This paper explores how pigeon racing in a Surabaya neighbourhood keeps poor men out of the city by hiding them within it. The paper provides an ethnographic example of what Anne Stoler (2022) conceptualises as the “interior frontiers” of the postcolony where equivocation is a means of dissent against being known. It shows how the racing pigeon enables such dissent by helping men escape the interpretive violence that has haunted them over many decades of authoritarian rule.