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Kennst
du das Land wo die Citronen bluhen?
It could be Dade County, Florida
or alongside the Rio Grande in Texas or it could be Tony Esposito's ranch in San
Fernando Valley, but in the reaches of the imagination it is probably the
terraces at Ravello overlooking the blue Gulf of Salerno
where the fragrance of the lemon blossoms is sweeter than all the perfumes of
the Orient.
But in our flight of fancy to this imagined and lovely paradise of scented
air, far from the bleak and chill of the zero winds pressing now against the
frost-covered windows of the room where I am writing, we tend to think of
this heavenly place as an island, because an island is a haven, a place of
refuge, a retreat from the ills and foibles and concerns and responsibilities
of an inconsiderate and cruel world, and if, on such an island, the fragrance
of lemon blossoms wafts over the hammock, ah, paradise is paradise enow!
As a matter of fact, all islanders I ever knew were always hell-bent to get
off of them. It seems to be true, however, that continent-dwellers, like the
Americans and the Russians and especially the Germans, dream of a life of
indolence and shorts on some island in the southern seas, far from home.
Now there are many such delightful islands sprinkled over the surface of the
earth. I have had the good fortune to have been able to visit some of them. Jamaica, for example, was a quaint and
beautiful island in the Caribbean, until the entrepreneurs built a causeway
from Miami Beach to Montego
Bay. Or take Hawaii: pineapple juice and white surf and flame
trees and three-finger poi; but it was all spoiled for us, because we landed
there in the Thirties after a journey to Peiping, and as we walked off the
gangplank of the Chichibu Maru we were greeted by a huge billboard stating
"W.P.A. Project Number 432" and we knew that we were back home.
Many of us are intrigued by the South Pacific islands, like Tahiti or
brassiere-less Bali, and I must confess that
I have been looking forward for years to a holiday in that part of the world,
with or without Robert Michener, but it looks as though the communists might
get there first.
Mallorca, in the Spanish Balearics, is an
island of great beauty and charm and climate, and cheap, too. I have never
understood why the tourists who go to Mallorca to escape the hordes of
tourists along the French Riviera do not try to escape the hordes of tourists
on Mallorca by going on to that other Balearic island, Menorca, or even Ibiza, where the cats live, in hordes. I suppose it's
because every tourist's wife wants to shed a silent tear in the convent at
Selva on Mallorca, over Chopin's piano in the apartment of what's-her-name,
and to visit the shop in Palma where one can buy a replica of a Spanish
"pipo," of ornamental clear green glass, trimmed with green glass
lace and green glass roses and green glass swans, a lovely thing indeed.
Portuguese Madeira, near the Canary Islands,
is a magnificent island, with a climate so moist and mild and propitious that
flowers, plants and trees from all over the world, transplanted there, seem
to grow and bloom more happily than in their natural habitats. Madeira has another advantage for island-dreamers.
Because its rather small area is threateningly mountainous, neither the
unenterprising Portuguese who control it politically nor the smug English who
own its business have endeavored to sculpture an airfield on it anywhere,
with the result that, since it lies far from conventional shipping routes,
the traveler must fly in by seaplane. The unadvertised advantage is simply
this, that since the sea is always so rough on the day of departure that the
plane cannot be trusted to take off safely, one is happily resigned to
stopping over another fortnight.
But there is a paragon of islands, mild in climate, rich in indolence and
glamorous in its traditions, its hectic history, its place in the modern
world. Sentimentality heaves a deep sigh at the approach to Zanzibar, the isle of spices and nostalgia
pricks up an anticipatory ear.
It is an emerald set in a sapphire sea.
The Portuguese and English argosies of the Indian Ocean harbored here, the
Persians controlled it a thousand years ago, the African nations of the Swahili Coast swarmed over it, the Arabs took
it for their own.
It was the funneling point for the African slave trade. The supply was so
plentiful that black humans sold for less than goats. Great shameful fortunes
were made in the business.
A tiny island, fifty miles long and twenty miles wide, lying just twenty-four
miles off the east coast of the enormous continent of Africa, it has a rich
and redolent history and is altogether a delightful place.
