and live lives of tense coordination. Half insects, half drones; perhaps all drones or none; maybe something between will emerge. But what a joke! What an error! What a lark indeed! A semi-cyborgian nation!
Here’s one more question: are we really a we? Or just a swarm in the swarm? Worse, is this me?! Was it the dread royal we all along? And is that the meaning of SOTP? Oh what a shame, that they rotted so quickly: the fruits of the new Cha-Cha-Cha.
Those fiery young bolshies tried to blow up the dam and take down the government that way. But their blueprints were old, their calculations too tight, and they’d made no concessions to chance. Indeed, their mistake – their Error of Errors – was simply forgetting the weather. Tabitha had warned them all about The Change, and that season was ultra-disastrous. The rainfall that came was ten times the norm and the damned wall was already failing. When the drones blocked the flue, the Zambezi pushed through, and Kariba Dam tumbled down after.
The bodies of water spilled their banks within days and soon the whole country was drowned. The gorges and valleys were rivers and lakes, the escarpments were lost under waterfalls. Electric grids failed, people fled from their homes. The flood flowed broad and washed out the roads, making streams and canals of the tarmac. Traffic slowed down, then stopped altogether. Passengers waded, then swam.
Lusaka survived, that dusty plateau, as its own city-state. Kalingalinga became its capital. A small community, egalitarian, humble. People grow all of the food that they eat. There are a few clinics, and one or two schools. Beads are used for barter and voting. And in its midst our lone survivors, Naila’s two lovers, now old. Haven’t we told you? She died giving birth, but her son doesn’t know who his father is.
We are here, too, in this warm, wet future. What keeps us going? Our arthropod flesh or our solar-strip skin? Perhaps it’s the same old difference. The best kind of tale tells you you in the end, unveils the unsolvable riddle. Wait! Did you hear that? Don’t leave us just yet! They’re suddenly all speaking through us – Naila and Jacob and Joseph, their parents, and all of their ancestors, too – with a crackling noise like old radio waves, here is their terminal message:
Time, that ancient and endless meander, stretches out and into the distance, but along the way, a cumulative stray swerves it into a lazy, loose curve. Imagine the equation, or picture the graph, of the Archimedean spiral. This is the turning that unrolls the day, that turns the turns that the seasons obey, and the cycle of years, and the decades. But outer space too, that celestial gyre, the great Milky Way, turns inward and outward at once. And so we roil in the oldest of drifts – a slow, slant spin at the pit of the void, the darkest heart of them all.
* * *
Acknowledgements
The Old Drift includes many fictions and quite a few facts. ‘The Falls’ chapter borrows heavily from Percy M. Clark, The Autobiography of an Old Drifter (London: G. C. Harrap, 1936) – all racism his. Other works consulted include: Milisuthando Bongela, ‘Tech artist bends the net to create decolonial, spiritual therapy for the spiritual age,’ The Mail & Guardian (28 July, 2016). Beppe Fenoglio, The Twenty-three Days of the City of Alba (1952), tr. John Shepley (South Royalton: Steerforth Italia, 2002). Ilsa M. Glazer, New Women of Lusaka (Mountainview: Mayfield, 1979). Jan-Bart Gewald, Giacomo Macola and Marja Hinfelaar, eds, One Zambia, Many Histories: Towards a History of Post-colonial Zambia (Leiden: Brill, 2008). David M. Gordon, Invisible Agents: Spirits in a Central African History (Athens: Ohio UP, 2012). Karen Tranberg Hansen, Distant Companions: Servants and Employers in Zambia, 1900–1985 (Cornell: Cornell UP, 1989). Panpan Hou et al, ‘Genome editing of CXCR4 by CRISPR/cas9 confers cells resistant to HIV-1 infection’, Scientific Reports 5:15577 (20 October, 2015). David Howarth, The Shadow of the Dam (London: Collins, 1961). Christina Lamb, The Africa House (London: , 1999). Austin Kaluba, ‘Zambia Down Memory Lane’ series, UKZambians (ukzambians). Clare Pettitt, Dr Livingstone, I Presume? Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers, and Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007). M. Marmor et al, ‘Resistance to HIV Infection’, Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 83:1: HIV Perspectives After 25 Years (1 January, 2006). Darryll J. Pines and Felipe Bohorquez, ‘Challenges Facing Future Micro-Air-Vehicle Development’, Journal of Aircraft 43:2 (March-April, 2006). Saritha Rai, ‘A Religious Tangle Over the Hair of Pious Hindus’, New York Times (14 July, 2004). Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio, Mosquito: The Story of Man’s Deadliest Foe (New York: Hyperion, 2001). Research that I conducted at the National Archives of Zambia, in newspapers and journals from the sixties and seventies, and via interviews for my New Yorker article, ‘The Zambian “Afronaut” Who Wanted to Join the Space Race’ (11 March, 2017) also made its way into the novel.
