“Boston usually leaves an extra spot for me. I’ll get you in. What’s the second condition?”
“When are you leaving?”
“I’m flying to the United States tonight.”
“I propose to travel with you.”
“It will cost me extra to get you a flight that fast. You will have to run like hell in America to make this up to me.”
“Understood.”
Hamm stood for a handshake. Keita risked taking it and was relieved that the agent did not attempt to crush his hand.
AS SOON AS HE LANDED AT BOSTON’S LOGAN INTERNATIONAL Airport, he began emailing and calling Charity. He left more messages on her voice mail, but still she did not reply. He had imagined that she would greet him with hugs, screams of joy and tears. They would console each other for the death of their father, and Charity would be able to advise Keita about how to apply for asylum in the United States. Perhaps he would be allowed to stay because of his promise as a marathoner. If not, he would have to go into hiding until a solution presented itself.
Keita had imagined that after the tears and the strategic discussion, Charity would feed him and fête him and tell him all about her life at Harvard, that she would feign disdain that he had chosen the path of athletics over a career of the mind but nevertheless be proud of her brother and bring her friends out to cheer for him on race day. For his sister, he wanted to turn in the fastest race of his life.
The phone lines at home were unreliable, but Charity had always kept in touch. Keita tried to remember when she had last called. Finally, he used some of his precious cash to take a taxi to her apartment. The note Keita had dictated days earlier remained tacked to Charity’s door. Her landlord said that though her rent was paid, he had not seen her in a few days.
The race organizers had shifted the date of the marathon to early March, because in recent years temperatures had climbed too high on the traditional race date in April. But this was a cold March day. Exposed to the freezing wind for thirty minutes before the starter’s pistol fired, Keita did not feel well. During the long wait, other runners kept shoving past him. When the gun finally went off, Keita tried to follow the leaders.
There were so many elite runners pushing and shoving that just fifteen minutes into the race, he was left unfocused and spent. The lead runners from Zantoroland ran in a pack to protect one another from the shoving, but they were moving too fast for Keita. It was the most prestigious marathon in the world, but Keita’s thoughts kept turning to his father and his sister. Where was she? To make matters worse, the hernia was throbbing, and Keita experienced a dizzy spell. He had neglected to drink enough water before the race, and then he missed the first water station. His lips were cracking, and he thought obsessively about drinking water.
Within eight kilometres, he felt he was chasing runners he would never catch. He felt energy draining out of him. The pack of lead runners dropped him, and then the chase pack of twenty runners dropped him. After ten kilometres, he slowed to an easy pace. If he had no chance of running a fast time, it was best to save his legs for another race and take this as an easy training run. But even at a pace he could have managed as a teenager at altitude, Keita now felt ill and desperately thirsty. At water station after water station, he drank greedily and spilled water all over himself. His hamstring clamped so tightly that he had to walk up the last part of Heartbreak Hill. Keita struggled to the finish line in 2:35. He finished sixty-fifth and was the slowest of the fifteen Zantorolanders in the race.
That was it. Keita had no chance of staying in America to build his running career. Hamm would send him home. Keita would be made to disappear one night. His life would end before it had truly begun. No career, no family, no lasting creation or crowning achievement, nothing.
Anton Hamm came to see him in the race recovery area, where Keita was downing cup after cup of electrolyte drink. Keita expected that Hamm would be furious, but he was surprised to see the man appearing calm.
“Not to worry,” Hamm said, clapping his giant palm on Keita’s shoulder. “Everybody has bad races. You just need a little more time, but not in America. You need a lot less competition. You need to be in Freedom State. How busted up are you?”
“I’m okay. I had a bad day, so I took it easy. My legs will be fine.”
Hamm said that he would give Keita two weeks in Freedom State to rest and do light workouts before being tested in a fifteen-kilometre race.
