01. Obi was away in England for a little under 02. four years. He sometimes found it difficult to 03. believe that it was as short as that. It seemed 04. more like a decade than four years, which 05. with the miseries of winter when his longing 06. to return home took on the sharpness of 07. physical pain. It was in England that Nigeria 08. first became more than just a name to him. 09. That was the first great thing that England did 10. for him. But the Nigeria he returned to was in 11. many ways different from the picture he had 12. carried in his mind during those four years. 13. There were many things he could no longer 14. recognize, and others — like the slums of 15. Lagos — which he was seeing for the first 16. time. 17. As a boy in the village of Umuofia, he had 18. heard his first stories about Lagos from a 19. soldier home …….. leave from the war. Those 20. soldiers were heroes who had seen the great 21. world. They spoke of Abyssinia, Egypt, 22. Palestine, Burma and so on. Some of them 23. had been village ne’er-do-wells, but now they 24. were heroes. They had bags and bags of 25. money, and the villagers sat …….. their feet 26. to listen to their stories. One of them went 27. regularly to a market in the neighbouring 28. village and helped himself to whatever he 29. liked. He went in full uniform, breaking the 30. earth with his boots, and no one dared touch 31. him. It was said that if you touched a soldier, 32. Government would deal with you. Besides, 33. soldiers were as strong as lions because of 34. the injections they were given …….. the army. 35. It was from one of these soldiers that Obi had 36. his first picture of Lagos. 37. ‘There is no darkness there,’ he told his 38. admiring listeners, ‘because at night the 39. electric shines like the sun, and people are 40. always walking about, that is, those who want 41. to walk. If you don’t want to walk, you only 42. have to wave your hand and a pleasure car 43. stops for you.’ His audience made sounds of 44. wonderment. Then by way of digression he 45. said: ’If you see a white man, take off your 46. hat for him. The only thing he cannot do is
47. mould a human being.’

ACHEBE, Chinua. No Longer at Ease. New York /London: Everyman’s Library, 2010. p. 162.

Assinale a alternativa que apresenta termos que, conforme empregados no texto, operam como membros de uma mesma classe de palavras.