The Illegal (2 page)

Zantoroland, 2004–2018

I
T HADN’T RAINED IN WEEKS.
A
FINE LAYER OF RED DUST
had settled in the doorway, on the windowsills, under the pews and on the pulpit. Keita Ali was not supposed to be sweeping while wearing his shoes. He had asked for months before his parents relented and bought the Meb Supremes. The training shoes had cost eighty dollars. Keita had promised to lengthen their lifespan by walking barefoot except while training. But he was so in love with his Meb Supremes that today he had left the house with them hidden in his knapsack as he walked along the red clay road leading away from the family’s summer cabin in the mountains.

It was not until he reached the Faloo Zion Baptist Church and unlocked the door that he slipped on the shoes, laced them up with double knots and began sweeping and dusting.

The shoes felt as light as slippers, as snug as socks. They had the perfect tread for sure-footed running in the Red Hills, here at two thousand metres altitude. He was only ten years old and not supposed to run more than three times a week, four kilometres at a time. “You are young and must save your legs,” Keita’s father had told him. Keita had feigned compliance. His father was a smart man, but he’d never been a runner. Nobody would be the wiser if Keita snuck in a few extra, longer runs to take full advantage of training at altitude.

Spending two hours on Saturday morning volunteering in the church, pushing a broom and cleaning under Deacon Andrews’ desk,
would normally have bored Keita, but it thrilled him to feel the new shoes hug his feet. Sometimes, after he said good night to his parents, he put on the Meb Supremes and wore them to bed, imagining his Olympic victory in twelve, sixteen or twenty years. Once he had taken the fantasy to its conclusion—crowds cheering and the president giving Keita the gold medal and the bonus that would make him a rich man—he would take off the shoes and put them away, so that his mother wouldn’t catch him in the morning. Then he would fall asleep listening to the sound of his father typing in the next room.

Keita’s father, Hassane Moustafa Ali, had a silly nickname—Yoyo—but he was a serious man: always working, always writing. Yoyo kept two manual Olivetti typewriters, with paper and spare ribbons handy, as well as battery-powered lanterns so he could keep writing at all times, day and night. The authorities in Zantoroland cut the electricity every night at ten o’clock, and it didn’t come back on until seven in the morning. And then there were also blackouts. Yoyo kept a supply of candles and stuck to his typewriters. He paid Keita’s older sister, Charity, to edit his copy and retype it on the computer. And he paid Keita to check all the connections for the home network, to keep them free of dust and double-check that Yoyo’s stories for newspapers around the world had been sent out properly by email.

Keita settled down every night to the sound of his father’s fingers hammering. He would listen for the ding at the end of each line and then Yoyo slamming the carriage return lever. Ding, slam, hammer-hammer-hammer. Ding, slam, hammer-hammer-hammer. Keita sometimes imagined what his father was thinking.
This one is for the
New York Times.
Two more like it, and I can pay for a new roof. This one is for the
Toronto Star.
So I can buy tickets for Keita and me to go watch the Zantoroland National Track and Field Championships next month.
Keita longed to attend the races with his father. They would watch Mohamed Paloma defend his 5,000-metre title. As Paloma rounded the final turn on the final lap, he would be right on the
shoulders of his competitors and preparing to outsprint them to the finish line.
Kick it, kick it, kick it, baby
, he and his father would shout for Paloma, as their national hero set a new world record.

Yoyo kept confidential story notes and drafts hidden in a row of teapots on a kitchen shelf. Pieces for the
New York Times
were folded and rolled into the red teapot. The green teapot held stories for the
Guardian
. Potentially incendiary stories went in the yellow teapot. As he returned to imagining what his father was writing, Keita wondered whether a person could be punished for having thoughts, or only for committing those thoughts to paper.

“Papa, what’s incendiary?” Keita had asked one day.

Charity had cut in: “Are you aware that if you open the dictionary, you can locate any word in twenty seconds? Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Papa,” Keita had repeated, and his father had explained.

