Laura Goffman is a Ph.D. student in Middle East and North African History at
Georgetown University. She also holds an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from New
York University. Her research focuses on the cultural and social dynamics of
militarization in twentieth-century Oman. Check her out on Academia.edu.
Al-Ghonaimi, Sheikha. Zanjibar:
Wa Akfān min Rahim al’alam. Maktaba ḍāmirī lilnashar wa at-tawzī‘. Sultana Oman,
2012.
The cover of Sheikha Al Ghonaimi’s 2012 novel Zanjibar:
Wa Akfān min Rahim al’alam (Zanzibar: Shrouds from the Womb of Pain) is an outline of the map of Zanzibar, splattered haphazardly with blood-red blotches of paint, spilling from the island into the surrounding Indian Ocean. We learn in Ghonaimi’s introduction that this blood represents the Omanis of Zanzibar who were slaughtered during the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. This uprising led to the death and expulsion of thousands of Arabs and South Asians, including the Omani Sultan who had been placed at the head of a constitutional monarchy when the British Empire granted Zanzibar’s independence in 1963. He fled the island on his yacht—many others were not so fortunate.
While Ghonaimi’s narrative focus is on the social life and
political events of Zanzibar, the orientation of her characters firmly remains
in the Omani homeland. Ghonaimi structures her novel in the form of a letter
written by her narrator, Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Harthy, to his older
brother, whom he has not seen since he departed from Oman some 30 years
earlier. Like many Omanis of the impoverished interior, the fictional Mohammed
left Oman with his father in the early 1950s in search of greater prosperity in
East Africa. Mohammed is only 8 years old when he and his father arrive in Zanzibar, and
the first part of the novel is built around a child's nostalgia for an idealized
home in Oman. The dramatic focus of this section is Mohammed's recollection of
his mother's reluctance to agree to her youngest son's departure, and his
father's persistence in convincing her that their son would benefit from
learning the ways of trade. Guiltily, Mohammed describes his childish ignorance
of the gravity and permanence of his departure, and his mother's rare display
of tears as he left. His mother, we learn, has long since passed away, and he
longs to have been able to tell her goodbye.
This melancholic nostalgia for his family colors Mohammed's
depiction of life in Oman, which Ghonaimi describes, through the lens of his
memories, as a pure and simple existence among an intimate circle. The
predictable rhythm of trips to the mosque, agricultural work, and religious
education structures Mohammed's early life. This Omani community emerges in his
memory as majestic in its commitment to these daily rituals. For example, he
describes his first trip to the mosque with his father, "I entered the mosque
for the first time at dawn...there the men were as though they were
illuminated...they were dressed in the Omani way, which reflected the purity of
their hearts...it was beautiful to see human beings participating as angels in
that atmosphere of spiritual purity" (17, quotations are my translations).
Some troubles do seep into Mohammed’s memories of this
well-ordered world of Oman's interior: the father and the teacher both feel
justified in beating mischievous children, who in turn harass Antoor, a
homeless wanderer who lost his entire family in a fire that started while his
wife was cooking. Also, clear hierarchies prevail, as girls cook and boys carry
tools to work on the date farms, and Mohammed recalls his mother sadly
reminding his aunt after she learns of Mohammed's approaching departure,
"I had no say in the matter" (29). His aunt is horrified that her
sister is forced to relinquish her youngest son, but the necessity of covering
her face and retreating from view as the men arrive to take him away prevents
her from expressing these feelings to Mohammed's father, so away they go, over
the mountains with their caravan to catch a ship to Zanzibar.
The Omani community in Zanzibar is apparently close-knit and
guards its communal privileges by maintaining a tight control over its network
of families. Ghonaimi illustrates this protection of their own when Muhammad and
his father arrive in Zanzibar as bedraggled immigrants, but are immediately
taken up by Al Barwani, a prominent Omani merchant with an elegant home and a
host of black servants. Mohammed and his father have no connection to Barwani
except for their shared Arabic language and Omani heritage, but he becomes
their willing patron and invites them to be his guests after Mohammed’s father
asks him for help translating the Swahili spokenon the dock. Barwani supplies
Mohammed with a black servant boy, Youssef, to teach him Swahili until he is
proficient enough to enroll in the local school, and he helps Mohammed’s father
to start a business.
Youssef becomes like family to Mohammad, yet he holds a
separate status as a non-Arab “native”. For example, when Barwani first
suggests that Mohammed learn Swahili from Youssef, his father worries about his
son mixing with blacks.Barwani assures him, “Don’t worry, Youssef has been
brought up in my house, and his manners and morals are excellent” (61). The
implication here is that Youssef, despite his race, is an acceptable companion
due to his cultivation in an Omani domestic setting. When violence erupts on
the island in 1964, Youssef's family saves Mohammed, now 18, and his little
brother, Ahmed. In an ultimate act of loyalty, Youssef decides to accompany
Mohammed and Ahmed as they smuggle themselves off of the island in the storage
cabin of a ship, and when Mohammed questions his willingness to leave his own
family, Youssef asks him angrily, "How can you say that there is a price
for friendship?" (127).
Friendship between a black former servant and an Omani
immigrant may be priceless, but it does have its limitations: after they have
reached Dar es Salaam, for example, Mohammed spots an older Omani woman on the
docks, and switches from Swahili to Arabic. When Youssef protests that he does
not understand, Mohammed replies that he is using Arabic because "I want
her to feel that I am close to her" (156). Just as Barwani took in
Mohammed and his father in Zanzibar, in Dar es Salaam Mohammed immediately
forges a connection with an Omani he identifies by language and appearance. As
Mohammed and his brother settle into another enclave of the Omani diaspora,
only Youssef’s exceptional loyalty to Mohammed and his upbringing in Barwani’s
household grant him entry to this community.
As Nate Mathews noted in
another post on Coverage
of East Africa in the Omani Media, nostalgia
for Oman's East African "empire" has become widespread in Omani media
today. Ghonaimi adopts the standard points of this narrative. Through the voice
of a minor character (a man who helps Mohammed and his companions to escape
Zanzibar during the uprising), Ghonaimi offers an elaborate account of the
history of Omanis in Zanzibar. The crucial points here are the propagation of
Islam in East Africa through Omani efforts, the primitive nature of Africans
before the Arab arrival (even alluding to acts of cannibalism), and the
gracious, cultivating influence of the Omanis (138-139). The legacy of slavery
is hardly mentioned, and after this historical rendition, Mohammed asks
indignantly, "Why do the Omanis deserve all this pain in a country they
improved so much?" (141). The answer to this query is at the didactic
heart of the novel, and Ghonaimi assures us that the horrors of 1964 came about
due to officious British colonizers and demagogic mainlanders (in the final
section of the book, Mohammed even lists the names and crimes of specific
political leaders), whose combined influence, she suggests, tragically
disturbed the harmonious and cosmopolitan balance of pre-1964 Zanzibar.
The most engaging parts of Zanzibar: Shrouds from the Womb of Pain are
Ghonaimi’s vivid descriptions of family and community life in Oman and Zanzibar.
Here, her enthusiasm for Omani history and her sensitivity to the textures of
daily life make for fascinating and compelling reading. Ghonaimi’sinsistence on
Omani benevolence and victimhood in East Africa is, however, somewhat one-sided
due to her reliance on racial and cultural stereotypes of "Africans"
and to her neglect of the historical reverberations of slavery and ethnic
chauvinism. Ultimately, these shortcomings are detrimental to her innovative
attempt to use the epistolary novel and the complex power of memory to make
some sense of the horrific violence of the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution.
Read more...
