I Never Asked You to Leave Anything Behind

A story by MUUKA GWABA

There was a long silence as they filed into the sitting room. The two women sat on either side of their father while their brother sat across on the sofa. There was a long silence before their father spoke quietly, his voice barely audible.  

I am only going to tell this story once for reasons that will become clear.  This is the story about how I met your mother and about how and why she is no longer with us. 

As you all know, I was a teacher for a long time, so I was off work during school holidays. On one of the April holidays, my parents asked that I drive a few of my younger cousins to Sianondo to visit the maternal grandparents. I was twenty-eight at the time, no family of my own, nothing to keep me in Lusaka for the month, so I said yes. It was an eight-hour-long exhausting drive back then, and when we got to the village, there were a few more hours of visiting relatives, numerous cups of chibwantu, comments about how big everyone had grown, and how we should be visiting more often. By sunset, I was ready to sleep. With my grandmother promising to set some food aside for me to eat later, I went to bed.  

I woke up at half one to complete darkness—darkness only possible in the village where there are no electric lights anywhere. They don’t have this anymore, but at that time, while there was electricity available in the village, people didn’t have security lights around their homes. There were no street lights because there were no defined council areas, and really, where would you be going at night in a village?

Anyway, I got up, filled my backpack with water, the food left for me, some fishing supplies, grabbed the old bicycle that my uncle kept behind his hut, and headed to the lake. It was after two a.m., and the whole way there was dead quiet. It was a warm night, cloudless after a previous downpour, with a light breeze and the smell of wet ground as I cycled. 

It was breathtaking. 

I loved every single part of the five kilometres to Lake Kariba and arrived refreshed. I set up my fishing rod and lay back on the pier with my hands interlinked behind my head, staring at the sky. The moon began to turn a dark red as it moved into the earth’s shadow, and I fumbled for my phone in the backpack beside me.

“You know, you can actually remember moments better if you don’t photograph or film them,” a voice said from below the pier. I started upright and looked around, but no one was there. I turned onto my stomach and peered over the side into the water, and not a hands length away, a woman’s head floated in the dark water. 

I gave a garbled scream and began to get up, got my feet tangled in my fishing rod and fell back onto the pier. I was never one for superstitious stories, but it’s one thing to laugh about the ridiculous nature of Dona fish and a completely different matter to see an actual human head bobbing up and down in the water. 

You can imagine how stupid I felt when the woman extended her hands over her head, waved, and shouted for me to calm down. 

“Hey! Easy, easy! I’m just a woman. Calm down. Sit. Sorry, I scared you!” she yelled. I watched as she swam, very human legs splashing behind her, and pulled herself up to collapse on the pier beside me.

“Gods! Your face!” She laughed.

I kissed my teeth, untangling my legs and setting my phone back into the bag. “I wasn’t scared.”

“Yes, you were,” she snorted and patted my leg. “I love giving people a fright”.

She extended her hand towards me. “I’m Luyando, what are you called?”

I shook her very wet hand - quite shaken myself - and said, “Chilufya. Chili to my friends.”

“Chili…I like it. Very spicy,” she replied, giving me a wink, and lay back adding, “Okay, so while we watch this eclipse, tell me what a northern boy is doing out in the middle of the night down in the south?”

“My mother is from Southern province actually, from very near here,” I replied and lay back beside her.

The eclipse lasted for about an hour, maybe two, and the things we talked about! Perhaps it was the darkness or the magic of a lunar eclipse above us, but it was the most open and honest about myself I had ever been with anyone, and Luyando admitted to the same feeling. And as the night went on–well, we were consenting adults with normal hormone levels.

Before I knew it, the sky began to hint at dawn. Luyando stood up, pulled on her top and pressed what I had assumed was a badge of some sort at her shoulder. A thin, dark membrane flowed down, covering her entire body. She lifted each leg in turn to allow it to cover her feet.

I stood there with my mouth open like an idiot.“What is that?” I gawped.

“It’s my swim gear. You didn’t think I swam all the way from there wearing just my swimming costume?” She waved her hand in the general direction of the lake. 

I looked over, and you would have had to pick my jaw off the floor. In the middle of the lake, at least fifteen kilometres from where we sat, was an island with what appeared to be a village on it.

