Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa

By MacSmart Ojiludu, Kanyinsola Olorunnisola, Najwa Bin Shatwan and 19 more

Dissent, disease, disaster.
This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. These evocative, often prescient, stories showcase new and emerging writers from across Africa to investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more.
In Disruption, authors from across Africa use their stories to explore the concept of change—environmental, political, and physical—and the power or impotence of the human race to innovate our way through it. From a post-apocalyptic African village in Innocent Ilo’s “Before We Die Unwritten,” to space colonization in Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s “Static,” to a mother’s attempt to save her infant from a dust storm in Mbozi Haimbe’s “Shelter,” Disruption illuminates change around and within, and our infallible capacity for hope amidst disaster.
Facing our shared anxieties head on, these authors scrutinize assumptions and invent worlds that combine the fantastical with the probable, the colonial with the dystopian, and the intrepid with the powerless, in stories recognizing our collective future and our disparate present. Disruption is the newest anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a non-profit organization established to develop and share the diversity of Africa’s voices through publishing and writing workshops.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catalyst Press
• Release date: Dec 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781946395627

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

"DISRUPTION

[noun] Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process."

WE CHOSE THIS as the broad topic and title for Short Story Day Africa’s 2020 collection, in utter innocence of how prescient it would prove to be. The stories had already been submitted for the annual SSDA competition, our faithful and experienced volunteer readers were sifting through them to choose a longlist, the Board was trying to raise funds for the production of the next anthology—and the world as we knew it stuttered to a halt.

The spread of a highly infectious and sometimes deadly coronavirus around the world at the start of 2020 changed our lives and the way we live them—most probably, for good. Our communities, families, economies, health and daily activities have all transformed in ways we could not have imagined—and seldom for the better.

The pandemic, along with the ensuing lockdowns and the disastrous economic fallout, have had a dramatic impact on SSDA, already mostly dependent on volunteer time and energy, and ad hoc donations.

We had already decided, with great reluctance, to shelve (at least temporarily) our highly successful editing mentoring program, simply because of lack of funds: we pay the mentees (very) modest honorariums, and without any means of offering these, we could not in good conscience ask young editors to commit to a process that would involve considerable sacrifice of their time.

SSDA prides itself on the intensive editing process into which we enter with our contributors: this commitment to developing authors and their skills is a hallmark of the project, and enables new and emerging writers to compete on a less bumpy playing field with more experienced and established authors. So even without mentoring talented editors gaining traction in their field, Rachel Zadok and I were nevertheless anticipating the editing with great pleasure—working with the caliber of writers, talented novices in particular, attracted by this competition is one of the professional highlights of my year.

Alas, it was not to be. I fell ill with the virus at exactly the same time that my home country, South Africa, began its first lockdown. I subsequently developed what has now come to be recognized as Post-acute Covid Syndrome, also known as Long Covid (or LoCo, as I think of it), and had no choice but to withdraw as one of the volume editors.

I was not alone, sadly. Members of the SSDA team have been bereaved; they have had to nurse friends or family members who have been gravely ill; they have been hammered economically, with many losing their income sources and streams. Some have had to seek supplementary employment, leaving little time for passion projects like this one. Along the way, we lost a year—but we were not alone in this. As was the case with many projects, especially cultural ones, we could not put out this collection in 2020 as planned. Nevertheless, the wait has been worth it.

It is a credit to the team, led by the apparently unstoppable Rachel Zadok, that this volume has come out at all, given the loss of health, time and funding that has hung like a pall over it. Jason Mykl Snyman and Karina Szczurek—board members and tireless supporters—joined forces with Rachel to complete the editing, and have done a beautiful job of collaborating with and coaxing the best from the contributors.

Of the selection process, Rachel Zadok says: This year, as always, the first round of reading was blind. An experienced team of editors read with a keen eye for original writing that exhibited ingenuity and a strong voice. We couldn’t…meet in person due to Covid-19 restrictions to debate the long-long list as a team. Instead, we discussed and defended our favorite stories in the columns of an Excel spreadsheet. We looked for writing that had, at its core, that special something that is difficult to define but that shines through and sticks with the reader. The longlisted stories all tackle the theme of Disruption" in ingenious ways and represent a range of genres…we believe each story on the list has something new to offer to the African literary world.

We’re especially excited to be publishing stories from Libya and Sierra Leone, both firsts for Short Story Day Africa. We’re also thrilled to be publishing our first-ever translated story, the surreal Armando’s Virtuous Crime’" by Najwa Bin Shatwan, brilliantly translated from Arabic into English by Sawad Hussain. It was our first experience of working with both the author and the translator, and we learned a great deal in the process.