We shall fly there to see it, for the steamers and freighters from Mombasa
and Dar- Es-Salaam are too uncertain in schedule and otherwise. We shall
start from the somewhat impromptu airport called Nairobi West and in a few
minutes Flight 035 of East African Airlines will roll into position. The
passenger list is light; we travel with two Somali gentlemen in white linen
business suits, a fat Parsee in long black coat and black bell-hop cap, a
noisy group of four untidy East Indian traders and a sandaled French
Franciscan monk.
There is no rush or confusion at Nairobi West. The international lines use
the other airport. But here at the minor port, matters are quiet and
relatively haphazard and if the passenger is alert, he is more likely than
not to get aboard the right plane.
Flight 035 is a local. The first down is Moshi, in an agricultural area, with
the snows of Kilimanjaro in the distance. The second down is Arusha, where
Europeans living in Nairobi come to see African scenery and I am told it is
magnificent, even the hotel, which is located at the edge of the Ngorongoro
Crater. This is a huge national park development project; wild animals are
here in great herds, packs and prides, and may be seen and photographed, but
not shot at. Ed Doresz, who was United States consul- general in Nairobi when
we were there, says Arusha is the finest spot in East Africa for an
interesting and yet relaxing holiday.
The third down is Mombasa, Kenya's booming port city, with a strong Arab
flavor, where, since Zanzibar will be the next stop, we will probably take
aboard two or three wild-eyed ferocious-looking emaciated young Oman Arabs on
their way back to their tasks on the dhows in Zanzibar Harbor, and the timid
among us will look with concern at the daggers in their waistbands, hoping
that a religious war or even a running amok, does not start while we are in
mid-air over the beautifully blue Zanzibar Channel.
But before we embark on this interesting, hot and humid, local flight to
Zanzibar, I would like to move back to a more sensible beginning. Why are we
going to Zanzibar at all? Not many travelers go there.
It all began in the fall of that year, when I said to Spouse Baer one Sunday
afternoon, "If we can have a holiday next spring, how would you like to
go to Russia?" Her "No!" was so vehement and explosive that I
hastily muttered, "Well, okay, okay. Then we'll go to Madagascar,
Mozambique and Zanzibar."
I don't know why I said that. They are all along the African east coast and
besides, the names are alliterative, the "m's" and the
"z's" and the "b's" sounding well in proximity. And
probably it had something to do with the stamp-collecting I did as a boy. As
I remember, I struggled to complete the Zanzibar 1898 set, from one-half anna
to eight annas, a lad intrigued by the crossed solid-red flags of the
protectorate and the head of Sultan Hamoud-bin-Mohamed, wrapped in a regal
turban, with features that seemed Arabic except for the thick African lips
and all set off and emphasized by a full white beard that bushed from regal
ear to regal ear.
Since Seyyid Hamoud's reign, from 1896 to 1902, introduced a high degree of
peace and quiet in the court circles of the island, under the censorious eye
of the British Resident, we should take a peek at the hectic period which
preceded it, reeking with oriental palace intrigue. Let us move back briefly
to 1741, when Ahmed, an obscure merchant who became a swash-buckling hero-general,
hurled the Persian invaders out of the Imamate of Oman in southern Arabia and
established the Al-bu-said dynasty. Fifty years later, in 1791, his grandson,
a fierce and enterprising fellow named Seyyid Said, moved his royal
prerogatives to the lush palm-fringed shores of Zanzibar, and established the
sultanate there, though maintaining control of Oman through uncles and
cousins. We shall skip the important reigns of Seyyid Majed and Barghash-bin-
Said, both sons of Seyyid Said, and several unimportant reigns of other
unimportant sons of Seyyid Said, and come to Hamed-bin-Thuwaini-bin-Said, who
ruled from 1893 to 1896. He was the son of Seyyid Said's eldest son Seyyid
Thuwaini, the first Sultan of Muscat, who was murdered in his sleep by his
son Salim. Salim fled to India, and the throne of Oman was taken by a cousin,
who in turn was killed by Thuwaini's brother, by name Turki. This prince had
a daughter, named Turkiyyeh, married to Seyyid Hamed, who conspiring
unsuccessfully to murder his father-in-law, was forced to flee to India and
divorce Turkiyyeh. She later married Seyyid Harub, a son of Seyyid Thuwaini,
and became the mother of Seyyid Khalifa-bin-Harub-bin- Thuwaini, the present
gracious Sultan of Zanzibar who has ruled since 1911.