“Where the h––”

“That’s where I’m from. And no, you’re not going crazy. You’ve never seen it before. But I can’t explain now, I’m running late. See you later? Midnight?”

I nodded. She blew me a kiss, turned, and dove into the water. I looked into the water and couldn’t see her. It wasn’t even the water quality. She disappeared, and then seconds later, her head broke the surface kilometres away. She gave a wave and dipped back in. I must have stood there for a good ten minutes before I decided she wasn’t coming back for air. I gathered my things, hopped back onto my bicycle, and began the long cycle back to my grandparents’ home.

I couldn’t wait for night to fall.  Felt like a teenager going on his first date.  My cousins, some of whom were actual teenagers at the time, side-eyed me and asked if I had a date, then laughed when I told them it wasn’t really any of their business. 

For the next three weeks, we met every night. She was always vague about where she came from and how a town that had not been there one day, was suddenly there. Don’t get me wrong, the subject came up every night, but she would say that she wanted to know more about me first, that she wanted to hear about my teaching, my family, the city, my past loves. She spoke about herself freely, just never about where she came from. In the end, I decided it didn’t really matter that much because I was already in love, and often, love closes your mind to logic, otherwise, you can’t sustain that state for long. 

As I mentioned, we always met at night. Neither of us ever suggested the day, and that may have been part of that illusion. It was––easier at night. To get away from family, to be open, vulnerable about my hopes and dreams and what I wanted. And I knew by the end of the holidays that what I wanted was to be with her.

Three nights before I was due to travel back to the city, I asked her to marry me.  

She looked into my eyes for a long time.

“Won’t your people need to know who my people are? Because mine will want to know.”

“I’m sure I’ll meet yours when you’re ready”, I replied. 

“I want to meet your people. Even if it’s just your grandparents for now,” She said. “I won’t be allowed to marry you if I don’t. And you’ll have to meet mine.”

I agreed, and that morning, we made our way to my grandparents’ home. It was as easy as I thought it would be because they loved her just as much as I did. My cousins adored her, wanting to take photographs on their cellphones and asking if it was okay to post them on Insta and thought she was very cute when she asked what the web was. Every relative we met agreed that it was a good sign of my maturity that I had met someone I wanted to marry. That’s just how things were in those days. Everyone was afraid that if you didn’t get married by the age of thirty, you would never find someone who would love you. Especially on a teacher’s salary. I was able to rent a small two-bedroom house, pay my bills and save enough to invest in treasury bills that paid dividends enough to keep me in my book addiction, but I wasn’t out there buying expensive things or socialising every weekend. I just couldn’t afford it. 

They were afraid, if you were a man, that you would become unmanageable, making women pregnant and your uncles having to deal with all the fallout from that. And if you were a woman, they worried that you would remain unfulfilled with no children of your own and husband.

By nightfall, we were both exhausted. She told me to be at the pier with a dry bag for my clothes, and she would take me to her world.  

Her world. Even the way she said it sent a shiver down my spine, but I didn’t ask anything more. I have always been a man who wanted to experience life as it came at me without thinking on it too much. 

I arrived at the pier at half-five that evening, swam to cool myself and my nerves down, and then sat at the edge watching the lights from the island. 

By six, I was sick with nerves and had convinced myself that she wasn’t going to show up. That somehow, the previous day had not gone as well as I had hoped. Of course, this meant that when she said, right beside me, “What are you thinking about?” I screamed, slipped, and fell into the water.

Yes, it was hilarious in hindsight.

Ten minutes later she was still clutching her side, wheezing with laughter. 

“Are you done?” I asked. 

She nodded weakly.

“But seriously,” I asked a short while later. “How did you manage to get here without me seeing you?”

“Magic!” she said, wriggling her hands. “You said you’re a secondary school teacher, right? Technology advancement.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay, so I won’t have to explain too much.”

She hesitated a moment. “You know the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?”

I nodded.

“My world, well, my village really, has a lot of technology. So before you go thinking it’s witchcraft or something, it’s just a piece of tech, same as the internet is a type of tech.”

She showed me the little pouch on her shoulder. It was the size of a kwacha coin, flesh-coloured to match her skin. She let me examine it before pressing down on it to allow the thin fabric to flow over her again. It was incredible. As soon as it covered her body, the colour changed to make her blend into the pier.