We’re grateful to all the writers for trusting us with their stories. Judging this year was extremely close-cut…. To the writers who didn’t make it: We encourage you to keep writing, and keep submitting.

THE CALL FOR submissions stated: Short Story Day Africa is seeking short fiction exploring disruption, especially but not limited to climate and environ[mental] disruption. We want your stories of change, protest, destruction, adaptation, disruption and [re]creation. Stories that explore how changing climates affect us, our adaptations to the environment, and the innovations that bring us hope.

Humanity’s pathological tendency to foul its own nest was seized upon by these twenty-one authors representing ten countries from all four corners of the continent, clearly demonstrating the urgency and agency with which African creatives are grappling with the relentless march of global environmental destruction. Interestingly, while climate disruption (and the resulting poisoning of soil, water, air, animals and humans) is a theme in nearly every story, few predicted a deadly zoonotic virus, although one or two stories glance in this direction.

Some of the writers who presented the end of the (human) world explored how environmental collapse is aided and abetted by colonial extraction (as in Nadia Ahidjo’s needle-sharp Before the Rains Came and Victor Forna’s lyrical DƆrə’s Song), rampant crony capitalism (Melusi Nkomo’s Between the Hard Earth and the Dry Heaven) or short-sighted local agricultural and economic practices (Jacob M’hango’s The Mother).

Several reinvented tales of zombies, aliens and space travel as powerful allegories of colonialism and imported religion (Another Zombie Story by Kanyinsola Olorunnisolacy and Static by Alithnayn Abdulkareem), or as a means of revisiting the horrors of apartheid (Kin by Masiyaleti Mbewe).

It is also clear that in the minds of the contributors, the demise of humanity will come not with a bang, but with whimpers and howls. But do we want to read stories of the suffering wrought by the folly of our species, given that we’re all exhausted, demoralized and traumatized by disruptions of the coronavirus?

We found the answer to be a resounding yes. Our contributors have not parroted the expected doom and gloom often found in dystopian or apocalyptic fiction, instead opting for imaginative and wildly original sprees enfolding sea monsters, zombies, time and space travel, cyborgs, immortals, gods and goddesses both benevolent and terrifying, and even a one-eyed octopus. The reader will find comedy, the absurd and surreal in these pages—as well as lovingly drawn and often valedictory accounts of the natural world and its denizens.

Above all, these stories tell of human connection in the face of impossibly difficult circumstances: moments where it falls short (as in Waiting to Die by Yefon Isabelle), as well as instances in which love and tenderness bloom (Laatlammer by J.S. Louw and Five Years Next Sunday by Idza Luhumyo), and sometimes even win the day (Shelter by Mbozi Haimbe). It is kinship bonds that might save us, as is shown in the exquisitely written Lycaon Pictus, which features the ties between brother and sister, as well as a tribe of wild dogs, by Liam Brickhill.

In some cases, the apocalypse occurs like the famous description of how a character in a Hemingway novel goes bankrupt: Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly. The way life continues in all its ordinariness—board meetings, connections with lovers old and new, family squabbles—only to be overtaken by hallucinations and horrors, can be seen in the wonderfully titled Objects in the Mirror Are Stranger Than They Appear by Kevin Mogotsi, and Innocent Chizaram Ilo’s imaginative and irreverent Before We Die Unwritten.

Some of the stories highlight how environmental collapse specifically affects women: in The Girl Named Uku/phaza/mi/se/ka, Philisiwe Twijnstra locates indigenous local mythology in the setting of a poisoned city to show one woman’s unwanted power; while Doreen Anyango’s haunting The Girl Who Laughed draws a line between environmental disruption and human trafficking. Jacob M’hango’s The Mother is a powerful meditation on the tendency to ascribe ecological damage to witchcraft.

The question of agency arises in these stories, and also others: given how powerless we are in the face of storms and floods, and equally pitiless rising temperatures and patriarchal structures, what power do individuals have? This is explored in When the Levees Break by Edwin Okolo (who, in a fine display of African intertextuality, takes inspiration from the writing of Lesley Nneka Arimah); and MacSmart Ojiludu’s moving exploration of maternal grief in A Defiant Departure.

It is precisely this lack of agency that means machines will not save us, according to Nicholas A. Dawn, whose story Enough features a HAL-like super-computer capable of designing and rehabilitating a viable planet—but which is stumped by the conundrum of human moral choice.