THEY FLEW FROM LOGAN AIRPORT ON A NON-STOP, FIFTEENHOUR trip to Freedom State. Keita sat in economy and Anton Hamm in first class, and as they exited the plane together, Hamm repeated his instructions.
“Nod and indicate that you understand, and otherwise, defer to me. I have your passport, your visa, your papers. Everything will be fine.”
They passed through three lines of security with armed guards and immigration and customs officials in uniform. The first line was there to inspect his passport, the second to inspect his visa, the third to go through his bags. At each, Anton Hamm explained that Keita Ali was an elite marathoner from Zantoroland, fresh from the Boston Marathon, come to enter races in Freedom State. Hamm said he was Keita’s manager and that he would ensure Keita obeyed all of the country’s laws, and then return him to his wife and children and his job as the groundskeeper in a tennis club in Zantoroland before the month-long visitor’s visa had expired.
Tennis club? Wife and children? All Keita had to do was nod and smile and watch his visa and passport get stamped and then go back into the pocket inside Hamm’s business suit. With that, he was allowed into the third-richest nation in the world.
Inside Clarkson International Airport, Hamm bought Keita a meal and a pack of gum and a few magazines, and then they boarded another flight for Metallurgia, three hours to the east.
IN METALLURGIA, THE FOURTH-LARGEST CITY IN FREEDOM State, Anton Hamm put Keita up in a guest house in a training centre for runners. Keita had a clean room with its own toilet and shower. The guest house had a television, daily newspapers from around the world and rows upon rows of books. They fed him, cafeteria-style, as much as he wanted to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and they showed him the starting point for dozens of kilometres of running trails.
Keita did not dare ask any other runners lodged at the training centre how a person from Zantoroland might slip into hiding in Freedom State. But he knew that he would have to flee before his one-month visa expired, and before Hamm chose to send him back to Zantoroland. Even if Keita ran well in Freedom State, his time here was limited. To stay alive, he had only one option: to go into hiding before he was returned home.
One evening, he went into town to watch a movie and afterwards wandered into a bar. With some hesitation, he approached a black man sitting alone and asked how he could get to AfricTown, which he knew was where the Zantorolanders lived.
“Take the bus to Clarkson,” the man said in a low voice, “and when you get there, walk south on AfricTown Road and follow the people.”
“And where can I find this bus?” Keita asked.
“Three blocks down. Corner of Millard and Hadfield Streets. But be careful in AfricTown.”
“Why?”
“Police raid it, looking for Illegals. I wouldn’t go there until things settle down.”
“What do you mean?” Keita said.
“It’s never been safe to be illegal here, but since the government got elected, they’ve been deporting people as fast as they can. I don’t know what you’re running from, brother, but be careful of what you are running to.”
Keita asked where a person could hide.
“No papers?” the man asked.
“No,” Keita said.
The man said that hotels were obliged to call the police when prospective guests arrived without documentation. But some private homes and guest houses took people in—cash only and no questions asked.
“Thanks, brother,” Keita said.
“Peace.” The stranger shook his hand.
; Keita hesitated, but then he could not stop himself from asking, “Could I use your phone? I need to call my sister, urgently, but she’s in the United States. I’ll pay you for it.”
“Help yourself, man. Don’t worry about the money.”
Keita called his sister, but she was still not answering and now her voice-mail box was full. A knot formed in his stomach. Would he find Charity? Was she alive? Keita handed back the phone, thanked the fellow and walked away. He had to force back his tears. He had no family with him. No friends. Not a soul who cared the least for him. It was an odd feeling to walk the streets of a country knowing that not a single person knew your name or a thing about you—or would notice if you lived or died.
A WEEK BEFORE THE FIFTEEN-KILOMETRE TEST RACE IN Metallurgia, Anton Hamm announced that he was leaving for a business trip out of town but would be back in time to watch. He took Keita’s passport, visa and ID with him. All Keita had was his clothes, the snacks that he had been hoarding from the dining room, the money that he had been saving (twenty dollars a day from Hamm for spending money), plus the two-thousand-dollar signing bonus.