“It’s a basic use of nanocrystals and iridophores. Like a chameleon. I have a chip embedded inside my shoulder that gives me control of things like colour, temperature, and a few other cool things. I swam here with it on, then retracted the camouflage when I got behind you.”

“How is that even possible?” I asked. “Such technology doesn’t exist.”

“It doesn’t exist in your world. It does in mine.” She said, then took my face in her hands. “Chili, come home with me and meet my people? I know it will leave you with more questions, but come, please.”

Of course, I said yes. 

She produced another little pouch from a pocket somewhere about her person, clipped it onto the shoulder of my vest, and pressed down on it. The sensation of the fabric sliding over me is one I’ll never forget. Like honey – warm, sticky, and gloopy, making its way at an incredible speed over my body, leaving a sensation like I couldn’t breathe.  She pulled the back over my head and did the same to hers, and transparent film flowed over both our faces, into our nostrils and mouths. It was the most horrible sensation I’ve ever felt and, as I said, one I will never ever forget. 

She spent time teaching me how to control the fabric and to breathe naturally. When I was more or less ready, I slung my dry bag of clothes and shoes over my shoulder, and we jumped into the lake. Placing my head carefully under the surface, my body disappeared, blending seamlessly into the water and I found that taking long breaths just as she had told me meant I could breathe with no difficulty. She gestured and kicked her legs, shooting ahead in a silent streak. I followed, amazed at the distance I was able to cover with one kick. 

When we got to the island, it was incredible. The homes were all domed structures, not dissimilar to beehive huts of the past. But these were modern brick versions of huts some of them two, three storeys high, with intricate artistic designs that Luyando explained were clan symbols.

“It’s a small population, so we have to make sure no one accidentally marries their relative,” she said. “When we were teenagers, if you saw a cute boy, the first thing you did was find out which was his house. Very useful.”

We wound our way through cobbled streets, motion sensor street lights coming on as we walked past, Luyando stopping to exchange greetings and introduce me to every person we met. The island didn’t seem large, and with more time, we could have walked around it in a day. She explained that they had a small school that didn’t work on primary or secondary school level but worked on teaching children what they were interested in. 

“How does that work?” I asked, intrigued by the notion.

“The same way it always worked before we as a people were forced to change it.” She explained. “When a child’s natural curiosity begins to lead them to discover things, the teacher is there, and other older students help to build on that knowledge.” 

“Then how do people end up with specialities or decide what they want to study at university?” 

“We don’t even have a university so that just doesn’t apply here.”

“But, how then do you come up with inventions like your suit?”

“Chili! You’re thinking too much in that colonial master mindset.” She tapped the side of her head. “The human mind doesn’t work in linear ways. When a baby is learning how to walk, it also crawls, and it doesn’t forget how to sit. And at the same time, it’s learning how to speak and recognising patterns in its world. Given that psychological makeup, do you honestly think humans learn best sitting at a desk for hours every day being talked at by another human?” 

Her family, like mine, were more relieved than anything that she had met someone she wanted to marry. All were quick to point out how important it was that I understood what a commitment this was going to be, and yet looked puzzled when I said that, of course, marriage was a very serious thing for me. Dinner was a noisy affair with generous helpings of kapenta, different types of beans, Amaranth, and a nsima with a sweet, nutty flavour and a coarse texture.

“We don’t grow corn. Too labour-intensive in such a small space. This is nzembwe.” Her mother explained, then called out, “What is nzembwe in English? Is it millet, or sorghum?”

“Millet!” half a dozen voices answered, and she turned back to me.

“Millet. You don’t need to eat much because it’s very filling, so nutritious, just like our ancestors used to eat.”

When it was time to leave, I said my goodbyes and overheard Luyando’s brother say to her, “You should tell him sooner rather than later,” and I pricked up my ears to try and catch her response but didn’t hear it. 

“What did your brother mean when he said to tell me something sooner rather than later?” I asked when we were back on our pier, sitting watching her home in the distance. Seconds passed before she sighed.

“You’re going to find it very hard to believe me.”

“I won’t know until you try me,” I said.

