The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  The rains had come, and this was a blessing. Luminous green bounded over the land, the drought was over, the crops would grow. The rains had stayed, and this was a curse. The roads flooded with twisting brown currents, cars drifting off like unwitting boats. Pedestrians clomped along in gumboots, the middle air a flotilla of umbrellas. Cholera and malaria swept through the markets and compounds. Kalulu sent his officers to boot the sellers off the roads – a cleansing. Those who protested were beaten and detained. Stalls stood bare. Downtown Lusaka looked clean and mournful.

  The rain rattled down on the roof of Naila’s flat in Ibex Hill, strumming a gentle vibration over her bed. It was a wet, silvery afternoon, an afternoon made for sex.

  ‘I was only ten when my mum started the business,’ she said, tangling her legs in the sheets. ‘Boutique hair. But, like, selling the hair off our heads, you know?’

  ‘This hair?’ He threaded his fingers inside it and tugged gently, pulling her head back.

  She just about kept from moaning. ‘Leka,’ she said unconvincingly.

  He let go and smiled. He was always amused when she tried to sound more Zambian.

  ‘The workers thought the business was witchcraft.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Ya, be careful, men,’ she flicked a finger against his chest. ‘You might be dealing with a witch.’

  He grabbed her finger and kissed the tip. ‘You would not be the first.’ He opened his lips to suck on it.

  ‘Iwe!’ She pulled it away. ‘That’s my Bead! You want to get zapped?’

  He laughed and turned her hand over, kissed the back of it instead like a courtier.

  ‘So what kind of muzungu witchcraft did they say your mother was practising?’

  ‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘my Italian ancestors are famous for their stregonaria…’

  ‘Is it?’ He rolled on top of her, holding himself up so their naked torsos just barely touched.

  ‘Mmhm,’ she nipped up at his lips. He still tasted of her – chalky and sour like baobab fruit.

  He pulled away, teasing her. ‘I am happy that your mother made a witchy business. And that your angry grandmother brought you to Kalingalinga. Because now look at us here.’

  She flipped onto her stomach and arched her bum against him, teasing the stiff urgency there. Then he ruined it.

  ‘Your grandmother had blueprints of the dam?’

  She collapsed into the mattress. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you’re with me just—’ She stopped herself. ‘Ya, she did.’ She spat a hair from her mouth. ‘But J? What are you planning to do with them?’

  He said nothing. Instead, he began scribbling on her back with his finger, a new habit of his. It drove her mad. She could never read what he was writing.

  2023

  A revolution always seems, in retrospect, like an eruption: a massive upheaval that overturns everything, flips the tables, shatters the sky, fractures the earth. No one talks about how long a revolution takes or how boring it can be, how it can slowly chew time with grinding teeth before gulping it down all at once. It consumed their lives for years – the supposed time of their lives, their early twenties – and in the end, it swallowed one whole.

  One day in October of 2023, the city garlanded with blooming jacarandas, a great light flashed over Lusaka. In restaurants, waiting rooms, bars, market stalls, at Spar, at the bank, on minibuses, even in a handful of schoolrooms – all of these peopled places lit up with bluewhite brightness, as if daytime lightning had come in the window. But this flash came from inside, not outside. Everyone who had a Bead contributed to it. It cast upon their palms a place and a time and the mysterious letters: SOTP.

  People were used by now to receiving government notifications through their Beads – about taxes, electric bills, elections, and, recently, the compulsory Virus vaccination appointments. But those messages had arrived individually, citizen by citizen, not all at once like this SOTP one. After everyone had recovered from the wonder of the simultaneity, some people went online and found a bare-bones website (www.theSOTP.com) with an RSVP form. The event, whatever it was – a rally? a giveaway? a concert? – would take place in a week, on Independence Day, in Kalingalinga.

  Lusaka was perplexed.

  ‘S! O! T! P! WADAZIMEEN TO YOU AND ME?!?!’ sang around the schoolyards.

  The Mast published a full-page ad: WHO IS THE SOTP?

  Radio Phoenix brought in experts – a linguistics lecturer from UNZA, a rising hip-hop artist named KnockKnock, a government official and a Christian minister – to talk with DJ Jay Dee.