As Keita swept the red-orange dust, he wondered if the stains on his shoes would reveal that he had been wearing them while working in the church. No, they wouldn’t—running on the roads would cause the same discoloration. As the dust flew up in puffs around his heels, Keita imagined the world’s fastest marathoner racing over a kilometre-long bed of Zantoroland dust. With each footfall, a ball of fire would erupt from his heels.
Incendiary
. One day, the licks of fire would scorch the path Keita ran, all alone and way ahead of his competitors, toward the Olympic Stadium. His parents and sister would fly in to watch him win the race that would change their lives forever.

Outside, a car horn blew repeatedly. Mad, unabashed honking. Keita set his broom down. It was just past eleven.

From the church door, he saw a pickup truck with men standing in the back. From his father, Keita had learned of the situations where strange men were best avoided: coming out of bars, roaming the streets in mobs and looting during blackouts. Unless they were workers en route to diamond mines or banana plantations, men standing in the back of pickup trucks were also not to be trusted.

The truck travelled slowly along the road, still a good distance
away. Keita estimated that he had thirty seconds, maybe a minute. He started the stopwatch function of his running watch. He closed the doors and turned off the lights so they would think the church was shut and empty. Keita peered through a window. The truck was now idling at the foot of the lane, forty metres from the church door. The men were shouting. It was hard to make out the words. Political slogans? Keita kneeled low to stay out of sight. He heard the truck tires turn on the road. The shouting gradually diminished in volume. Keita looked out the window to see the truck pulling out of sight. One minute, five seconds.

Keita timed everything. He knew how long it took him to jog once around the 400-metre track: two minutes, fifteen seconds. He knew how long it took him to race the same distance flat-out: fifty-nine seconds. Keita knew how long it took to help Charity do dishes: on average, eight minutes. How long it took to sweep the floor. How long to walk to school. Run to school. Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Keita even knew how long it took to lace up both running shoes. Cleaning the church did not take long: thirty-five minutes, if he worked quickly. He resumed sweeping.

The church doors were flung open. In came Deacon Andrews and ten choristers. Charity was among them. Keita did not hate his sister, but she was eleven years old and teeming with bossiness, and he didn’t want to be one single bit like her: head of her debating team, top of the class in all subjects.

Keita ran up to the deacon. “Men just drove by in a truck! Shouting.”

“Threats?” the deacon asked.

“I couldn’t hear, exactly.”

Deacon Andrews put one hand on Keita’s shoulder. “Hooligans,” the deacon said, “cannot interfere with the will of God.” But he promised to keep the rehearsal short, just to be safe.

K
EITA STOOD BY THE WALL TO LISTEN TO THE CHOIR REHEARSE
“Rock My Soul (In the Bosom of Abraham).” Keita didn’t know the choristers that well. He had met Mrs. Rowe, Mrs. Pollock, Miss Shinozaki and Miss Dixon. He didn’t know their first names and had never seen the inside of their homes, but when they opened their mouths to sing, Keita felt as if he had known and loved them forever.

Keita listened for a while and then walked out to the porch that wrapped around the front and sides of the church. Wind had deposited the red dust everywhere, so he swept vigorously for a few minutes. He did not mind the task. Soon he could return home to a pancake lunch. He looked up and past the two parked cars that had brought the choristers, down the church lane and along the dirt road as far as the rolling hills allowed him to see. There, a kilometre down the road, cresting one hill before descending the slope after it, flew a pack of twenty runners.

Keita shouted into the church, “Marathoners!”

The hymns stopped abruptly and the choristers hurried out to join him on the porch. Mrs. Pollock put her hand on Keita’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “One day, you’ll run with them.”

Keita heard Charity compliment Mrs. Pollock on her new blue dress. His sister would say anything to get ahead. She was as thin as he was but several inches taller. She stood like a schoolmaster, hair pulled into a bun, lips taut, chin up, hand on hip. Little Miss Perfect. Even on the newspaper route that the siblings shared, Charity delivered every paper on time and pounded on doors to collect payment. Keita, on the other hand, bribed his friends to help, promising his mother’s cookies and tea. He avoided walking door to door to collect payment, knowing that Charity would pick up the slack.

From a distance, the pack of runners resembled a cloud of dust in the wind. “Look, Charity,” Keita whispered. “Look at them coming. Look how fast they go.”