“My village will disappear from this––I don’t know, plane? Dimension? Space time? In about twelve more moon cycles.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that village you’re looking at right now. Come back next April, and it won’t be there. I won’t be there. Here. You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean.” I was genuinely lost.

“We don’t know what started it. It’s been like that for generations, but every three hundred and sixty-five days, the island disappears. And we disappear with it.”

For centuries, Luyando explained, the village was on a small plateau beside the river. The original people had settled there for the fertile land and defence.  When the disappearance would happen, they still had access to the river and land wide enough to cultivate and harvest crops. They came to realise that the disappearances would last thirteen moon cycles, and so it was also used as a way to measure time for both them and the surrounding people, which developed a mathematical system that led to a recording system and ways of preserving those writings.

They believed at that time that the land was chosen for a greater task–– to allow people time away from the world to innovate and enhance themselves either spiritually or technologically. Many people travelled great distances to share knowledge and learn and then carry what they had learnt further afield. 

This went on for centuries, with things changing outside the village and innovation continuing to happen within. Whispers of other people, different people who did not have the same ethos of Ubuntu, began to spread, but the village was isolated from this because people were protective of that space. They knew it would not survive these new people, and so those people rarely found themselves in that vicinity.

One year, the people of the village woke up to find that the village had reappeared in the middle of a large body of water. Because they hadn’t expected this development, it took them time to mend boats they rarely used and navigate to the new shore. People they had called neighbours were no longer there, crops had disappeared, and the people they found at the shore had not heard of them. Gradually, it emerged that the plateau was now an island in a man-made lake, isolated from everyone they had known, with no easy way to travel between them and the rest of the land. The village elders made a decision to remain on the island and continue innovating as much as possible even as they realised they had passed into myth. And a hundred years later, in my time, they had passed from myth into near obscurity. 

I tell you this story now to help you understand why you never saw your mother’s side of the family, an abnormal occurrence in today’s time. It’s unusual for a matrilineal tribe to have no contact with their own ancestors, but your mother’s people trace their lines for generations on that island and rarely left except to marry and bring their partners to the island. 

That final day, when your mother told me this story as we sat on the pier, she asked me if I would go with her and live on the island. But I was torn. I had my own family to think about and decisions like this cannot be made quickly. After all, a person does not just marry a person. When you get married, you are asking for that person’s people to merge with your people and become one. 

“So what you’re saying,” I said back then, “is that next year you’ll be gone? That I won’t see you?”

She nodded. 

I have never been a man to make decisions in a hurry and I wasn’t about to start then, but I felt a slow panic begin to rise. I knew with all my heart that this was the woman I wanted to share my life with, and the thought of losing her, even for a day, made me feel ill. 

“Luyando, we’re not teenagers.” I began. “I want you to come with me. I don’t have much to offer you in terms of material wealth in the city, but I love you, and love is a rare enough thing to find these days.”

“Of course, I’ll come with you.” She said simply. “I will go home and pack and say my goodbyes. Come get me in the morning.”

Despite what you’ve all heard from my relatives, everything actually went well at the start. The first thing I did was to make her watch Black Panther.

“Okay,” she said when it was over, “why did you want me to watch that?”

“Ah, come on. Your village is Zambia’s Wakanda!” I laughed. 

“Eh! No, we certainly are not.” She scoffed and refused to broach the subject again.  

Luyando set herself up as a consultant in a tech research company, downgrading her skills and knowledge to a great extent but pulling in a fantastic salary that allowed us to buy this very house that we’re all in right now. 

Granted, she also learnt a lot because there are things here in our world that are not in hers, and she was an eternal scholar. She would talk for hours to people at her work and on the internet about the most mundane technological advancements that had happened years ago. We travelled at least once a month to see things she had never seen - we followed the wildebeest migration in a hot air balloon, went to Kasanka National Park to experience the straw-coloured fruit bat convergence, hiked the fish river canyon, we learnt how to scuba dive on Lake Tanganyika and sailed from Mpulungu port to Kipili port in Tanzania. Luyando carried her books with her, taking notes to take back with her for further innovations when she returned to her village. It was the most spectacular time of our lives. 

A month before Luyando was meant to leave, she decided to stay. I can’t even tell you how happy I was. We planned the wedding quickly and married on the shore of Lake Kariba at sunset and it was the most beautiful ceremony. You’ve seen the pictures. You’ve seen me crying with happiness on that day. And for the next eight months, we were happy. So happy.