Early the next morning, during breakfast, Keita was summoned to the office for a phone call from Hamm. He reassured Hamm that his run the day before had gone well, his legs felt fine and he was ready for the race.
After Keita hung up, he returned to his room and stuffed his clothes, five apples, four pears, three peanut butter sandwiches, two energy bars and a litre of water into his large knapsack. He shoved his small knapsack inside it, too. He put on his running gear and laced up his shoes. Keita hid his cash in a zippered pocket inside his knapsack, but he kept a fifty-dollar bill in each of his pants pockets. Then he slipped out the door and jogged, with the knapsack pulled against his back, twelve kilometres to the Metallurgia transit station. He paid $150 in cash for a one-way ticket, and in the bathroom, he used the toilet, washed and towelled off, applied deodorant, changed into street clothes and brushed his teeth. Feeling and smelling clean and hoping he looked about as unassuming and ordinary as any black man could look in a country known for deporting every Illegal it could catch, Keita Ali boarded an intercity bus that would leave in a matter of minutes. A day-old Clarkson Post had been left on the seat he chose in the middle of the bus, and he made a point of looking at the sports pages because that seemed like something an ordinary Freedom Statonian would do. Perhaps the strategy worked. Nobody stopped, interrogated or looked at him. The bus left at the scheduled hour, although it was only half full at the time.
It was the strangest bus ride Keita had ever taken. There were no chickens or goats aboard. There was only one passenger per seat, and no one stood in the aisles or sat among luggage on top of the bus. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even have luggage on top of the bus. Keita stowed his knapsack in a space above his seat.
Not a single person sang or laughed or danced during the twenty-six-hour trip. Nobody turned on a transistor radio; in fact, no one seemed to carry one. No strangers met, argued about politics, shared a sandwich or discovered that they were distant relatives. Keita looked out the windows anxiously: Would they come up to police stations or army barracks and be halted there? Would roving bands of soldiers board the bus? There were no checkpoints along the highway, and no soldiers entered the bus to find his passport missing and wait for a bribe. Every six hours, the bus stopped at a gas station and passengers were told that they had ten minutes to get out and stretch or buy a snack. Except to relieve himself, guzzle water and refill his bottle, Keita stayed on the bus, slouched low in his seat.
Apart from the absence of human conversation, it was the most comfortable, commodious, odourless and painless bus ride in the history of mankind. At the end of the trip, which terminated at the very hour the bus schedule had predicted, Keita and forty-nine other passengers were discharged from the vehicle. He followed the others, all of whom acted as if they were complete strangers, as if they had never travelled together or eaten side by side or slept under the very same moving roof.
Keita Ali was anonymous, alone and about to go underground in Clarkson, population 4.5 million—the capital and the biggest city of Freedom State. Nobody knew him here. If something happened to him, nobody would think to notify his sister. Nobody would even know where to find her. Keita Ali could not afford to get caught. If he were deported, he would likely be executed. And then Charity would be alone. If any immigration official or police officer approached him, Keita would run for his life.
PART TWO
Freedom State, 2018
CHAPTER FIVE
VIOLA HILL PASSED THE TWO-KILOMETRE MARKER in her racing chair. She was making good time on the harbourfront boardwalk. At seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, there were no toddlers dashing out in front of her, no grannies standing in the middle of the path, no oblivious smokers and no dogs off-leash as Viola wheeled at sixteen kilometres an hour. The sun was coming up. To Viola’s right, it struck the waters of Ten-Mile Inlet at a low angle, and to her left, it washed the white stones of the government buildings in soft light. Viola would do a U-turn at the commercial harbour and get back home in time to shower, eat and make it to her shift at the paper. Viola liked to arrive early. Always.
Viola had a cellphone strapped to her arm and plugged into her earbuds. Mick Jagger was getting no satisfaction. Damn right. Viola had been trying for two years to get off the sports page, and she couldn’t get any satisfaction either.