Many of the stories in the collection are laced with wit, often surreal—Armando’s Virtuous Crime by Najwa Bin Shatwan employs absurdity to make its point, and Innocent Chizaram Ilo and Kevin Mogotsi see no reason why the end of the world shouldn’t have lighter moments. Genna Gardini’s The Fishtank Crab (in which a pet-sitting gig goes spectacularly wrong) combines both slapstick comedy and witty social commentary on romantic relationships.

AND NOW (DRUMROLL, please), it gives me great pleasure to announce the winners of the 2019/20 SSDA competition. Eleven experienced volunteer judges, using a points system thrashed out over the years, were once again so impressed by the caliber of the stories that a shortlist of eight was agreed upon.

It was, as always, hard to pick the top three, and everyone had their own favorites, but in the end, the spectacularly talented Idza Luhumyo nudged past the other contenders to win first place with a hypnotic tale weaving hair and drought together with love and betrayal: Five Years Next Sunday. Mbozi Haimbe’s gripping, tender, and multi-layered Shelter was the runner-up, and Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s Static, a subversive tale of post-apocalyptic patriarchal colonialism, took the third spot.

The judges also placed the following impressive stories in the highly commended category: Laatlammer by J.S. Louw; DƆrə’s Song by Victor Forna; The Fish Tank Crab by Genna Gardini; Before We Die Unwritten by Innocent Chizaram Ilo; and When The Levees Break by Edwin Okolo.

One ongoing joy of this project has been witnessing how SSDA has acted as a greenhouse for writers. No less than five authors on this shortlist are SSDA alumni who have had their stories appear in our previous anthologies. We are delighted and privileged to have had the opportunity to witness them hone their skills and develop their voices over the past few short years. This gives us added confidence that the writers who find their way to this project are indeed ones to watch in the future—a rewarding prospect. We congratulate them all.

Our congratulations also go once more to all our longlisted contributors; and also to our readers, who now have a coruscating, pulsing collection of the best kinds of disruption in their hands or on their screens. May you be inspired, horrified, and comforted.

Cape Town, March 2021

Static

Alithnayn Abdulkareem

2ND RUNNER-UP OF THE 2019/2020 SHORT STORY DAY AFRICA PRIZE

THE HEADLINE READS A Series of Record Droughts Plague Eko. I run the newspaper over my sweaty neck and cleavage as I climb the stairs. Experts can be really obtuse sometimes. Anybody here could have told them droughts were inevitable; it hasn’t rained in Eko for years. All the clouds resemble upside down volcanoes. I’ve stopped looking up, the sky has a dusty orange filter these days. I’m waiting for lava to flow from the heavens and burn us all up.

I reach the fifth floor and turn the door knob. My clammy palm slips against the smooth metal and I fall, jarring my knees. I twist it again and the door opens. The air inside the apartment reaches out to me. I gag and cough, and stagger back. I remove my T-shirt and tie it across my face before entering. The smell heats its way through the fabric covering my nose till my eyes weep. I can even taste it through the cotton. It makes me think of the first time Maami made me clean a pot of rotten rice and maggots. I put my hand inside it, and threw up in the sink. She still made me clean the pot. I didn’t know it then, but it was a good precursor for my body, training me to deal better with rotten things.

I open the window and the silence is sliced when one fly enters, then another. They land on Maami’s dead body by the fridge. I look around the apartment: cream walls, the fridge in a corner, one window to outside. No pictures on the wall. Printers require ink and ink requires water, so photographs are now a luxury. I step over Maami’s body to the table where a jug of water gathers a film of dust. I remove the T-shirt and hold my breath while swallowing. The water touches my stomach and makes a U-turn, carrying everything already inside me back up in the wave. I run to the bathroom and lean over the toilet. Plantain chips and water gush into the bowl. The mess swirls down the drain too quickly for me to comprehend what has just left me.

I’ve only ever seen one dead body before Maami’s, and I couldn’t smell him. At his funeral, Maami’s hand pushed my head into her chest. I don’t think she meant to press that hard, but she was using her other hand to shake the hands of the mourners who’d come to pay their respects and it would have been impolite to grip them tight. So she placed all her tension on me. She smelled like a song, I don’t know how else to describe it, but she held me and I started hearing all those songs in Hausa movies, the ones with too much autotune and saccharine metaphors for love, kamar soyaya.

I squat over Maami’s body. Her dress has ridden up and I can see the under-curve of her left breast. One hand is stretched out, the other is on her chest. I lower her lids, the only things I’ve touched in the thirty-six hours since she stopped breathing.

