Beverly Hills Maasai by Eric Walters Read Free Book Online

out my chair and sat, and then they did the same, settling in at the dining-room table.
    I had to hand it to my mother: she had gone all out on the table. The tablecloth was white linen—Italian linen—and she’d set out the bone china, crystal glasses, our best silver, all arranged around a beautiful floral centrepiece. The table looked perfect. It would have impressed the Queen of England. Unfortunately, the Queen wasn’t sitting at the table.
    “What would our guests like to drink?” my mother asked.
    Nobody answered.
    “We have tea, coffee, juice, wine, sparkling water, and—”
    “Water,” Nebala said. “We would like water, please.”
    My mother picked up a little bell and rang it. Carmella poked her head into the room.
    “Could we please have water for everybody,” my mother said.
    Carmella nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. When she came back out, she filled all the crystal glasses from a bottle of sparkling water.
    “So you’re all runners,” my mother said.
    “Yes,” Nebala answered.
    “I myself am into yoga.”
    “What is yoga?” Nebala asked.
    She looked surprised that he didn’t know, but pleased that she’d have the opportunity to tell him. She had become, over the past few months, the Yoga Queen.
    “It’s an ancient Hindu philosophy that allows the integration of body, mind, and spirit,” she began.
    Nebala looked completely lost.
    “It is a way for a person to seek inner contentment through the—”
    “It’s exercise,” I said, cutting her off.
    “It’s so much more than that,” my mother said with a laugh. “It’s more like a form of meditation.”
    “That’s not going to help,” I said. I turned to Nebala. “Do you know what meditation is?”
    He shook his head.
    “It’s a way to create a kind of inner peace.” She paused. “Actually, I have friends who run, and they tell me that running can produce that same sense of peace. Do you find running peaceful?”
    Nebala didn’t know what to answer to that question either. It was obvious, even to my mother, that this wasn’t clearing up his confusion.
    “It gives them time to think,” she continued. “What do you think about when you run?”
    “I think about when I can stop running and walk again,” he answered.
    I laughed.
    “Or if I can catch what I run after … or get away from what is chasing me,” he continued.
    I laughed again. There was a twinkle in his eyes, so I knew he was just joking.
    “Surely you must get something more out of running?” she questioned.
    “It’s just how they get around,” I said, trying to explain. “It’s not like they all have cars or can hop on to the subway. Maasai run because it gets them where they have to go.”
    “But there has to be more to it than that,” my mother protested.
    “I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “They just run to move, either to get something or somewhere, or to get away from something or somewhere.”
    “But if that’s the only reason, why are they here now to run in the marathon?”
    I hadn’t thought about that. That was a good question.
    “If it’s simply running to get around, they wouldn’t have come halfway across the world to run in Beverly Hills,” my mother said. “There has to be more.”
    “Nebala,” I said, turning to him. “Why
did
you come to Beverly Hills to run in the marathon?”
    “To win,” he said.
    “Yes, yes, I know you want to win, but why did you come all this way, to Beverly Hills, to run in this particular marathon?”
    “To win,” he repeated.
    “But … but … why didn’t you just stay in Kenya and run?”
    He laughed. “There is no money to run in Kenya. Here is money.”
    “Money?”
    He reached into his pouch and pulled out that yellowed flyer announcing the marathon. He placed it in front of me and tapped his finger against the advertisement. There, at the bottom, was a list of the prizes for the event.
    “Oh, wow!” I gasped.
    “What is it?” my mother