  ‘So, me I think it means Surrender Oil Thankyou Please,’ said KnockKnock.

  ‘What oil? We are not Nigerians. Me, I think it stands for Seek Out The Praiseworthy!’

  Callers into the show had equally outlandish theories. Maybe this was doomsday talk like Y2K or Twenty Twenty. Maybe it was about The Change. Maybe it was a coup, like back in ’97.

  ‘Do you remember those dangerous happenings? It was also around Independence Day.’

  ‘Yes, but four days after,’ the older government official corrected. ‘Twenty-eighth of October.’

  ‘Ah-ah?’ KnockKnock exclaimed. ‘The coup was operating on African time?!’

  Laughter.

  ‘But you people, that was not even a proper coup. Three men conquering a radio station—’

  ‘If that was a coup, even our show today can be a coup,’ said DJ Jay Dee.

  Laughter.

  ‘Alright, that’s all we have today. Thanks, listeners. We’ll see you at the S to the O to the T to the P. Whatever that ends up being!’

  * * *

  Naila felt full to the brim. It was like getting likes or hearts or adds online – a flood of community feeling blinking towards her, albeit empty of content. Joseph was furious. The day of the radio show, he picked her up from work. He started ranting as soon as she got in the car.

  ‘How the hell are we supposed to get a political platform together in a week, Niles?’

  She flipped down the passenger-side visor and flipped up the mirror.

  ‘Why the fuck did Tabs send out that message without consulting us about the date?’

  Naila pulled her hair up into a bun and applied her Bruise lipstick.

  ‘I told her to send it,’ she said. ‘We can’t keep frikkin kawaya-wayaring. Are we going?’

  He opened his mouth, closed it again. He drove them to New Kasama in silence. Jacob welcomed them at the broken front door with open arms, a big grin and an open bottle of whisky. They settled into their usual rooftop roles – Naila raising, Joseph dampening and Jacob ironising their spirits as they planned. They decided the best place to set up a stage was under the billboard at the CRDZ intersection. They could paint their message on it. But what should it say?

  ‘Freedom,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Freedom is a capitalist illusion,’ said Naila. ‘It should say equality.’

  ‘You people, it must say revolution!’ said Jacob.

  And then the guys were off arguing again. Naila settled back, stroking her palm to scroll through RSVPs – 379 people had already said they were coming. The comments section was full of jokes about what the letters stood for and whether there would be freebies. Free like Digit-All Beads and AFRINET Wi-Fi had been free. Addicted to aid, indeed. Naila smiled to herself. It was her vision in action – an infiltration of the capitalist circuits. Everyone was happily doing what they always did, joining in with their clicks. The SOTP had the masses. Now it was time for the swerve.

  * * *

  The day of the rally dawned sullen with heat. After lunch, Naila put on her green cotton salwar kameez patterned with little Black Power fists. She drove to Showgrounds to pick up a generator and the rental audio equipment and then on to Kalingalinga. The fever for malls that had gripped Lusaka in the first decade of the twenty-first centu
ry had spread to the compounds. She read the signs as she drove past: WALKERS MALL, JUBILEE MALL, NDEKE MALL, MADINA MALL. More the size of grocers, these buildings now lined the roads, as if they’d just devoured the wares that used to be displayed on the ground. Some had their escalators on the outside, for show. The painted signage had been upgraded, too – fluorescent screens advertising stock photos – though the names of the businesses still had their Zinglish charm: THUMBS NAIL HARDWARE, GOD KNOWZ HAIR SALON, THE HIGHEST BEEDER.

  They had chosen the least busy part of Kalingalinga to set up, an empty field where two roads met under an old billboard. As Naila parked, she saw a raised platform ten feet above the ground. Jacob and Joseph were crouched at its base, knocking together a set of steps up to it using tools borrowed from RIP Beds & Coffins. She winced – they had set up the stage on the wrong side. The plan had been to mount it facing east, under the blank back of the billboard, so they could paint their slogan on it. Instead, the guys had built it facing west, under the front of the billboard, which showed a multicoloured advert.