And then the next April came and over a cup of tea, I asked whether Luyando wanted us to visit her family. It was like I had told her that her dog died. She burst into tears and would not stop crying for hours. When I finally got her to tell me what was wrong, she admitted tearfully,

“I never told you this. The village won’t appear for another nine years.”

I was…shocked.

“What do you mean it won’t appear for another nine years? You said it disappears every thirteen moon cycles.”

“Yes,” she nodded, wiping tears with the back of her hand, “for ten years”.

And you know what, my children? That’s when I understood just how much she loved me. She had given up her family and the life she knew for me. 

And five years later, we were expecting you. To tell you that I was shocked to be having not twins but triplets! Well, we were both over the moon and completely overwhelmed by the news. After the initial shock, everything went well. We told family and friends and they were all so supportive. There was no question of a natural birth, so we opted for a planned c-section, and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made as your father. As the first of you was taken out of your mother, we named you Natasha because we were so thankful for your arrival. Because it was nightfall, we called our second baby Busiku, and you have always loved the night, and last our only boy we called Mainza for the rainstorm that had threatened to make it impossible for us to get to the hospital. God, I was so happy. I felt fulfilled. I had my wife and family, and everything was perfect.

And then, it wasn’t.

I know now that a lot of it was my fault. 

Your mother missed her family. That ache had never really gone away, and your arrival, while it made her incredibly happy, opened up a chasm of loss inside her that was impossible to fill. She withdrew into your childhood and dedicated every minute to making sure the three of you were fed, documenting every little thing you did in thousands of photographs and videos that she catalogued religiously. She decided that you were all going to be polyglots, so she not only taught you Tonga but also learnt Bemba and Nyanja and Lozi so she could teach you herself, and for sure, by the time you were all four years old, you had a good grasp of all those languages. She taught you songs and played with you and took you places and I enjoyed all these things with you all as much as I could, given my work. 

When you were five, she began talking about going back to her home. Which was fair, her people had as much right to meet and get to know you as mine did, and I told her as much.

“No, not to meet them. I want to go with them and take them with me for the disappearance.” She said.

“You can’t just take our children away for the next ten years!” I said, “Luyando, what about all their friends, their lives, our lives?”

“Well, you are coming as well! Why are you saying it like I meant for you not to come?” 

I don’t even know why I had excluded myself from that question. In hindsight, of course, she meant for us all to go, but I think a low sort of jealousy had begun to simmer within me. She was just so taken with you all. In a way, I lost my wife a little bit when you were all born, and now I know, that was exactly what should happen.  I felt excluded from the family that I had helped create. I didn’t understand then that a woman’s heart doesn’t move direction from her husband to her children, it expands to envelop them and love them just as much. 

But at that moment, I wasn’t thinking straight. As the day to go back to her village grew closer and I watched Luyando grow more and more excited, an ache began to build in my heart. I was now thirty-nine and leaving meant I would only return when I was forty-nine. 

“It’s all very well and good for you. You’ll be in your Wakanda world living it up while I’m the poor idiot from the mainland,” I hissed one night in what had become a frequent disagreement.

“Chili, come on, don’t be childish. I’ve told you many times that equating my village with Wakanda is juvenile! Were we deliberately hiding from the world? Were we deliberately ignoring the slave trade and suffering of people to protect anything? You know we didn’t have a choice in the disappearances.”

“No, but look at the technology you’re hoarding now! And you want our children to also learn the same habits? Sitting on tech that could change the world like that!” I snapped my fingers.

“You have technology right now that could change the world, and yet you let the rich hoard it! You have tech here that we didn’t know existed! Cars, microwaves, aeroplanes, Mobile phones, for gods’ sake! Don’t you think I would kill to be able to talk to my family right now?”

“That’s all that you think about? Talking to your family? We’re your family, Luyando! And what happens to all the people I leave here? My parents could be dead in ten years’ time, and my friends no longer my friends. And what career do I come back to? You’re asking me to uproot my whole life for a place where I’ll be surrounded by people I don’t know and a completely different way of life I would have to get used to.”

It was like I had slapped her.

