And Home Was Kariakoo (33 page)

So much for the happy cows in their turbans. There are also at this market the Baluchi mercenaries, “comely brown [men] with regular features” and flowing, henna-dyed beards, sporting long-barrelled matchlocks; as well, “the wildest and most picturesque figures … the half-breeds from the western shores of the Persian Gulf.… Their elf-like locks fall in masses over unclean, saffron-stained shirts [kanzus].” They wear heavy swords over their shoulders and daggers at their waists, and their whips “await immediate use.”

Burton goes on with full hyperbolic gusto,

Burton, a British secret agent a few years before, had intrigued with the first Aga Khan in Persia, not a happy experience for him, and is under the misapprehension that the Khojas (who follow the
Aga Khans) were Persian in origin; they were in fact Indians, cousins of the Kutchi Bhatias, the “Banyans.” But whatever value one gives to this portrayal of the island’s inhabitants, one still takes away a sense of its tumult and diversity, and the arrogance of the Zanzibari Arab, not to mention the white man, in this case the Englishman who observes and reports.

Forodhani is the grassy plain next to the harbour, across from the palace, where townspeople and tourists come in the evenings to shoot the breeze, and young people come for overt trysts. Formerly a part of the palace establishment, the ground was laid waste by the British bombardment in the Anglo–Zanzibar (thirty-eight-minute) “war” and became a public space, where for decades now a nightly food court has indulged the public with sizzling snacks. Vendors arrive at dusk and set up their stalls, offering grilled meat and seafood, breads, fruit juices, and sodas. The smoky dark, lit up with sporadic lamps, the charcoal fires, and the quiet chatter of people strolling about combine to produce a uniquely Zanzibari ambience reflective of its attitude to life. There’s no hurry. Recently the park was renovated with paved paths, stone benches, a bandstand, thick bounding walls to sit on, and rows of built-up stalls for the vendors. It looks clean and pretty and perhaps a bit touristy, but Zanzibaris are grateful; tourists are needed to boost the economy.

All the young visitors who were on the ferry with me this morning are here, what else is there to do in Zanzibar but wander about on this beautiful, balmy evening? Out in the distance a ferry takes on its last batch of passengers for the mainland; farther away a container ship lies in apparent coma. A bunch of touts appear, call out in English and Italian—“Amici!”—to the young Europeans hovering around in small groups, many of them actually Italian. Caution on their minds,
they are hesitant initially to savour the food so abundantly and aromatically on display. But then gradually one by one and then all together they yield. The grills are crowded, the vendors sound relieved.

I have arranged to meet here Abdul Sheriff, local intellectual and historian, the author of several books on Zanzibar. A quiet, unassuming man in his mid-sixties, he went to university in Berkeley and London. Later he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, where he was one among the intellectual crowd during the heyday of the 1970s. Returning to his native Zanzibar, for a few years he curated the House of Wonders, the rather impressive though underfunded museum of Swahili and coastal history, across the road from where we now stroll on Forodhani. His edited book,
The History and Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town
, is studded with gems of information. His
Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar
is a detailed analysis of the growth of Zanzibar as a commercial hub in the nineteenth century. Until recently, when he retired, he ran the Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute. Funding was difficult, he says, dependent on foreign agencies, which preferred to donate to high-profile charities. The study of the Indian Ocean zone is not sexy enough. Poverty and disease are always more attractive.

We get our mishkakis, he with a naan, and I with a chapati, and sit on the seawall, partly facing the harbour. A few small boats are about, nothing else. Sea traffic is much less than it was in the time of Burton and Stanley, more than a hundred years ago. This island has only memories left, and Stone Town is one such memory. Abdul’s current project concerns the proposed new constitution for the Tanzanian Union, and he is involved in public discussions about it. The Union government is keen to push it through as quickly as possible. The present constitution, describing Zanzibar’s relations with the mainland, he says, was forced upon the island in the
shotgun marriage of 1964, only a few months after the revolution. Now Zanzibaris want a better deal, on the model of the American federal system.

We find ourselves talking of our respective communities, the Ithnasheris and the Ismailis. They were initially a single community of Khojas, which split up in the late nineteenth century in India, and then again later in Africa, on grounds of religious practice. The split in Zanzibar, with repurcussions on the mainland, was bitter and sometimes violent; it divided many families. Such was the bitterness that Ismailis were forbidden even to accept water from an Ithnasheri house. That is saying a lot. And the colour black was frowned upon because it was identified with the “enemy.” It is all embarrassing now. As young people who had not seen the bitterness of the conflict, this attitude in our elders was curious, producing a slight niggling in the mind, a portent of the greater doubts that would in time arrive.

He walks me back to my hotel on Kenyatta Avenue.

The jamatkhana, the Khoja khano, on Jamatini Street was built in 1905, apparently on the site of an earlier, nineteenth-century structure. It is a light yellow rectangular building flush with its neighbours in the old section of town called Kiponda. The windows are arched and barred, the massive front door is typically Zanzibari, carved and studded. There is a carved trim on the outer wall, but none of the geometrical calligraphic affectations that seem to be de rigeur nowadays. There is no dome. This was the East African headquarters of the Khojas, and the area was called the Khoja Circle. The khano would have been crowded once, hundreds coming to pray every day, at dawn and dusk. Visitors would be welcomed. The tycoons Tharia Topan and Sewa Haji would have received pleadings and homage.

