by M G Vassanji
“You didn’t say it, I say it! Give him orange juice,” Karume commanded.
Chagpar was given orange juice.
It turned out that money was being pilfered from the army, and Karume wanted Chagpar, an Asian, to keep the army’s accounts. Chagpar said he was not an army person. “You are now a major,” Karume declared.
A bizarre story and typical of the times, of the randomness of the leaders and the fears of the minorities. It was Karume who introduced an amendment to the Marriage Act to force Asian girls to marry Africans; these men were usually elderly and connected to the government. A girl as young as fifteen or sixteen had only to catch the eye of a passing elderly bigwig for a marriage offer to arrive. Refusal of such a proposal was punishable by a fine or imprisonment and possibly a corporal punishment of twenty-four strokes of the cane. But this was mere legalese, much more could happen to a family if it refused the offer. In response to the act, families married off their girls posthaste to boys through the usual family and community connections; many girls escaped by boat to Dar. The case became notorious because four of the girls so coerced were Iranians, of whom one committed suicide. The intention of the act, Chagpar says, was to increase racial integration. Soon we will become like Cuba, Karume told him, where you cannot distinguish among the races. One wonders.
“When we read Animal Farm in school we thought it was just a funny story about animals. Well, after the revolution I understood that book, because Zanzibar had become Animal Farm. Everything was upside-down.”
Chagpar had to undergo military training, and his instructors were Russians. Because he knew English, he was also their interpreter. Soon he was making a fat salary. He recalls personally putting people on boats to escape to the mainland.
Not far from my hotel on Kenyatta Road is the old English Club, a large boxlike structure. Next to it is the old German Consulate. Behind these stands the stylish and expensive Serena Inn, where today’s foreign delegations put up. The nightly cultural entertainment and menus of local food at the Serena promise to be good, though the lengths of human flesh stretched out inert by the pool tend to discourage any thought of lingering there over a beer or coffee. Close by is Vuga Road, which has some interesting traditional-style buildings with white facades, balconies, and arched windows. Most impressive is the court building, now dilapidated but still in use, an example of what the historian Abdul Sheriff calls Saracenic architecture—with arched doorways and windows, verandas and balconies, dark wooden trimming, and raised domes—a style in fact introduced by a British official named J.H. Sinclair. An example of this style farther down the road is the old Aga Khan School, now part of the local university. Close by is the new Majestic Cinema; the old one, burnt down in a fire, was also in the Saracenic style, the new one is a pastiche art deco structure in typical twentieth-century cinema style.
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The bloodletting of the revolution therefore has not carried over into a violence against the past in the form of its monuments and architecture. Zanzibar remains a puzzle. Unlike Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar’s Stone Town has preserved its distinct physical character. Its economic power is gone, the political landscape has altered, yet the island thrives on its historical and cultural connections, in the same way, I am reminded, that Shimla, the former British summer capital of India, does. Zanzibar now hosts film, book, and music festivals. It promotes traditional taarab music—when the ancient diva, “the Queen of Taarab” Bi Kidude, died recently, the entire coastal region of the nation mourned. And Zanzibar likes to tell its stories. Of course it’s also moved closer to Oman, where everyone—one is told—has links to Zanzibar, and Swahili is the second language.
Dar es Salaam, in contrast, is a market that keeps on growing as it destroys and alters the cityscape. It seems to remember nothing.
A friend has arranged to have a car take me to Kizimkazi, a village near the southern tip of the island. We pass on a quiet road through a forested region to reach the village—a scattering of houses—at the edge of which in the midst of farmland is its famous mosque, built in 1107 and still in use, except for the Friday prayer. Today is Friday and 1 p.m., the caretaker is praying at the village’s other mosque. He arrives on his bicycle to open this ancient one for us. It is a square white building with a green, corrugated, and sloping double-roof. The inside has three original fat pillars, newly plastered and painted green and white. The front—the qibla—is also original, with a row of Kufic inscriptions on the line of bricks above that give the date of the mosque’s construction, by settlers believed to have come from Iran. Unfortunately the inscriptions have been oil-painted over, a prettifying defacement much lamented by historians. Because the mosque has been in continuous use, it has seen regular renovation, and that is the reason why it doesn’t look typically ancient.