Hamed came to Zanzibar from India, and in 1893, as we have said, ascended the
throne there. He became very ill in 1896, which set the stage for more dirty
work at the crossroads, and while he was dying in his palace his Persian
bodyguard was influenced by one Seyyid Khaled, a delightful and ambitious
young fellow and a son of the great Sultan Barghash, to seize the throne. You
can read all about this palace revolution in "The Memoirs of an Arabian
Princess" presumably written by Salamah, daughter of Seyyid Said, later
becoming Frau Emily Ruete, and, if you ask me, the Germans had a hand in it.
At any rate, guns of the British Royal Fleet blew up the palace in the nick
of time and with it terminated the many years of Arabian royal family
intrigues and plots.
It was the great Seyyid Said who imported the clove tree from Mauritius into
Zanzibar and had the first seedlings planted on the grounds of Bet-il-Mtoni,
the palace four miles north of the city. The climate and soil of Zanzibar and
its sister island Pemba seem to be exactly right for cloves and almost ninety
percent of the world supply is grown there. Incidentally, the annual crop has
been averaging ten thousand tons, more than half of which is exported to
India and, of all places, the Indonesian Peninsula, the so-called "Spice
Islands" of the Portuguese, English and Dutch sea-faring men of the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Asians use it principally as a condiment, but generally oil of cloves has
wide industrial and pharmaceutical usage.
Major Pearce says: "It is to be regretted that the clove is not more
extensively used in the domestic economy of the household, for it is
essentially tonic and antiseptic in its action. No rat or mouse will touch a
clove."
"As a preserver of teeth from decay," he writes, "as a
purifier of the mouth, and a preventative of sore throat, it is far more
efficacious and pleasant than the host of advertised drugs, while its sweet
fragrance, reminiscent of the Isles of the Sun in the Azanian Sea, imparts a
sense of reassuring wholesomeness and freshness to the wardrobe or linen
cupboard in which a few are placed. Nothing accentuates or brings out the
subtle aroma of good tobacco whether cigar, cigarette or pipe better than the
presence of a few well-dried cloves in the cigar box."
Then he adds: "The clove is probably seen at its worst when used in the
conventional manner beloved of English cooks."
When we were on our way to Africa, aboard the S.S. African Endeavor, we asked
Captain Mortenson, the skipper, an innocent question about cloves at lunch
one noon. He carefully lowered to his plate the soup spoon in which he had
been mixing his salad dressing of olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. His
blue eyes blazed from under his shaggy eyebrows and he snorted, "The
cloves of Zanzibar they stink!"
To the skipper there was no romance about Africa. To him Africa meant
terrific gales preventing his ship from entering the harbor at Capetown,
thick hot humid nights in port, endless arguments with obdurate imperturbable
East Indian ship agents and lazy black dockhands. To him the East Coast did
not spell pirates and treasure, Vasco de Gama and the Portuguese argosies,
Persian princes and Arab sultans and the fragrance of the clove trees of
Zanzibar wafting out twenty-five miles to sea from the palm- fringed emerald
island. To him the East Coast meant two things only: malaria and Stinkibar.
As he had run his old coast freighters from Lourenco Marques to Beira to old
Mozambique to Dar-Es-Salaam to Mombasa to Mogadishu, his most painfully
unforgettable experiences had to do with the cloves of Zanzibar, loading down
the ship with stinking tons of cloves in matting bags made by the Mshihiri
Arabs of Zanzibar town. The odor was so heavy and pervasive that his rugged
Lascar seamen actually became so nauseated that they could not stand their
watches. The officers could not visit friends or whatever ashore because of
clove-stench. And when the cargo was finally cleared out of the hold, it took
three days of scouring and washing and soapstoning and painting to eradicate
the pungent odor of cloves before any other kind of cargo could be put
aboard.