As plain and dignified as the outside is, the inside is magnificent in a baroque sort of way, with intricately carved woodwork on the wall panellings, trellises, railings, and columns, and massive ancient-looking chandeliers hanging low from the ceilings. And like all old buildings in Zanzibar, this one has its own ghosts.

The last time I went to the Zanzibar khano, I counted seventeen people.

I
T WAS
J
ANUARY
12, 1964. In Dar es Salaam, schools had reopened after the month-long holidays, the hot season was at its height, and the mangoes were ripe. Almost exactly a month before, Tanganyika had become a republic, refusing a British governor general and formal ties to the Crown; also a month ago Kenya had gained independence from Britain, and so had Zanzibar. It was an exciting time. They would tell us in school, You are the future. And so we believed. But that Sunday morning we woke up to a bizarre piece of news. There had been a revolution in Zanzibar. Those who listened to Radio Zanzibar heard the thundering voice of “the Field Marshall,” in a Swahili that sounded Kenyan or Ugandan, announcing the overthrow: “Wake up, you imperialists, there is no longer an imperialist government on this island. This is now the government of the freedom fighters.…” All these terms were foreign to us. A revolution in our backyard, in sleepy, peaceful old Zanzibar. It is impossible to describe the impact of this news. Disbelief, confusion, rumour. What did a revolution look like? Other countries had revolutions. But here? And what did it mean to our world? Zanzibar was a different country, an insignificant place, a stopover for our grandparents. The
overriding fear when news of the violence had somehow drifted across the channel into Dar was, Can the revolution come here, to Tanganyika? Where will we run?

Zanzibar—easygoing isle on one hand, and on the other, the place of perhaps the bloodiest revolution on the continent. It is a conundrum. To this day many Zanzibaris remain stunned by the fact, the violence, the suddenness of the revolution. It appears relaxed even now: the streets are mostly safe and life is slow, the sun shines and the blue sea is accessible to enjoy, the dressing is casual, the kahawa seller comes by with his kettle, at Sugra Bai’s people of all races will sit in a plain room in a humble abode in an alley for a snack of tasty bhajia mix, there remains a sense of humour. Yet sporadic—though much smaller—violence does take place. Perhaps Zanzibaris, the poor ones, hide their resentments well most of the time. Or perhaps—this can hardly be satisfactory—one simply accepts the puzzle that is Zanzibar.

What brought about this upheaval? There’s no denying that beneath the placid surface of island life there has lurked the memory of a historical racial grievance: many of the Africans were the descendants of slaves. To feed that resentment, the seeds of a revolt had already been planted in the flawed general election that was a gift of the British to the friendly Sultan of Zanzibar before they lowered their flag and departed. At independence, Zanzibar found itself with a coalition government—formed by the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and the Pemba People’s Party (PPP), both dominated by the Arabs—with Sultan Jamshed as the constitutional monarch. (Pemba is the smaller island to the north, considered politically a part of Zanzibar.) The ZNP and PPP were “moderate” parties; moreover, a constitutional monarchy suited the British, for they had been the patrons of the sultans and their
senior partners since the nineteenth century. The colonial powers had sponsored such mixed-race “moderate” parties in other countries as well, and failed, for the simple reason that history was against them. The Africans did not want a partnership with the minorities who had dominated them in the ruling and social hierarchy, and would continue to dominate given the chance. The predominantly African parties were the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) and the Umma party, the latter formed by disaffected socialist members of the ZNP and now banned.

At independence there were approximately 230,000 Africans, 50,000 Arabs, and 20,000 Asians on the island. As expected, the majority of the popular vote was captured by the Afro-Shirazi Party, the ASP; and yet the ZNP–PPP coalition managed to obtain the greater number of seats and formed the government. There was something manifestly unfair about this outcome. The wealthier ZNP could buy votes; the distribution of constituencies was questionable; and there were charges of vote-rigging.

The revolution began at around three in the morning and was over within the day. A few hundred “freedom-fighters” armed with rudimentary weapons—spears, machetes, bows and arrows, tire irons—managed to overcome two police stations and capture their weapons, and to take over the radio station. Their numbers swelled, and quickly a violent rampage spread across the island. Soon after the attacks began, the Zanzibari prime minister requested British troops, based in Kenya, to intervene. The British government refused, despite American recommendation. Early in the morning the sultan, the prime minister, and members of the cabinet quietly fled in the royal yacht, stopping in Dar before flying off to England. What remained was the lingering aftermath. The world had changed.

The revolution was shockingly bloody, most of the violence directed against the Arabs, some against the Asians. It is surprising how many people today will casually mention having witnessed a murder, a rape, a beating. Don Petterson, an official at the U.S. Consulate at the time, describes a scene witnessed by some frightened Americans crowded inside the living room of a house: