears and reads in the news about the riots, she feels angry and despairing. The media has sterilized a conflict that cannot be articulated. Chika does not want to hear about the history of violence between the Muslims and non-Muslims. She will never forget the grace and kindness the Hausa Muslim woman showed her.