“And what about what I’ve given up over the last ten years, Chili? What about all the things I left behind? What about my life and the things I wanted to be?”

“I never asked you to leave anything behind.”

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. 

Once words are said, they cannot be unheard.  

“You did ask me, Chili. And I left everything I was because I love you and wanted to be with you more than anything in the world. Thanks for letting me know that meant nothing to you.”

We didn’t speak for days after that. I knew it was entirely my fault, but pride, though tasteless and sizeless, is often the hardest thing to swallow. 

What was once the happiest of marriages became a cold shell. We rarely spoke, but when we did, it was to clash about the same thing. Me saying my children were going nowhere without me, and her saying children belonged with their mother and I could stay here if all I thought about was my precious career. 

We were emotionally vicious to each other. I said things that I am not going to repeat because they were unforgivable and I won’t try and justify them by saying your mother said what what what. She only wanted her babies to be with her. And being honest with myself, she wanted me there too, but my words were like a kick in the teeth to her.

Your mother knew at that stage that the village was there, and she only had a few weeks left before the window to go back closed, and the village disappeared again. She began packing her things and yours. Every day, I would come back to boxes of clothes, toys, and books ready to be taken out of the house and piled into her car. She spoke excitedly to the friends she had made, telling them she was going back home and not sure when she and the children would be back. There was no longer any mention of me in her plans. 

The night before, I knew for certain that she was leaving with you, I apologised. I told her I was sorry for everything and that I was definitely going to come with her. She cried so hard that she got a headache. She went to lie down and I promised to finish packing. 

I moved all the things she had packed into her car into our bigger Hilux and added a few more boxes of my own clothing. By the time we woke up, I had put up an advertisement to rent out our house for the next ten years, and showed her all the arrangements I had made to ensure we had a life when we returned. 

“Chili!” she said with tears in her eyes, “I don’t––I––”

You all gathered yourselves into her arms, asking what was wrong. 

“Nothing. These are happy tears! Your dad is going to come with us to see your grandparents. We’re all going to live together!” 

The drive there was the usual long, exhausting drive, and when we got to my grandparents, they confirmed that your mother’s people had been there the day before, checking whether we were, in fact, going to be there as planned. A quick meal––because whoever heard of visiting the village and not getting offered food––then we headed to the pier. We left you all behind so we could hire a small speed boat to take all the boxes across. It was hard going with just the two of us and it was nearing nightfall when we finished. We knew that the disappearance happened at the moment the full moon rose fully into the sky, so we drove quickly to get you all.

Back at the pier, you all chattered excitedly as your mother quickly stripped down to her swimming suit, activated her swim device and as planned, I lowered each of you into the boat to take you across with me. 

Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she dove into the water and laughed with glee.

“I have missed these waters so much!” she screamed.

“Okay, you start off,” I said with a smile on my face. “I’ll be right behind you.” 

“You remember where the jetty is?” she asked. “You won’t get lost?”

“Yes! You go. We’ll see you soon.” 

I hope that one day you will be able to forgive me for what I did.  

I knew that your mother would get onto the island on the shore facing the pier, but that the island’s pier was on the opposite side. It would take her a short thirty-minute cycle to get from one end of the island to where we would already be on land, waiting for her. Plenty of time before moonrise. 

As soon as I saw she was safely on shore, I turned the boat to follow the shore around, all of you waving and smiling. And when we were out of view, I killed the engine and waited. 

Fifteen minutes later, I headed back to the pier. 

As I helped you all up on the pier, I looked back over my shoulder. The island was gone. 

I told everyone that your mother had left you. I didn’t say anything else apart from that because I knew the rumour mill would take over. What type of mother abandons her children after all? And ten years later, we moved countries, to England for the year. Yes, it was calculated. I knew she would never be able to get a visa outside the continent. Like a coward, I fled the confrontation that I knew would happen when she was back in the world.  

I did not want to lose my children. 

And when we returned to Zambia, life went on without you knowing she had come and searched for you. 

And now here we are again, and according to my calculations, the village reappeared last week. 

You are all adults now it’s time you made your own choices.  

There is nothing shameful in admitting when one is wrong about something. And I want to admit that I was wrong. I should have never kept you away from your mother. 

For that, I ask for your forgiveness. And listen now––that is her car hooting at the gate.