On the way back we cross over to the southeastern coast of the isle, to an area called Makunduchi. Here Muslim Indians from the Kumbhad (potter) caste had settled in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, becoming completely accultured to native life. (The Kumbhads of Dar es Salaam, in contrast, are Hindus.) Already in 1925 it was observed that the Kumbhads of Makunduchi, called Makumbaro, spoke Kihadimu, the local Swahili dialect, as fluently as the local Africans, called the Hadimu and considered indigenous. The Makumbaro were from Kutch and Kathiawad, in Gujarat, and were the only people on the island who used the camel for transportation. There were thirty families in the area. Kihadimu was very distinct from Kiswahili (Swahili) and for an outsider took some effort to understand, as we find even now when we stop to ask if there are any Makumbaro around. After a few queries, we are directed to a house that’s one among a cluster, well built and plastered; outside in the yard two children, who look of mixed race, are at play. We knock and are met by an Asian man wearing shorts and an open shirt, who greets us warmly in Swahili, welcomes us to join him for a lunch of rice, stew, and mango. We decline politely. He says that all the Makumbaro have moved to the towns; they used to run shops. This must have been, presumably, after they gave up their traditional occupation of working with clay.
As we drive back, we pass on the highway signboards indicating tourist restaurants, which are closer to the water and not obviously visible; and men in white kanzus and kofias walking back casually from Friday prayers. It is a quiet, tranquil scene, ours the only vehicle for long stretches of the road, which is often shaded by the trees. When we reach the town I treat the driver to a lunch at Passing Show, where they have run out of pilau and banana, so we opt for chicken and fish biriyanis.
Two men in their sixties, one of whom, Shiraz, left forty-eight years ago for the U.K., soon after the revolution, at the age of sixteen. His Swahili is halting and accented. The other, Sadru, left more than thirty years ago for Toronto. Both have children and families abroad; Shiraz is divorced from his English wife, Sadru is widowed. And now—this is a typically Zanzibari attitude—they both feel utterly at home here, where they run a much-appreciated dental clinic. Shiraz is a long-experienced dentist from Brighton, Sadru is the manager. They have converted a storage room into a consultancy, having had it cleaned and painted and installed with a dentist’s long chair and other equipment. Judging by the looks on the patients’ faces as they wait outside to be called, these two men are a godsend. As I arrive, a root canal is in progress.
A woman in her sixties lies on the chair, mouth open. Shiraz instructs an assistant, a qualified young graduate; Sadru stands by with the cement for the filling. A generator rattles away somewhere; mains electricity is unreliable. Sadru usually takes care of the business end, banking and buying supplies. He also lectures the patients on dental care while they wait. The clinic charges what the patient can afford to pay. European prices for Europeans, though, to make ends meet. Some donations come from Toronto. The men work hard, five and a half days a week, plus a half-day to take care of business.
They live on the first floor of a traditional-style white house off the main drag that is Kenyatta Avenue, not fa
r from the practice. All around them, NGO residences, SUVs parked outside. The building is owned by an old Khoja family. Shiraz is a Bohra, Sadru an Ithnasheri. Shiraz, who has acquired his accent and mannerisms from the U.K., doesn’t practise his faith anymore, but one day, he says, he went to pay his respects to the local Bohra mulla, who received him cordially—which community doesn’t appreciate a doctor or dentist in its midst? Shiraz had put on a kofia for the occasion, out of respect. But having met the mulla, as he came out of the room he was accosted by a young man for not wearing the traditional Bohra hat. (I didn’t even know that such a thing existed.) There were more youthful fanatics waiting as Shiraz came out of the building, threatening to beat him up for his effrontery. He looks nonplussed as he narrates this, and I ask, But why did you bother to go? The answer, though he does not put it this way, is simple: it’s not so easy to break off one’s traditional ties completely. Reason says one thing, the heart pulls the other way.