No cloves for Captain Mortenson. No sirree! Even nutmeg made him a little
queasy in his stomach.
It was aboard the Endeavor, during that peaceful eighteen-day voyage from New
York to Capetown, that I learned many things about modern Zanzibar from
Charles Reed, career diplomat and promptly forgot them in my soreness from
stinging Scrabble defeats by Charles and his wife Martha. Charles, then
United States consul-general at Johannesburg, had spent a home leave listing
every two-letter word in Webster, some five hundred of them, and his defense
was impregnable.
I listened, over the Scrabble game, and at gin and tonic before dinner, to
the endless excruciating problems of race and color relations in Africa. In
our day they had expressed themselves violently and dramatically in the Mau
Mau explosion in Kenya, but there are even more terrific tensions in South
Africa, which Charles knew best.
Zanzibar, in its tiny way, reflects continental racial stresses. Of the
quarter million people who live and work on Zanzibar and Pemba, some two
hundred thousand are Swahili, or coast people, in other words, basically
African folk. There do not seem to have been any Zanzibar aborigines. A very
long time ago, African tribes from the mainland settled on the islands.
Probably as early as the Christian era they were subjugated by Arab and
Persian invaders and traders. One large group of the Zanzibari describe
themselves as Shirazi and claim descendence from the Persians. During early
Arab domination there was extensive slave-trading through Zanzibar and many
of the descendents of those slaves, brought from both east and central
Africa, are part of Zanzibar's population today. Then, in the nineteenth
century, as the clove plantations developed a modern agricultural prosperity,
thousands of coastal Africans crossed the channel to seek jobs on Zanzibar
and Pemba, and it is these relative newcomers who form most of the rural
population.
The East Indian population numbers about ten thousand and includes both
Moslems and Hindus. The most important Moslem group is that of the Ismailia
Khojas, whose allegiance is to the Aga Khan. The East Indians are in general
very well-to-do, controlling practically all of the retail and wholesale
trade.
The Oman Arabs are the ruling class and are a cultured people, deeply
religious, well- educated in the text of the Koran, generally intolerant,
very proud of their Arabic inheritance and tradition. There are other Arab
groups besides Oman Arabs, but they are rather unimportant socially and
politically. Most interesting are the Shatri and Mafazi Arabs, from the
African coast, whose forefathers came from Arabia some time or other during
the last two thousand years and established their colonies along the lush
coast of East Africa, long before Seyyid Said moved his harem and his other
interests from Muscat to old Zanzibar town. A large Arabic minority group is
composed of the Mshihiri people from the Hadramaut, that desolate mountainous
country which is the south shore of the Arabian peninsula. These folk live in
the Malindi quarter of Zanzibar, where they weave bags and baskets from
palm-leaf matting, and where they entertain, during the season of the
northeast monsoons, their seafaring relatives off the dhows.
But it is the Oman Arabs who have set the pattern of civilized life in
Zanzibar. Theirs is the royal family (and when I say family, I mean family),
theirs are the great plantations, theirs are the fine stone townhouses
immaculately whitewashed and distinguished by their beautiful brass-studded
teakwood doors, theirs is the record of sensible practical good local
government and theirs is the satisfaction of having maintained mutually
profitable and peaceful relations with their protector, the British Lion, for
a century and a half.
"And There," said Charles Reed, setting down seven tiles carefully
on the Scrabble board, spelling out the word "Arabian," for which
he was awarded fifty extra points, "hangs another African tale of racial
tension and struggle. You see, here it isn't a case of African rising
nationalism embarrassing the British, but Arab nationalism and only Allah
knows how it will work out eventually."