Snippets from the following songs appear in the novel: Larry Maluma’s ‘Chakolwa (Drunkard)’ (1984); Whitney Houston’s ‘How Will I Know?’ (George Merrill, Shannon Rubicam and Narada Michael Walden, 1985); Billy Ocean’s ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car’ (Billy Ocean and Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, 1988); Soul for Real’s ‘Candy Rain’ (Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Hamish Stuart, Dwight Myers, Malik Taylor, Owen McIntyre, Samuel Barnes, Jean-Claude Olivier and Terri Robinson, 1994).
A novel this long in the making draws around it a veritable swarm of souls. Some categories overlap; I name you each only once. My warmest thanks to:
The classmates and instructors of writing workshops I took with Lan Samantha Chang, John Crowley, Mitchell S. Jackson, Jamaica Kincaid and Katharine Weber. The members of my writing groups over the years: Alisa Braithwaite, Case Q. Kerns, Julia Lee, Christina Svendsen, (Cambridge); Tej Rae (Lusaka); Nadia Ellis, Swati Rana (Berkeley). My residency hearts: Allison Amend, Liz Greenwood, Fatima Kola, Carmen Maria Machado, Janet Mock, Kiran Desai and Seema Yasmin. My Berkeley students and colleagues, especially Scott Saul.
Callaloo for publishing ‘Muzungu’ (an early version of ‘Isabella 1983’) and Alice Sebold and Heidi Pitlor for selecting it for The Best American Short Stories 2009 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). Binyavanga Wainaina, Margaret Busby, Osonye Tess Onwueme and Elechi Amadi, for selecting me for Africa39 and publishing ‘The Sack’ (Bloomsbury, 2014). Margaret Busby and Candida Lacey for publishing ‘The Living and the Dead’ in New Daughters of Africa (Myriad, 2019).
The Berkeley Institute of International Studies for the 2012 Robert O. Collins grant to brush up on my Nyanja and Bemba. The 2010 and 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing for shortlisting ‘Muzungu’; awarding the prize to ‘The Sack’; giving me the space to write ‘The Man With the Hole in His Face’ (an early version of ‘Thandiwe 1996’); and (re)publishing them in the respective Caine Prize Anthologies (New Internationalist). Nick Elam for telling me that I was already a writer in the Douala airport. Nick Stanton for being my Virgil through the media. The 2015 committee – Zoe Wicomb (chair), Zeinab Badawi, Brian Chikwava, Neel Mukherjee and Cóilín Parsons – and Lizzy Attree for forgiving my cheekiness.
Berkeley for giving me a job that lets me write. Sangam House, Ledig House, Chaminuka, Hedgebrook and The Ruby for surrounding the creation of this project with beauty, time, deliciousness and solidarity.
My generous fact checkers and providers: Samuel Bjork, Glenda Carpio, Roy and Sarah Clarke, Federico Ferro, Mubanga and Juanita Kashoki, Georgina Kleege, Adam Morris, Audrey Mpunzwana, Ilse and Jacob Mwanza, Suwilanji Ngambi, Mukuka Nkoloso Jr., Shailja Patel, Ranka Primorac, Bartek Sabela, Robert Serpell, Duncan Smith and Shanti Thirumalai. My last minute proofer Kyler Ernst.
My teams at Janklow & Nesbit and at Hogarth for being extraordinary machines. Will Francis for escorting me around London; Molly Stern for gallantly swooping in. Poppy Hampson and Alexis Washam for taming this monstropolous beast and ushering it into the world with such patience, precision and love. Greg Clowes for fixing it up. Kai and Sunny for dressing it up. Michael Taeckens for introducing it to everyone with panache and grace.
PJ Mark for finding me, sticking by me, and always knowing exactly what to do and when – you are kismet itself.
My earliest editors: eagle-eyed Margaret Miller and gimlet-eyed Mike Vazquez.
My readers, my sisters, my graces: Michelle Quint and Zewelanji Serpell and Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.
My other family members, friends and boos for your love and support along the way.
My mother, Namposya Nampanya-Serpell (1950–2016), who knew who I was before I did, and never stopped believing. Mama, this book is for your joy. It isn’t the story of the invention of the alphabet (‘Ay! It’s a bee!’) but at least it begins with a Z.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.