I wash my hands with vodka and water, then yank the sheets off my bed and place them over her before moving my mattress to the window, as far from her as possible. I flop onto the bare foam. It’s my first time rooming with a dead person. There is no weight anywhere, nothing shudders, nothing stiffens the hairs on my neck. In the dark, covered with my bedsheet, Maami could pass for furniture, any mundane object hidden till its usefulness required the covering to be removed. I imagine that she is alive and snoring. Over the years, that dragging of mucus from her nostrils to throat functioned as a lullaby. I close my eyes till Khail knocks on my door.

I let him in and he surveys the mess. Let’s do this, he sighs.

He takes her arms and I take her legs, pumping the muscles in our calves to raise her off the ground. A dead body doesn’t move like a live one, it sags in ungainly ways, and we constantly have to readjust to keep her from reuniting with gravity. The stairway is not wide enough to make turning easy. To maneuvre, Khail and I bend and stretch her as needed, folding her into a V to turn, then back into an I as we descend each new flight of stairs.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, an inconvenience I ignore. We reach the ground floor and let her go. Her body makes a plush sucking sound on the concrete.

I’m tired and thirsty, I tell Khail.

Yeah. He takes Maami’s arms and drags her along the ground. My phone vibrates again. I pick up. The number seems familiar, but there is no caller ID.

Hello.

Good day from Planet One. Please state your name and identity number after the tone.

I suppress a shudder. No matter how good Planet One’s AI gets at mimicry, the speed and timbre of its voice always gives it away.

Amina Saud, A00012727, I say.

What is your father’s name? the AI asks the secret question I gave them during the compatibility tests. The question catches me off guard. I hesitate. It repeats the question. He has no name, he’s dead.

Congratulations, Miss Amina Saud. You have been selected by the interplanetary lottery board as a finalist. Due to your excellent physical and mental assessment scores, we are pleased to make you an offer to join the new crop of migrants to Planet Forma. Press one if you accept, press two if you decline.

I hold the phone away and look at Khail dragging Maami away. Bits of skin and black blood rub off on the gravel, sticking to the ground like clues leading to her grave. I stop and put the phone back to my ear.

The message repeats on a loop. My fingers hover between one and two. Why is there no option for further questions?

I press one.

The AI thanks me and spews some information I don’t bother to retain as it will be sent to me. I almost miss the instructions to press hash if I have any queries. I press hash.

Why me?

It replies in an electro-word jumble as if, somewhere, a desk robot is typing a response being read out by a phone robot.

You were an excellent fit with our criteria. Physically and otherwise. Finally, something coherent. It might be poor at tone, but Planet One’s AI is excellent at subtext. I’m fertile, I’m poor enough to be desperate, and I carry genes from two different races.

Well thank you. What is the next step?

A package will arrive tomorrow or the next day with further instructions. Congratulations once more. Have a great day.

You too, thanks. I say, but the call is already finished.

I walk faster, hope filling my ankles with new energy. When I catch up with Khail, there is already a fresh hole.

How?

Yesterday. Friends at midnight.

Allah bless them.

I move to Maami’s body. She looks a mess. Her clothes have ripped and her skin wears fresh wounds. They’ll never heal now. I comb my fingers through her hair and wipe the earth and blood from her face. Then we roll her into the ground. Khail hands me a bottle of vodka and I pour it over her. He strikes a match and throws it into the grave. We move a few feet away.

Khail takes my hand, Amina, I’m sorry.

Uh-huh.

We pass the remaining vodka between us. After four swigs I cough.

Khail. Planet One called.

He passes the drink and cracks his knuckles. The company selected you.

How did you know? I don’t sound excited.

I always knew they’d take you. You’re a diversity goldmine, the golden token. He draws lines in the sand with his toes.

I swallow the dryness that takes my throat down to my stomach. You can come, you know? We could get married. Then they’d have to allow you to come with me.

No, Amina.

I snatch the bottle from his hands and drain it. Fuck you, Khail!

Okay. He pulls me toward him till his mouth is a fan on my lips and I can taste the vodka on his tongue. I close my eyes and let our lips touch. I pull away and touch his hand.

Why won’t you do this for me? Would it be so bad? I reach for his face, stroking his cheekbones and jawline. We don’t have anything left here.

I throw the bottle into the fire. Khail steps away from me.

Amina, they’re going to dress you up, tell you to bat your lashes and dance. And after the party they will lock you up in a beautiful prison and tell you it’s a castle. How can you take this offer after what they did to your father?

Then tell me what to do?

I can’t. I love you, but I can’t.

You won’t come with me, you won’t tell me what you want.

