Zanzibar makes no demands on the visitor, and that is a major attraction. There are no casinos or tattoo parlours or noisy bars or tall hotels ruining the beachfront. Paradise, in short. You are free to do what you came to do바카라laze by the sea.
Zanzibar바카라s capital Stone Town saw the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896. It lasted about 38 minutes, and is the shortest in history. That is incredibly fast action in a place where leisureliness is the key to happiness.
The sand is white, the sea turquoise, and if you booked into the Xanadu Resort, even Kubla Khan would envy you, for it is a stately pleasure-dome. We were wined and dined and spa-ed and buttled beyond embarrassment. For the adventurous there were a slew of activities; for the chronically inert, sheer inactivity.
Is there a Sunil Gavaskar Stadium in Zanzibar? I remember reading about the foundation stone being laid a couple of years ago, but couldn바카라t find anyone who knew of its existence there. Perhaps next time바카라
바카라The land is semi-African in aspect; the city is but semi-Arabian,바카라 wrote the British explorer Henry Stanley who met up with the missionary David Livingstone a few miles from where I remained inactive. Stanley, in his book How I Found Livingstone, says: 바카라Zanzibar is the Bagdad, the Istanbul, if you like, of East Africa. It is the great mart which invites the ivory traders from the African interior. To this market come the hides, the timber, and the black slaves from Africa바카라바카라 It is a book of colonial entitlement and racist condescension바카라바카라Arabs should marvel at the speed with which the white man바카라s caravan travelled to Zanzibar.바카라
Livingstone, who in his 32 years in Africa managed to convert just one person (who then reconverted), stayed in what is now the Livingstone House, the office of the Zanzibar Tourist Corporation. Many explorers set out from here. The old slave market is now a cathedral built to signify the end of one of the largest and open slave markets, and Livingstone바카라s role in its abolition.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Our voluble taxi-driver and guide may not have heard of Stanley but he was familiar with rock star Freddie Mercury, who was born in Stone Town. Some of his stories were even true. Born Farrokh Bulsara to a Parsi family, Mercury바카라s first name came from schoolfriends, and the second from either the Roman god or the lyrics of 바카라My Fairy King바카라. Lead guitarist of Queen Brian May thought it was the latter.
The Freddie Mercury Museum is a tourist attraction; you can바카라t avoid it. The Bulsara family home located on one of Stone Town바카라s narrow, winding streets is now the Museum, inspired partly by a visit Brian May made there five years ago. Photographs, posters, handwritten notes all attempt to recreate the Mercury magic, staying strictly within his music and avoiding his lifestyle altogether in a place where 98 per cent of the population is Muslim.
There is no museum for Zanzibar바카라s other famous son, the Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. Reading him is an antidote to Stanley. In Paradise, a young boy, sold by his father into indentured labour, goes unwittingly on a slave-trading expedition into Africa바카라s interior. Paradise is a good description of Zanzibar, but what Gurnah writes about is the destruction of a tradition by colonialism.
바카라I grew up under British colonialism,바카라 Gurnah wrote later. 바카라Our rulers flashed past us in the streets or appeared in the feathery regalia they liked to wear on ceremonial occasions. In a sense, they were a fact of no significance in the life of a young person, just the source of dictates and regulations from a distance.바카라
At 18, Gurnah left Zanzibar, as a revolution raged after the departure of the British, saying, 바카라I just thought, something better than this is possible.바카라 He flew to England with false documents to pass off as a tourist. 바카라I remember waking up and thinking, 바카라What am I doing here?바카라바카라 he said of his first night in Britain, where he now lives.
He put colonialism in perspective in an interview, 바카라The intervention of Europe into all these places doesn바카라t just stop. It continues in various ways. It continues with the havoc left behind, but it also continues with those who have been carried away by it, or seduced by it.바카라
No Worries
In Zanzibar, T-shirts, that repository of accumulated local wisdom, say바카라gently, for no one screams here바카라Hakuna Matata. It seems appropriate.
Suresh Menon is an author, most recently of Why Don바카라t You Write Something I Might Read?
(This appeared in the Print as 'Zanzibar Diary')