  Naila got out of the car and walked up to the stage, passing through a football game in the field. Some kids had gathered to play, hoping for handouts or gossip. She beckoned for Joseph to come down from the stage, then took him aside to point out the mistake.

  ‘Fuck!’ He blinked up at the billboard, then whirled around with his hands on top of his head. His bare chest was sweaty from the exertion of lifting and hammering, and she could almost feel his rage beaming off it.

  ‘We can’t move the whole stage now!’ he shouted. ‘It’s too heavy.’

  The kids stopped kicking their plastic-bag football and stared at the angry coloured man.

  ‘Then we have to take it apart and rebuild,’ she said.

  ‘What’s up?’ Jacob called out from the stage, standing slowly, hitching his jeans. He was bare-chested too. She pointed at the billboard. He walked a few feet forward, turned, and looked at it. He started laughing, his mouth snapping up at the sky. The kids giggled and pointed too, as if they got the joke.

  BOOM POWER.

  YOUR SMART DETERGENT CHOICE.

  ‘I guess it is a message?’ Jacob shrugged.

  ‘It’s an embarrassment.’ Joseph shook his head and stormed off in a huff.

  Naila raised an eyebrow at Jacob, but he was still looking at the billboard.

  ‘You know what? We can fix it,’ he said and loped off. He came back moments later, carrying a ladder, two cans of paint and a paint brush. The kids sat on the ground in a line in front of the stage to watch like it was field day.

  * * *

  Naila didn’t see Joseph again until hours later. She and Jacob were climbing the steps up to the stage, holding either end of the giant speaker they’d rented. Joseph emerged in the distance, wearing a suit, carrying a sheaf of pages – a speech, no doubt – and his little red book. She and Jacob shuffled along the creaking wood planks and levered the speaker into place. She dusted off her hands as Joseph came up on the stage.

  ‘Yikes. Where d’you get that Kaunda suit, men?’ she said. ‘Sally’s?’

  ‘It’s not salaula,’ Joseph said indignantly, looking down his chin at it. ‘It’s my grandpa’s.’

  Jacob was leaning over the edge of the stage, dousing his head with a bottle of water. He shook his head like a dog, flinging droplets. Naila stepped away, clucking – he was still covered in paint like a Nyau dancer from whitewashing the billboard. Joseph approached the mic and tapped it.

  ‘Microphone testing. One-two—’ His voice boomed then screeched and he ducked.

  The kids sitting on the ground in front of the stage covered their ears – the littlest one covered his eyes. Jacob gave a shout and jogged over to a nest of cables by the speaker to fix the feedback. Naila went to stand next to Joseph at centre stage. The sun was setting right into their eyes.

  ‘So you wrote a little speech?’

  He looked hurt by the question. He paused.

  ‘Are you fucking Jacob?’ he whispered.

  She glanced back but Jacob was rummaging in a duffel bag at the back of the stage. She laughed, her throat tight. ‘Are you really asking me that right now, men?’

  ‘Answer the fucking question, Niles.’ Joseph’s green eyes looked swampy.

  Jacob came towards them, buttoning up his own secondhand Nehru jacket. He shooed them together, oblivious to the tension in the air. They stood next to each other – Joseph, Jacob, Naila – and he took a group selfie with an old iPhone.

  Just before it gave its fake camera click, Naila noticed a boy standing in the football field looking up at them. So this was how kids faked taking pictures these days: not by bracketing their hands into a camera, but by raising a middle finger as if for a Bead selfie. Naila smiled. The boy smiled back. The sun glowered behind his head. He turned and then Naila heard it too: the rumble-drum of approaching feet.

  * * *

  The roads were chock-a-block with rush-hour traffic so the people flooded around the slo-go, trickling between the cars, and even clambering on top of them. Fed-up drivers left their vehicles in the road to join the surge of bodies. It was surprisingly quiet. People laughed. Babies squawked. Opportunistic hawkers called out wares and prices. Two news drones hovered above the compound with their truculent whine. But curiosity is not a loud sound and this was neither protest nor riot. It was more like an indaba, a gathering to discuss a problem, the problem pending until everyone has arrived.