As Charles told it, the wealthy Zanzibar sheiks sent some of their children
to Egypt and England for middle-school and higher education and it is these
young people who would like to remove the colonial yoke. The Arab community
has endorsed the program in the belief that when the British are gone, the
Arabs will quietly take their places. But there are two hundred thousand
Swahili in Zanzibar and if government changes from benevolent paternalism to
common roll democracy, the Oman Arab ruling class may find itself asking for
crumbs.
"When you get there," said Charles, "look up Ali Muhsin, the
publisher of Al-Falaq. He wants self-determination and although he was an
appointed member of the Legislative Council, the British had him up for
sedition in 1954 and found him guilty, but put him on probation. He still is.
He's also building a fine house, modern mind you, but equipped with both
western-style and Moslem toilets, and if you've never seen a Moslem toilet,
ask him to invite you out. He'll ask you to an Arab dinner and you'll abhor
it, because all the hot things will be served cold and all the cold things
will be served hot. The only foods you'll recognize will be pilaf, which'll
be cold and shish-kebab, which will also be cold. But I hope that he serves
you tamarind juice, because it's really delicious.
"Ka," chortled Charles, as he placed two tiles triumphantly on the
board.
"Damn!" said Martha. "What's Ka, an Arab dish?"
"Not so," said Charles, "just the Egyptian soul."
And he lit his pipe and settled down to enjoy her discomfiture.
Perhaps we can go back to Major Pearce for a description of the people on the
narrow streets of Zanzibar, for, although there are the three distinct racial
groups socially and politically, Zanzibar is still a crossroads port of the
Indian Ocean and its transient population is bizarre.
On your hour's walk, writes Pearce, you will probably encounter
"cannibals from the Congo, Chinamen, Nubians and Abbyssinians, Somalis
and Cape boys,' specimens of humanity from every part of Africa, the
deep-chested coast negro and the sturdy Yao; the Baluch and the Egyptian; the
Persian; the exclusive Hindu; the native from the Comoros and Madagascar; the
Indian traders of every caste and persuasion are there in hundreds; the
Cingalee and the Turk; the Goan and the Japanese; the would-be pirate from
the Persian Gulf; the Syrian Jew and the stately Zanzibar Arab."
That remark about the "would-be pirate from the Persian Gulf" is a
nice English touch, for he is referring to those sea-faring men from the
Hadramaut and Oman, who for thousands of years, since boats were first used
in the Indian Ocean, have been sailing their dhows down to Zanzibar and the
East Coast, during the northeast monsoon season, December to March, returning
north in the season of the southwest monsoons, April to October, using no
taxable oil for fuel and trading goods for goods without benefit of British
agents.
When I asked Samira what the dhow merchants brought down to Zanzibar, she
replied dreamily, "Myrrh and frankincense and Persian carpets."
As a matter of fact, they seem to accomplish some satisfactory trading with
in-cargoes of coffee, dates, spices from the East, prayer rugs, old copper
utensils and similar products of interest to the Moslem population of
Zanzibar. They take back to Arabia principally cocoanut and timber, and some
textiles and other items of Western manufacture which seem to be in more
plentiful supply in the busy ports of East Africa than in Arabia.
There was a time, however, when they trafficked in other commodities. The
British Consul, writing in 1859, stated that the town filled up with many
thousands of these seafaring Arabs during the northeast monsoons, "Who
come," he says, "solely for the purpose of kidnapping slaves and
children, which they convey for sale to the coasts of Arabia and
Persia."
On March 9, 1861, they attacked the American Consulate, wounding four of the
servants, locking up the Consul and threatening his life. Parties ranged the
town all day, brandishing swords and daggers, and as Major Pearce says,
"calling out that they would have the blood of a white man."
The Sultan was helpless and hid on the second floor of his palace. The
situation worsened by night, and all Europeans locked themselves in their
quarters. But the Sultan was finally persuaded to send an Arab emissary to
the so-called pirates and bought them off with a bribe of one thousand
rupees. Fortunately, the British Navy arrived on the scene as usual in the
nick of time, and the commanding officer gave the ruffian slavers forty-eight
hours to clear out, which presumably they did, because obviously even a great
fleet of hand-hewn timbered Arabian dhows could not face up to one
well-cannoned British warship.
