The Illegal

  MAP

  DEDICATION

  For Miranda—

  always full of love, understanding and inspiration.

  This one is for you.

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Part Three Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Lawrence Hill

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Freedom State, 2018

  GO HOME.”

  The words came from the runner on Keita’s left. White, and surely from Freedom State. Limp brown hair, flopping as he ran. Arms too high. Choppy gait. Running was the smoothest dance in the world. Keita had been trained to picture his own legs like wheels. He had learned to strike with his feet soundlessly, transfer weight through the balls of his feet, roll off the toes and spend more time flying than earthbound. Anybody could run, but few with grace. This competitor ran as if his tires weren’t inflated. Keita didn’t say a word. Didn’t acknowledge that he spoke or understood English. He just kept running.

  The runner on his shoulder said it again. “Go. Fucking. Home.”

  A rude man. He deserved to suffer. Keita bumped up the pace. Sooner or later, the obnoxious fellow would start to hurt. The name of the game was to inflict more pain than he felt. So Keita—a stranger in a strange land whose only transgression was to exist in a place where his presence was illegal—would use speed to break this man.

  Keita had studied a map of the Buttersby Marathon. It was an out-and-back route: 21.1 kilometres east along the Chelting Escarpment, a 180-degree turn, and 21.1 kilometres right back to the finish line. A few kilometres after the halfway turn, they would climb back up the marathon’s one and only hill. It would curve, steepen and keep rising for two kilometres. Challenging, for sure. But what were two kilometres uphill at sea level in Freedom State compared to the Red Hills of Zantoroland at altitude?

  They ran along a winding road bordered by the tallest pine trees Keita had ever seen. A hundred years ago, somebody must have set out to create the most peaceful tree-lined road in the world. On each side of him, as high as he could see, trees defined the bends in the road. They had grown so big and thick that they created their own microclimate; it was a warm day, but it felt five degrees cooler in their prodigious shade. Running this race was like swimming in a lake back home in Zantoroland and suddenly hitting a pocket of cool water.

  Here along the marathon route, massive, branchless trunks reached many storeys into the air and exploded into a riot of needles and cones. Keita inhaled the smell of pine. Odd, to find such welcoming trees in this hostile land. Perhaps if he were free, he could appreciate all of this beauty. To Keita, the treetops looked like glorious afros of the sort he had seen in photos of African Americans in the 1970s. Way up above, the afros wove together. They made Keita think of people in church pews inclining their heads to pray. Keita imagined two of the treetop heads to be his own mother and father.

  Driving just ahead of them were three police motorcycles. One carried a race official, who sat facing backwards to keep his eye on the leading marathoners. Keita tried to put the police officers out of his mind. They would never suspect him. Not in a race. Not under their noses.

  The motorcade rounded a corner, and the instant it slipped out of sight, the fellow to Keita’s left threw a low punch. Keita saw the blow coming and stepped to the right, but it glanced off his umbilical hernia. The hernia, now the size of a golf ball, throbbed. Could the other runner tell it was there, under Keita’s shirt? The runners rounded the corner, and the motorcycles came into sight again. It wouldn’t be enough to beat his aggressor; Keita wanted to make him suffer. But the aggressive runner remained close.

  “Gonna mess you up,” the man said.

  Keita drifted to the far side of the road. The runner stayed with him. Keita swerved back. The name-caller stuck to him.

  A string of orange cones marked the halfway point. The runners rounded the turn and began to run back in the direction from which they had come. Keita glanced at the large digital clock, which showed 1:05:11. He would have to pick up his pace slightly. The second half of the race would be harder because of the hill, but there was extra prize money if the winner came in at under 2:10. Keita wanted to finish under the bonus time but didn’t want to run faster than necessary. He had to save his legs for the next race.

  Keita’s adversary tucked in behind him, and a third runner trailed by a step. Another white guy from Freedom State. Two hundred metres back in the direction of the finish line, they blew past the fourth- and fifth-place runners. Six hundred metres farther along, they encountered another trickle of outbound runners.

  Keita glanced down. The hernia embarrassed him. When the television news in Freedom State wanted to show hungry kids in Zantoroland, they zoomed in on a child with a hernia. A swollen belly. And meagre hair, faintly reddish from malnutrition. Perhaps it was to blame for Keita’s recent bouts of thirst. The hernia was small, but in the weeks since he had gone into hiding in Freedom State, staying in black market guest houses that took in undocumented people at dusk and booted them out at dawn, he had often experienced an unquenchable thirst.

  Today, however, he had gulped down cups of electrolyte drink at each water station, and so far he felt strong. Today, he hoped his body would not betray him.

  Keita had to make enough money to get the hernia fixed. Leaving aside money to keep himself fed, clothed and well hidden, he would need thousands for the surgery. If he won another few races, he would check out a private clinic. But first, he had to win this race.

  The jerk remained one stride back.

  “Right on your ass, sonny boy,” he said. “Go run in your own fucking country.” He poked Keita’s shoulder. “Roger Bannister,” he sneered, referring to the name on Keita’s bib. “Not on your life. That’s a white man’s name.”

  Keita glanced back at his nemesis. A snarling face, snot in the nose, mouth hanging open and a race bib that said Billy Deeds.

  “What you looking at?” Deeds asked him.

  Keita kept running. Deeds would expect a race up the hill, so the best strategy was to cause him pain before they got there. A kilometre before the hill, Keita kicked up the pace and put on a burst for a hundred metres. Deeds and the third runner stayed with him.

  “Is that all you got?”
Deeds said, but Keita heard the strain in his voice.

  Keita coasted for two hundred metres, then attacked again for fifteen seconds. He glanced over. Deeds was starting to slap the ground with his feet.

  “Gonna kick your ass, nigger,” Deeds panted.

  “Billy, shut up with that.” It was the third runner. Another white guy.

  Keita glanced at his bib. Last name was Smart.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Smart said. “He’s just messing with you.”

  “Stay out of this,” Deeds said.

  At the base of the hill, they passed the twenty-four-kilometre mark. Smart dropped back a few metres. Deeds was still on Keita’s tail but breathing hard. Keita picked up the pace once more, drilling down just under 3:00 per kilometre. They were passing a river of runners, and some held out their hands to congratulate him. Keita high-fived one or two, just to pretend that he was feeling no pain.

  As the grade of the slope increased, Keita employed the trick that he had been taught while training in the Red Hills. Want to shatter your opponent’s confidence? Just when he starts to hurt, you sing.

  PART ONE

  Zantoroland, 2004–2018

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT 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. “M
en 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.

  KEITA 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.