It is Saturday night, and the anniversary of the Prophet’s death, so Sadru dresses up, cologne and all, and goes to his mosque. He returns late, past midnight, having paid a visit to an Arab friend. She went to school with him, he says.
As boys both Shiraz and Sadru witnessed at close hand the violence of the Zanzibar revolution. Shiraz was smuggled out on a boat at night and after reaching Dar, ended up in Tanga at his married sister’s. Sadru was sent off to Dar by his brother. And yet here they are, home in a way, living out their senior years in the place where they grew up, still belonging to it. It’s not that they are not aware of race; they are, as everyone here is; their attitudes regarding efficiency and punctuality have also altered. But Zanzibar is a small place and different peoples have lived together for centuries. Memories of the aberration and nightmare that was the 1964 revolution remain but are being set aside to continue on with the simple process of living. The people are Zanzibaris first. Regardless of their politics, the overwhelming majority being Muslims, they all bow to Mecca during prayers, and on the Prophet’s birthday and during the Eids they all come out to celebrate. Islam—in principle—does not distinguish between races. The first person to make the call to prayer in Mecca was a black man named Bilal.
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21.
The Old Warriors: Dar es Salaam Again
THEY SOUND WISTFUL OR CYNICAL, disappointed or resigned, the aging leftists of Dar who engaged with zeal with the new Africa, indeed the new world that had emerged in the 1960s; now passing middle age most are doing very well, for who in his right mind—there are a few—would try to live by their old idealist codes now that socialism is gone and there’s a free-for-all? For this meeting with some of them, I requested less food and more chat, having observed that those who can afford to, eat and eat. We meet at the Patel Brotherhood Club, an assortment of Asians—the term is too broad, just as “African” is—on the lawn of the old club house, which has been converted into an open-air restaurant. Of the club—tucked away in the midst of Gaam—a vestige remains. It had snooker and card tables, a dart board, and tennis courts; the cricket team was respectable. There are five of us today, the other four being Nadir, Harko, Chauhan, and Muzu. Nadir and Harko met in England in the 1970s, radicals ripened in Tanzania and coming out for African causes. Harko regales us with a humorous tale in which he stood before an almost all-black audience in London, to speak out against Idi Amin, when the audience evidently supported the dictator and his anti-Asian rhetoric. Against all advice, Harko spoke his mind. His message was that Amin was bad for Africa and Africans, leave aside the Asians (who had been told to leave the country). Much to his bewilderment he received a standing ovation. He is an ebullient, quick-witted personality, who adventured in India—spending time with the Naxalite-Maoists—and the U.K., before returning to socialist Tanzania, where he became the English-language editor of the state-owned Tanzania Publishing House (TPH). This is where the question of race comes in.
There was a hint of it when I happened to mention earlier that in German times a few Asians had been hanged for supporting African resistance. And Harko said, briefly, “That should come in handy in the future.”
I remind Muzu, a professional photographer and an artist, about my first meeting with him, more than a decade ago, when I had been invited to Dar to spend two weeks at the International School, where his wife was employed. One afternoon I was asked to speak to a group of professionals in town, and at the meeting I had noted, indiscreetly and perhaps ungraciously, my surprise to see that all of them were Asians and no African was present. There was an uproar—who was I to judge them, coming from abroad. I still debate with myself if I should have been more prudent and refrained from that comment. I was being naive, but I had also hit a nerve. My offence was that these were the educated, progressive elite, and I had embarrassed them.
Now Nadir says, “How come when Africans talk of integration they only speak of intermarriage. It all comes down to fucking.”
“There is the attraction of the exotic,” I mention.
But Harko’s daughter is marrying an African Tanzanian, whom she met in the U.S., and the couple are returning home for the wedding. “We explained to them the possible problems, and then it was their wish,” says the father.
Still on the subject of intermarriage, Chauhan, who is a businessman, and his wife are from different castes. There was so much opposition to their union, they had to elope. This was forty years ago. Now one of their sons is married to a Swede.
The subject is dropped.
Nadir is an architect. “We are all controlled by our wives,” he says. “But I don’t mind. And my wife doesn’t follow me around, doesn’t ask where I’ve been. Today I feel like drinking.” He is also an artist; one occupation gives him a handsome living, the other his passion.