  Naila took a breath and glanced at Jacob and Joseph on either side of her. They were ready. Except – she looked behind them – they hadn’t had time to paint their message on the billboard. It sat there, its all and nothing surface, that dumb blankness full of meaning. The slick paint was coppering in the sunset. Traces of a BOOM shadowed its surface. Jacob saw Naila looking at it and with a nod, he walked over to a can of blue paint, bent down, and levered its lid up.

  He had only managed to paint a big sloppy S and half of an O by the time the crowd was complete. There was still some motion within it but no longer that of a gushing flood or a river breaking its banks – it was the shimmering of a dark, pensive lake. Naila stepped back. Joseph stepped forward. He shuffled his papers, sniffed into the mic and looked up.

  ‘My name,’ he began and the mic bansheed with displeasure.

  The crowd reeled. Joseph stepped back. Jacob scampered around adjusting cables. Naila, sensing restlessness afoot, quickly stepped to a corner of the stage. She raised her fist and started a simple chant – ‘S! O! T! P!’ The crowd picked it up, delighted to be instructed. Naila saw the speed of sound as the chant travelled back – by the time it hit people twenty yards off, it had stuttered off-rhythm. It became an echo, then a round, then died away.

  A sweaty target had spread on the back of Joseph’s Kaunda jacket. He cleared his throat then hesitated and glanced back. Jacob, kneeling over a tangle of cables, motioned for him to go on.

  Joseph turned to the mic and yelled furiously: ‘My name is Joseph Banda!’

  No echo. No screech. Just his high, clear voice. Relief hummed across the crowd.

  ‘We have gathered here today,’ he smiled, ‘to—’

  The sound cut completely and the rest of his sentence was drowned out by groans of pity and disappointment, which swelled and grew spiky with complaint. Joseph stepped away from the mic. There was a movement in the crowd, just visible in the purpling gloam of the sunset: a new contingent of bodies was wriggling through the masses, heading towards the stage. Naila heard a droning sound, punctuated by clapping: someone was singing a hymn.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Joseph shouted.

  ‘Power cut,’ Jacob replied brusquely as he strode past and squatted at the front edge of the stage. An undulating serpent of bodies was squeezing towards him – all women, wearing all black – and now the head of the serpent emerged: a short, round woman in a cr
acked leather bomber jacket. Jacob reached his arms down into the twisting pit. The crowd knotted and boosted the woman up into his arms.

  Joseph was yelling in Naila’s ear now, clutching his undelivered speech. She brushed him off and ran forward to help lift the woman up onto the stage. Jacob’s gogo got on her feet, tugged her jacket down and nodded her thanks. Then she turned to the crowd, pushed past the dead microphone and punched her fist into the air. The crowd erupted. When had Matha Mwamba been freed from prison?

  ‘Kwacha?!’ she called in a deep, guttural voice.

  ‘Ngweeee!’ came the response from the older members of the crowd, the ones who remembered.

  ‘Kwacha?!’ she called again, cupping her hand to her ear.

  ‘Ngweeee!’ came the response, sighing across the crowd to the ones who were learning.

  Matha laughed with joy and her congregation of Weepers below the stage began to sing and ululate.

  ‘Revolution now!’ Jacob shouted. He grabbed his gogo’s hand and punched it high again, so their fists were raised together. The bolus of their hands glowed – the press of their fingers had turned on his Bead. Those closest to the stage took the cue, pinpricks of light flickering on one by one. It was nearly dark out and Naila now saw the speed of light, the scatter of Beads flashing on over the crowd, coursing into a galaxy. The crowd cooed softly at the nimbus it had made, like a big baby fascinated by its own hand.

  Matha Mwamba stalked the stage, calling out, a natural-born preacher.

  ‘One Zambia?!’

  ‘One Nation!’

  ‘A luta?!’

  ‘Continua!’

  The bits of light waved and trembled. Jacob switched his Bead to a megaphone app. Matha took his wrist and began speaking into it.

  ‘And the first beast was like a lion,’ she said. ‘And the second beast like a calf.’ She raised her voice. ‘And the third beast had a face as a man and the fourth beast was a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him and they were full of eyes within. What. Are. These. Mysteries?!’ She cocked her head. ‘Is. This. Not. Prophecy?!’