In these days, the dhows, during their season, ride at anchor very
picturesquely in the vast ocean harbor at Zanzibar. Some of the crews live
aboard, shaded from the equatorial sun by matting awnings, while others find
homes temporarily in the Malindi Quarter, where they busy themselves at
various trades and occupations, picking up a fair handful of shillings. The
docks are a beehive of activity, with the moving of cargo in small boats and
barges, all kinds of repairs under way, and rowboat taxis carrying turbaned
and bearded Arabs, each with a jambia or dagger stuck in his waistband, back
and forth from dhow to dock.
A group of small islands lies offshore at Zanzibar Harbor, the principal
three having significant names: Grave Island contains the English cemetery;
the bats fly from Bat Island to Zanzibar town every night to feed; and Prison
Island once had a jail on it. There are many huge tortoises on it now. A
fourth island named Bawe is cable headquarters, and two other tiny islets
named Chumbe and Pungume have light- houses.
We fell into talk about Zanzibar as a tourist attraction with the
hotel-keeper of the Swazi Inn at Mbabane in Swaziland, as he was mixing for
us, in the hot afternoon, a Pimm's Cup Number Two made intriguing with
several slices of cucumber.
I had asked him about his well-behaved barefooted dining-room boys, who wore,
in addition to the customary long white gowns with red sashes, rather unusual
starched white crocheted skullcaps. He said they were Zanzibari, and that he
would have no other servants for his hostelry, and that he was on the point
of selling out the joint because he was getting sick and tired of the
encroachments of the damn Afrikaaners, and that he was about to leave for
Zanzibar town to see about setting up a hotel there.
"So you're going to Zanzibar," he remarked disconsolately,
"and so you're going to stop at the Zanzibar Hotel there. Now tell me,
don't you have any friends there with whom you might stay? Most visitors stop
with friends in Zanzibar."
"We have friends," I replied, "but our friends are Moslems and
we are to be there during Ramadan. They would be embarrassed not to be able
to feed us breakfast or lunch and really, Mr. Frothingham, breaking the fast
after sundown must mean about nine o'clock at night in Zanzibar. Under those
circumstances, as starved tourists we would be about as ineffectual as the
starved Mohammedan workers."
"Oh my word," sighed our host, "how true that is! They're just
no bloody good during Ramadan."
"Well, it isn't too bad," he continued, "if you can find it. I
mean the Zanzibar Hotel. It's down an alley somewhere. I'm told it was an
Arab palace once, but you know how those Arabs were, even the wealthy ones.
They hadn't much interest in plumbing. Oh, there's a bathtub or two in the
place, but those electric hot-water heaters from Manchester are not
dependable and there's no one in Zanzibar who knows how to repair them."
"Now," he said, warming to his subject, "when you want your
bath in your rondaval tonight, before dinner, my boys will throw a pile of
wood under that open-air boiler and in ten minutes you'll have a tubful of
the sweetest, cleanest, hottest bathwater on the eastern slope of Pigg's
Peak."
"Are you flying to Zanzibar from Nairobi?" he inquired.
"Yes," I replied.
"Then take baths aplenty in the Norfolk before you leave," he said
wryly, "whether they like it or not. I understand they still have big
signs posted there at Norfolk House warning you to keep your doors and
windows locked. Well, there's no Mau Mau in Zanzibar and you can walk around
those narrow winding Arab streets cool, though, in the hot son with never a
fear. Or through the bazaars. And have some Turkish coffee for me, won't you?
And in daylight you can walk through the African Quarter. Interesting. Very.
And no danger, personally, whatever. It's called the Ngambo, meaning the
Other Side."
"You'll love Zanzibar," Frothingham said. "I love it. It has a
quality. It's romantic. I ought to know. I've been around. All but that
hotel. Even if you can find it, you won't like it. No service. You ring and
ring and ring, and no boy appears. You climb down the long stairs to the desk
to complain, and then you're told that the boy is cracking ice in the bar,
but all the drinks in the bar are warm. I don't get it, as you Americans say.