I want you to be free, Amina. He points at the grave fire. The air smells like cooked meat. For the first time ever there is nothing holding you down. You can leave. We can leave Eko. There are still livable places on Earth, protected parts. It’ll be hard, but we can get in and be safe. Don’t give your freedom to the kind that killed your father.

I stare into the dwindling flames. This is what my world is, people waiting to be consumed by fire. One day fire will fall from the sky and kill us all.

Khail pisses vodka into the sand nearby. Already we are dropping from dehydration, from poor oxygen, from exhaustion. Why is he so adamant about staying?

I’m going, I shout at his shadowy form in the darkness. I will not wait for fire to claim me.

THE PALE DOCTOR asks me to draw Khail’s face. I tell him I’m better with my mouth than my eyes and hands. He nods and asks me to paint Khail with words. I tell him about the consistency of his fura, how whenever I ground the balls they ended up clumpy. His fura was always fine and mixed with thick yogurt where I used milk and sugar.

I tell him about trailing Khail around the market. How I watched his long black neck crick under the weight of cement and bricks until it became a permanent hunch. How I gasped the first time I saw him shirtless; he had skin like raw crude, beautiful and firm, but patched with red from sunburn and healed wounds. I did not know it was possible for a person so dark to hold so much color.

Khail is tall, I say to the Pale doctor. His chest used to be wider but he lost a lot of weight. His hugs are amazing. He smells like water. I know how that sounds, but it’s what I think of when he hugs me. I feel that same consistency of water running across stone, wearing down, smoothing edges.

He’s so smart. He taught me a lot about history.

Where is Khail now? the Pale doctor asks.

Earth.

Hmmn. Have you been able to stay in touch since you moved?

Not really.

If you saw him, what might you say to him?

That I’m sorry I left. That I want him to tell me he understands so I can stop feeling pepper in my blood every time I think of him.

What was Khail’s capacity in your life, Amina?

There’s no earthly word that would do justice to our bond.

He must have been very special.

He is, Dr. Atiku.

WHENEVER I MEET with Dr. Atiku, he greets with a swivel of his chair and a smile. I wish I knew what his real face looked like. His doctor face is too much like mine. We both have deep gray eyes and straight noses. Where mine tapers off to the left a little, his stays firm and ends above the divide on his top lip. Our top lips are dark while our bottoms are pink. We are both always wearing polite smiles. I barely see his teeth. He wears pink often. I admire that in a man.

My husband remarked on the same thing the day he dropped me off at my first appointment. It’s weird but you kind of look like your doctor.

I thought I was supposed to look like you. People in love starting to meld into each other and all.

He laughed and kissed my head. Yes, but you never smile.

I am literally always smiling.

No. Your teeth never show. Mine are always on display.

AT OUR FIRST session, I told Dr. Atiku that my blood felt off. Can you describe what that feels like? he asked.

There’s a lot of itching sometimes, a lot of heaviness. I feel heavy all the time.

The heavy feeling could be attributed to the gravity shifts; the itching could be an atmospheric response. Maybe you haven’t quite taken to your new environment.

No, it’s not that. I don’t think so.

Amina, you can say anything here, it’s confidential. The same legal framework on Earth applies here. He chuckled, For now.

I think maybe I miss being around Others. I’ve never been in such an overwhelmingly Pale place before.

Oh? He leaned back and tucked a strand of straight yellow hair behind his ears.

Yes. I had this person back home. He used to say he never supported Others moving planets. He said we’d move here and Pale people would enslave us all over again.

The doctor crossed his legs.

No one here makes jokes like that, I said and sighed. He was kind of right. I feel like I’m in a bubble.

Amina, a percentage of Forma consists of Others. Surely there must be associations and the like?

No one tells me or invites me.

He blinked fast, three times.

I’m sorry.

Please don’t apologize.

Sorry yeah, not sorry. I just…I don’t know.

Yeah, that tends to happen. Give yourself some time. How long have you been here?

A year and a half in Earth time.

Okay, well I’d like you to schedule a follow-up session. I think together we can find the source of your internal burden.

I laughed quietly. I like that description. Thank you, doctor.

On the way out I saw an Other in a cleaner’s uniform coming out of the laboratory. The corner of her cart hit me as we passed each other. Sorry, she mumbled.

Ba Masala, I replied in my father’s language.

Her head jerked up and she regarded me. I smiled. In a gaida. Hello. Her eyes flickered across my nose to my eyes, wide like hers, gray unlike her black. Her eyes scrutinized my face, my butter-colored skin, an unholy hue of Pale and Other. Then she scurried away.

CHET’S PALE FRIENDS, Cherry and Brett, are