The Illegal Read Online Free PDF Page B

the labourers who hauled oranges, chickens and okra to market. How important could a wagon be? Better that he go straight to help his father. Keita flew out the door and began running.
    The Ministry of Citizenship was housed with other government offices in a three-storey pink building on the bay at the south end of the President’s Promenade. After the coup d’état three years earlier, Keita had been warned to not approach the building—which was also known as the Pink Palace—or to walk within a block of it. Faloos and dissidents were sometimes snatched off the street near there, never to be seen again. No sane person approached the building unless they had good reason to do so.
    A RMED SOLDIERS STOOD GUARD AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE building. Keita informed them that he had been summoned to meet his father.
    One of the soldiers nodded.
    Keita ran up six steps and into the building. Ahead of him was an office. Not a soul was inside.
    “Dad!” he shouted.
    No answer. No one was visible in the building. Keita heard nothing but his own voice echoing off the marble floors and the walls adorned with portraits of President Randall.
    Keita tried to open doors on the first floor. The first three were locked. It was cold in the building, and he shivered as he remembered his father’s words: It’s not truly a Ministry of Citizenship. It’s a Ministry of Detention, Abuse and Worse . The fourth office door that Keita tried was unlocked, so he opened it and entered a square, windowless room with an unoccupied desk and seats all along the walls,like an empty medical clinic. On the walls were more portraits of the president. Keita walked slowly around the room and noticed another door. He was reaching for the handle when the door opened and a man came through. Keita jumped back.
    The man was short and thin with a military brush cut, inscrutable black eyes, a nose the size of a plum and what appeared to be a permanent sneer on his face. He wore a black suit and a black tie.
    “Hello,” Keita said, “I am—”
    “We know who you are. Where is the wagon?”
    “I came for my father.”
    “Not ready to leave,” the man said.
    “May I see him?”
    “You were instructed to bring a wagon. Are you deaf, or are you dense?”
    “I don’t have a wagon, but I wish to see my father.” Keita wondered if it was safe to argue. What would Charity do? His sister, he knew, would not take no for an answer.
    “Wait here,” the man said.
    “May I ask—?” Keita began, but the man raised his palm, turned and passed through the door, which closed behind him.
    Keita waited a moment. He tried the door. Locked. He pounded on it, but there was no answer.
    Keita had no book to read, no material to study. He waited. And waited. And waited. In his hurry to leave the house, he had forgotten to put on his watch. There was a clock on the wall, but the hour and minute hands were fixed at noon. It seemed to Keita that an hour or two passed, but nobody came to see him.
    Then, from the other side of the locked door, he heard a voice. “Nooo,” it wailed. It sounded at first like a child, loud and insistent, but then it didn’t sound like a child at all. Keita waited for the sound again, listening carefully. When it came again, he knew.
    Keita stood up and pounded on the door. No answer.
    “I don’t know!” his father cried out, just beyond the locked door.
    “Dad!” Keita pounded on the door.
    Now his father’s voice came from farther away. Keita shouted again. “Dad!”
    The door swung open and the short man stood before him. Keita tried to see into the room, but the man blocked the way.
    “You are a poor listener,” he said. “No wagon, and not patiently waiting either. Well, if you must, come in. Be quiet, or you will make matters worse.”
    “I want to see my father.”
    “That will have to wait.”
    The man stood to the side and Keita stepped into the room. Then he felt a blunt, hard blow that left him dizzy. The man had punched him.