How do you like your Pimm's Cup?"
"The rooms are hot. They don't control the sunshine. Not like our Swazi
Inn. You'll sleep like a top tonight, in this mountain air. There you have to
sleep under netting and the cloth they use is too closely woven. Even the
ceiling fan won't help. You'll smother until morning comes. Then there's a
sea breeze. The birds wake you. It's beautiful."
"The cook's preparing roast pheasant for dinner tonight," he said.
"You might enjoy with it a bottle of Grunberger Stein from the Cape.
Finest white wine in the world! I've grown to detest the Afrikaaner, but I've
grown to admire his wines. What vintners they are! When I get my new hotel in
Zanzibar, I'll stock the cellar with Cape wines, none other!"
He rambled on and on. He liked the Law Courts and the British Residency along
the waterfront. But he didn't like Mr. Potter. Cold as a fish. British
colonial bureaucracy at its worst. For a guide one couldn't do better than
George Washington. This was a white-gowned elderly Arab who sat on the tile
stoop of the Zanzibar Hotel, waiting for trade. American sailors had given
him his name because he was the only available guide who could speak
understandable English and it stuck. He would take us to the old Slave Market
and show us the windows in the Cathedral and the fine Arab doors on the
second floor past the clove market and the clove warehouses. We should go to
all the bazaars, the African, the Indian and the Arab bazaars. But stay far
away from the shark-meat market. Dried shark-meat. The Swahili love it. And
it's cheap. Worst smell east of Suez!
Long before we had started on our long journey to East Africa Samira Seif had
said, "Zanzibar is the most beautiful island in the world. It is my
home."
Major Pearce wrote: "It is a city of brilliant sunshine and purple
shadows; of dark entries and latticed windows; of mysterious stairways and
massive doors in grey walls which conceal one doe not know what; of
sun-streaked courtyards and glimpses of green gardens; of barred windows and
ruined walls on which peacocks preen. It is a town of rich merchants and busy
streets; of thronged market-places and clustered mansions. Over all there is
the din of barter, of shouts from the harbor; the glamour of the sun, the
magic of the sea and the rich savor of Eastern spice. This is Zanzibar!"
Samira Seif's husband is the Urban District Commissioner of Zanzibar and his
sister is the present Sultana. His name is Seyyid Saud a Busaidy and the
"Seyyid" means that he is of royal blood. Semira and Saud have two
lovely little daughters. We saw their snapshots in Chicago. While Samira was
at the University studying advanced pedagogy, the little girls were being
cared for in the Sultan's palace.
"And when you go to Zanzibar," Samira said, "Saud will drive
you in his car, so that you may see the countryside. He will drive you to the
village of Bububu, where there is an old mosque and he will stop on the way
at the old palace of Bet-el-Mtoni, where you may see the ruins of the great
house of our forefathers and the remnants of the gardens and the ruins of the
garden pools which still have water lilies in them as they had one hundred
and fifty years ago."
"He will drive you to Kidichi to see the Persian baths which Seyyid Said
built for his second wife, the Persian princess Binti Irich Mirza, but she
died of homesickness just the same. From the roofs of the baths is a lovely
view of Zanzibar town. Then he will drive you through the clove groves to our
little villa in the country and from there to the beach we like the best, the
one at Chakwa, where you will see the famous fishing boats fashioned out of
hollowed mango logs, with outriggers that make them glide over the water like
birds. And you will see the fish traps which the fishermen weave out of
reeds. I will tell Saud to take you there at sundown, so that as you turn
away from the sea at last, you will see the fringe of palm trees like lace
against the deep glow of the western sky."
"Saud will take you for a walk in the cool of the evening, through the
winding narrow streets of our city, down to Jubilee Park, between the House
of Wonders and the sea. You will sit down on a bench, and maybe you will talk
of me, and you will see the town children playing at their games, and the
Arabs walking by in their long white kanzus, wearing the conventional white
embroidered caps, which, as I have told you, the Arab men embroider. You will
see an Ismailia Indian woman in a bright silk sari. Perhaps an Arab woman in
purdah will walk by hurriedly in her black bui-bui, holding an edge of her
cloak over her face. You will enjoy the garments of the Swahili women, a
black cloak imitating the Arab lady, but under it the bright-colored kanga
drawn tightly across the bosom, leaving arms and shoulders bare, the calico
prints including pineapples and violins and snow-white Kilimanjaro and
mottoes such as ' Meet Me in Zanzibar' or ' By the Light of the Moon.'"