Viola had nothing against sports. She liked to work out, and she liked the burn in her biceps, triceps and deltoids when she wheeled three mornings a week. Yes, she liked sports, but she wanted to write about news. She wanted people to look for her stories and read them, without knowing or caring that she was blagaybulled—black, gay and disabled—and proud of it. “Blagaybulled” was Viola’s own word, and she wanted her words to fly without being weighed down by her identity. In sports, she could not escape it. Every team manager, athlete and sports reader knew her. And she knew them. She knew which ones were thinking, Here comes that bigmouth in the wheelchair.
She was strong. And fast. Viola easily overtook walkers and joggers on the boardwalk. So it surprised her when a runner came up from behind and shot past her. This was no jogger. This man was flying. Slim, fit and running faster than 3:30 per kilometre but not even looking like he was working. Black. Short, tightly cropped hair. Medium height. He wasn’t wearing long, loose, baggy shorts that hung almost all the way to the knees. No sir, this man had proper marathon shorts, slit up the side of the thighs. His hamstrings were as well defined as rope, and his calves bulged like rocks. He lifted off the balls of his feet as he entered his stride and spent more time airborne than on the ground. Viola enjoyed the view of his working backside until he disappeared around a bend, and then she wheeled faster to bring him back into sight. As she rounded the bend, only a kilometre from the end of the boardwalk and the piers by the commercial harbour, where the multicoloured containers were lifted on and off the decks of the huge ships, the runner was coming back her way. At the same time that she saw him—mid-twenties, baby face, clean-shaven—she heard the sirens.
The runner said, “I’d turn back, if I were you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Mob, up ahead.” And then he was gone.
Viola kept wheeling onward. If there was a mob, that’s where she would head—and quicker than before. She tilted forward into a racing position and pumped harder with her arms, catching the wheels with her gloved hands and pushing down to accelerate. What were the sirens for, and where was this mob? There. Where the boardwalk ended, up ahead. Five police cruisers, two paddy wagons and a handful of Freedom State Immigration Enforcement vehicles were parked helter-skelter in a lot. There was a boat at the wharf. About ten metres long. Chipped paint. The Voyager. Rough shape. But the boat wasn’t as shabby as the small crowd of black people on deck. One by one, they were being led stumbling over a gangplank and onto the pier, where they were handcuffed by a police officer and led to
the paddy wagon.
Viola wheeled up to the pier. “Excuse me,” she called up to an immigration enforcement official. “Excuse me. What’s going on here?”
He ignored her.
“Hey, buddy, what’s going on?” she said.
“Beat it,” he said.
Viola removed the phone from the strap on her shoulder and began filming. All those leaving the boat were black. Mostly men. All thin.
The immigration official turned to face her directly. “I said beat it.”
“I’m with the Telegram,” she said.
“And I’m Barack Obama,” he said. The man was as white as paste.
She wheeled past him, right up to the police paddy wagon into which the refugees were being shoved. She saw five men and a woman in there and took a picture with her cellphone.
A man was led in handcuffs right past her.
“Sir,” she said, “I’m with the Clarkson Evening Telegram. Who are you, and why are you being arrested?”
He was about twenty-five years old and bleeding from a cut above his eye.
“Did someone hit you?” Viola asked.
The man took a look at the officer leading him, and said, “No, I just bumped my head.”
“Where are you from?”
“No talking to media,” the police officer said.
“There is no law that says you can’t talk to the media,” Viola said. She tried again. “Where are you from?”
“Zantoroland,” the man said. The officer rushed him into the paddy wagon.
“You, ma’am,” Viola said to a woman. She was about twenty, walking with a pronounced limp and carrying a bundle of rags in her arms. “Why is this happening?”
“Three weeks on that boat,” the woman said. “No toilet, bad water, food rations. Now I can’t wake my baby.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dolores Williams. Can someone help my baby?”