We start with beer and move on to Scotch. They like to talk of wines here and drink it, but their expertise is beer and Scotch. The food is prawns, mishkaki, chicken, naan. Abundance.
The race question. Harko says, when an opening came up for the general manager at the TPH, he was the obvious choice. But he knew he would not get the post. There were rumblings against that idea. An Asian in a top publishing post, a sensitive one at the gates of culture in a socialist African country. And so he himself suggested the name of Walter Bgoya, who was working in the foreign office at the time, having just been sent down from the embassy in Addis Ababa for misbehaving. Harko went into business. And thus began Walter’s long career in publishing, and Harko’s rise in wealth.
We’ve perhaps had too much, it’s almost midnight, and ours is the only table left occupied. But Nadir wants to make a long night of it, therefore three of us decide to go to Harko’s house. Muzu, always in control, decides he has had enough and goes home.
Harko lives in Oyster Bay, behind the Canadian high commissioner. We drive to his house in a large SUV with all possible extras, a car like which only one other person owns in Dar, he tells me. But, “Frankly,” he continues, “I was happier when I was younger.” When he returned to Tanzania, he was one of a political discussion group that met regularly, and included the country’s future president Benjamin Mkapa, as well as Walter Bgoya. Now he owns one of the country’s biggest fish-processing and exporting companies, and is on the way to moving into the chicken business. He does not quite fit into the role of a chicken and fish magnate, doesn’t much talk about the business. He obviously still thinks left, which is what’s responsible for his cynical humour. He visits India frequently, the music on the car is Indian—there is now in our generation an unabashed acceptance of Indian heritage without a feeling of betrayal. We arrive at the house, which as befits the area has a forbidding gate with guards, but there are no German shepherds. It’s a large, modern house with a pool, and was designed by Nadir. We sit outside by the pool so as not to disturb Harko’s wife and continue our imbibing until 3 a.m., when Harko, still remarkably alert, drives me to my hotel.
Harko is a Hindu, his wife is Ithnasheri Muslim. Nadir is a Kho
ja Ismaili, his wife is also Ithnasheri, sister of the leftist intellectual Hassan at Makerere. Hassan’s former wife is Fawzi; his current wife is a famous film director. Hassan, Shivji, and Abdul of Zanzibar are long-standing friends. And so they are all connected.
Nadir’s house, where I visit him one evening a few days later, is also in an exclusive area by the sea, and is designed by himself, naturally. He is a tall, soft-spoken man, who makes the cutting remark without Harko’s bite or exuberance. All the walls of the house are covered in paintings, his and others’. There’s a terrace on the first floor where we sit for a while under the stars, listening to the sound of waves, the swish of branches overhead. After a while we go up a level to his studio where he shows me his art. The paintings tend to be abstract renderings of the political and mystical. The political ones depict the despair of the intellectual humanist. One of his series is in black and white and shows sections of the human body in various postures of power; it is a commentary on the oppression of the weak. Another series shows the human head and torso defaced and rendered grotesque with abrupt and haphazard-looking brushstrokes. Man turned beast.
Adjacent to the studio is his library. I met someone in Toronto who had visited Nadir’s house in Moshi when they were both in their teens. And what she remembered were the books, Nadir’s pride in them. He had shown her his books as he now does to me. The pride of place here is taken by his first editions. From him I learn that there is actually an archaic law in place that forbids importing or owning indecent pictures, sometimes as innocuous as simple nudes, and therefore he’s had struggles to release art books from Customs. In one instance his office assistant had to seek help from a relative in the security services.
People like him, educated abroad and living on the edges of society, find camaraderie with a few like-minded souls and a few expatriates. The latter are his patrons, those who seem to understand his art and encourage him. There is no other patronage of the arts in town. No one would understand his madness. And yet the same would be true if he were to move overseas, I reflect to myself, having observed Chinese, Pakistani, and Punjabi artists floundering in neglect in Toronto. When all’s said and done, despite foreign influences, he belongs here, where he has a context.