"In the day," continued Samira as we sat in the lounge of
International House sipping insipid cocoa, "Saud will be busy at his
work and he will secure for you a guide, but do not let him give you George
Washington, who is a rascal and thinks only of his commission from the Indian
merchants. Perhaps he will find for you Ali-bin- Mohamed, who knows our city
and its history very well indeed and can speak English almost adequately and
who is so poor and needs badly the shillings you will give him. He will show
you the shops where I buy things when I am at home, and when they know you
are my friends they will be honest with you. Velvet bags embroidered with
silver thread you are to buy at the shop of Topiwala Dulabh on Tharia Street
in the Indian bazaar, and you will see him and his sons doing silver-zari
embroidery work there. For good jewelry you may go to Ranti deSilva on Main
Street, for he is jeweler by Special Appointment to His Royal Highness. And
if you would like some of the thin silver bangles we have talked about, you
should go to the fine shop of Hamilton & Company where another of the De
Silva brothers is in charge. Do not buy genuine antique brass-studded
Zanzibar camphor chests."
"When you are there," said Samira, "it will be Ramadan and it
may be that His Highness will not be able to see you, and that will be sad,
for he is a fine man and I would like to think that you will meet him."
I explained that Paul Douglas had written to Edmund Dorsz, suggesting that
Mr. Dorsz might dispatch a State Department document to Mr. Potter, the
British Resident at Zanzibar, with the proposal that Mr. Potter might
possibly arrange a very short audience for the Baers and their companions
with His Highness, but that the message had come back, couched in cool and
diplomatic language, that His Highness was seventy-eight years old and tired,
and was not physically able to interview casual American tourists.
Samira snorted and said, "Mr. Potter."
Then she said, "Saud will try and really, Saud is like the American
Marines."
"And," said Samira, brightening up, "if you should have an
audience with His Highness, you will climb up the great high stairs in the
palace, and he will meet you informally at the landing, escort you graciously
into a sitting-room where you will meet Her Highness the Sultana, and
servants will bring in gifts, and the first gifts for the ladies will be
pom-poms sewn together of fragrant jasmine blossoms, which they will pin in
their hair, over the right ear. His Highness will talk of many things, of his
polo horses in his youth, of his official visits to England for coronations,
of his lands on the African coast, and you will all drink Turkish coffee."
She added, "but anyway you will see His Highness on the streets. The
people love him. They love him. His chauffeur drives him about in his red
motorcar."
"Cadillac?" I enquired.
"No," said Samira. "A Cadillac would not fit in the narrow
winding streets of Zanzibar town. An English Morris painted bright red, with
red leather upholstery, and when he rides in it, he always wears his long red
velvet joho, or robe, and with his white turban and his full white beard, he
is a picture."
Samira's father was a man of vision. He educated his children at the
university in Cairo. Samira's elder sister is a physician and practices in
Alexandria. Samira is a teacher and has been teaching literature and
mathematics in the young normal school in Zanzibar. She has great faith in
the power of education and a burning zeal to extend education for girls in
her Moslem country.
I was thinking of Samira as we sat in the shade at Nairobi West, waiting
patiently for our plane. Suddenly there it was, a DC-3 spreading its graceful
wings for our flight to Zanzibar and we scrambled aboard.
When we landed at the island aerodrome five hours later, there was Seyyid
Saud to meet us, black-haired and tall and handsome and Ali Muhsin was with
him and the two lovely little girls, and everything that had been said about
Zanzibar, by Major Pearce, by Ed Dorsz, by Charles Reed, by the innkeeper in
Swaziland, by Samira herself and even by Captain Mortenson turned out to be
just so.
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