Keita felt a surge of pride. His country produced the fastest marathoners in the world. Zantorolanders had swept first, second and third place last year, two oceans away in the Boston Marathon. If
you won Olympic gold for Zantoroland, every citizen would know your name. The president would give you a free house and a hundred thousand dollars. Later, you could have a coaching job for life. You would be world famous, like the Eritrean American marathoner Meb Keflezighi.

The runners were bunched tightly together. They all wore the same gear: running shoes, white socks, white running shorts stained with the red dust, and the blue-and-red singlets reserved for the top twenty runners in the national marathon squad. The runners spilled along the road like blood out of veins, passing over yet another hill. Brown arms swung in loose unison and legs churned smoothly, feet nearly soundless on the dirt road, apart from the crunching of pebbles. When they were within earshot, Deacon Andrews led the choristers into song with another verse from “Rock My Soul.”

As the runners drew near, they sang right back:

So high, you can’t get over it

So low, you can’t get under it

So wide, you can’t get around it

You gotta go through the door.

The runners sang well and in tune, all twenty of them, raising their hands in salute as they flew past the church. None of them seemed to be suffering. Perhaps it was early in the run. Keita followed every bending knee, every foot touching down only to resume flight. And then, in an instant, the runners rounded a curve in the road and disappeared.

The choristers went back inside and rehearsed five more songs, and then Deacon Andrews told them to drive straight home. Just to be safe, in case the troublemakers came by again.

Charity took Keita’s wrist. “Come home,” she said.

Keita pulled his arm free. “I’ll stay and help the deacon.”

“Dad and Mom would want you to come home now.”

“Dad and Mom said I had to come here to clean. To work for my shoes.”

She touched his wrist again, gently this time. She didn’t usually touch him like that. She gave him a little smile. When she wasn’t trying to rule the world, Charity was a good sister.

“Brother,” she said. “Come with me.”

“I’ll be safe. In these shoes, I’m uncatchable.”

“I’ll tell Mom and Dad to expect you in an hour. Don’t make them wait or worry.” Charity left with the choristers.

Keita ran his cloth along the varnished pews. The deacon picked up another cloth, and joined him.

“What is your father up to these days?”

“Writing,” Keita said. “What else?”

“He’s the only man who is trying to tell the world about the Faloo people. We used to be looked up to in this country. Politicians, business leaders, shopkeepers. But now we’re in danger. Your father is a great man. Courageous. Some might say too courageous.”

Keita nodded politely, but he wasn’t sure what that meant. How could a person be
too
courageous? He stepped out to shake his dusting cloth on the porch, and saw them coming. Ten men, carrying big sticks and cricket bats. Not the same men who had been in the truck. Different men. Swaying a bit on the road. Were they dancing? No. They were drunk.

Keita shouted for the deacon, who rushed to the porch. “You must leave,” he said. “Now.”

He turned and locked the doors. Then he took a cellphone from his pocket. Keita heard a woman answer.

“Martha,” the deacon said, “get the constable to come out to the church. Troublemakers are on the way. Love you.”

The deacon picked up his Bible. Keita stood with him. It didn’t feel right to leave him alone. A line of sweat ran down the side of the deacon’s forehead. The men were just a hundred metres away now, and Keita could hear them shouting like football hooligans. What did they want? Every second word from their mouths was a curse.
Keita could run! He was the quickest boy in his school over every race, from 100 to 1,500 metres. He could run, and they would never catch him. But what about Deacon Andrews?

“Fucking Faloos and their fucking church,” one of the men called out. “Let’s burn this shithole down!”

“Keita, I will teach these young men the language of God,” said the deacon. “You get running.”

Keita ran across the yard to the road, but stopped about fifty metres away. The deacon had walked out to meet the men. Keita didn’t understand why these men hated Faloos. Keita’s mother was a Faloo, but his father was a Bamileke, from Cameroon in Africa. Yoyo had written for a newspaper in France about the growing unpopularity of Faloos as shopkeepers and business people. Keita wished that he were 100 percent Bamileke, like his father. He wished that he, too, had come from Africa—a continent thousands of kilometres to the west of Zantoroland. Maybe then these men wouldn’t hate him.