Zanzibar

by Giles Foden

  Nick smiled politely and, shaking his head, looked out over the waves, affecting an exaggerated search for sight of land.

  ‘Top banana,’ said the man with the eyepatch after a while, as if aggrieved.

  Then he grinned, creasing the flesh near his covered eye. The patch was attached with strips of dirty tape.

  ‘I learn speech from British Army.’

  Nick stared at him.

  ‘Fought with wazungu,’ the man added proudly. He gave a brisk salute. ‘Kill Hitler. Kill Mussolini. You are from London?’

  ‘The US.’

  The man grinned again, showing his red teeth.

  ‘USA – top banana!’

  Raising his eyebrows, Nick lit another cigarette.

  He would smoke two more before Stone Town, the capital of Zanzibar, came into view. Cranes, minarets. He scanned the quays as they docked. The usual drama of arrival. Harbour people. Harbour equipment. The emptying and filling of vessels. Dhows, modern cargo ships. Longshoremen were working with lifting gear, extracting brightly coloured metal boxes out of the container ships and wooden crates from the dhows. Port officials spoke into walkie-talkies as distinguished Arab merchants, in long white gowns and Muslim skullcaps, waited patiently for their goods.

  All this made it a wonderful place to someone like Nick, someone with the sea in his veins. But it was a wonderful place that was also fetid and slightly threatening. The older buildings, constructed out of massive coral blocks, once glittering and white, no doubt, were now almost as grey as the new concrete ones. As he disembarked, he was approached by several young men offering to carry his bag, one grabbing hold of the handle and tugging hard. He pulled it back sharply.

  Sweating, he found himself being funnelled into a series of narrow offices amid a jostling crowd of other passengers. There were more hustlers here, leaning on door jambs or squatting on the floor of the customs hall. He was annoyed to have to fill out an immigration card and have his passport stamped for a second time. The official, a man with a deep, tubercular cough, looked more like a bar-keep than an immigration officer. The reason for the double stamp was, Nick gathered, something to do with Zanzibar’s precarious federal status – a separate country, but in uneasy union with mainland Tanzania. He also had to show a yellow-fever inoculation certificate. Then there was some problem with his visa. The man in the booth at first said he could not enter. This turned out to be a ploy to earn a $20 bribe, which Nick duly paid, too tired to argue the point.

  He finally emerged into the wider throng of the Stone Town dock area. Dino’s tales of his merchant-seaman days came back to him. Piraeus, Port Said, old Marseilles … He could see those ancient wooden sailboats, the dhows, riding at their moorings in the slight swell. Fishermen were bringing in a catch, tipping silver fry from their nets into plastic boxes. Others were heading and tailing bigger fish, barracuda maybe, with machetes. Elsewhere, a tall man, stripped to the waist, was gripping an octopus by a tentacle and whacking it against a rock.

  Nick walked a little way along the breakwater, humping his green canvas bag, looking for some sense of where the town proper began. There was a boy tugging a donkey. He still felt disoriented as his eye followed the tight cord between the boy’s black fist and the donkey’s pink, flaring nostrils.

  A clattering noise. Startled, he looked over his shoulder. A crane loading up a cargo ship had dropped a pallet of hessian bags. Some split, releasing a sudden strong smell into the air.

  Cloves. The spice lay strewn about on the stone. He went over and picked some up. Little black tacks in his hand. He stared at the splintered pallet. He turned and the boy pulling the donkey crossed his field of vision again. From side to side, the cord in between, the boy and the donkey: it was like a tug of war.

  The docks fed into the town through a network of winding alleys. Many of the shops seemed to sell only firewood and raisins. He passed a mosque, letting his eyes travel up the abstract patterns of its stone pillars. He had a headache. He would, he determined, get something to eat and drink before trying to find this guy. Chikambwa. A marine policeman, the Zanzibar government contact for his project. The USAID man in Dar-es-Salaam had given him the name, then warned him, off the record, that he shouldn’t expect much help. ‘You’ll be pretty much left to your own devices …’

  Extensive as his USAID briefings had been, he already felt unprepared. The organisation’s mission statement – furthering America’s foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of citizens of the developing world – was hardly going to be of help on a day-to-day basis. Nor were his fellow officers on the ground in East Africa. The chain of command went to Michael Nagle in Dar, then someone in Nairobi, then the Africa office in Washington. Nagle was an agricultural economist with little sense of what marine conservation might be about.

  Avoiding young African men buzzing by on old-fashioned Italian scooters, he wandered through the narrow streets (one even called ‘Narrow Street’) until he came to a crumbling hotel. Its façade included a balustraded veranda overlooking the esplanade. He climbed the steps and settled himself in a wicker chair. From behind a carved wooden door of great antiquity, a waiter appeared and took his order of shrimp and salad. The waiter was very gaunt, and as soon as he’d gone Nick experienced a twinge of anxiety about eating raw food in such a place.

  Waiting for his meal, Nick noticed a faded poster on the wall. It declared that the building ‘formerly housed part of the sultan’s harem’, beneath a black-and-white photograph of a woman’s face, half-covered by a diaphanous veil. The exposed half seemed, at first, to express corrupt and exotic sensuality – a sly invitation to dangerous adventure. Under the heavy, kohl-ed eyelids, however, was a glimpse of fierce intelligence quite out of keeping with the impression of decadence the photographer had clearly hoped to achieve.

  Nick was still gazing at the photograph when his food arrived. He set to – only to be disturbed a few minutes later by something brushing against his leg. A glaring gang of cats had surrounded him on the veranda. Smaller and mangier than ones back home, they had sharp pointed ears and extravagant marmalade markings. They seemed wild, ancient, mystically Egyptian, and their amber eyes looked at him, or more properly at his plate of shrimp, with sphinx-like fascination. Picking a shrimp from his plate, he tossed it into the road and watched as they chased after it, fighting amongst themselves, cuffing and hissing.

  Paying the bill, he asked the waiter where he might find the offices of the Zanzibar Ministry of the Marine Environment. The man looked back at him blankly.

  ‘I have to find an Inspector Chikambwa.’

  The waiter’s thin face lit up. ‘Oh, you mean Bwana Ernest. That is far. That is Ng’ambo.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  The waiter looked very grave, as if the translation were a difficult one. ‘It means – the other side.’

  Nick paused.

  ‘Ng’ambo is the other side of Creek Road,’ the waiter explained.

  That part of town, as he learned during a confused and sweltering search, was also called Michenzani. It was a poor area, shockingly poor, overrun with ragged children scrabbling round in the dust in front of old stone houses. In the centre of Michenzani, he rounded another derelict corner and encountered – against expectation – a thicket of modern tower blocks. They were dilapidated and discoloured, but they were at least a century newer than the houses. He approached one of these more recent ruins and peered in at the lower levels. The inhabitants seemed to be camping rather than living there. The glass was missing in the windows, and he could see right in to where they were cooking food in tin pots over open fires. Looking up, he saw smoke rising from the top of the block. Holes must have been made in the roofs of each successive level to let it pass through. He felt faintly disheartened. Somehow he hadn’t expected to see this kind of poverty here, the kind of African poverty which he associated with Ethiopia and all those other places.

  *

 
‘So, you are the new American?’

  Chikambwa’s heels were on the desk when Nick entered the office. From the very start, he conceived a dislike of this sullen man in his charcoal-grey policeman’s shirt and steel-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘That’s right. Nick Karolides.’

  ‘Passport!’

  The policeman examined it sternly.

  ‘Karro-lides?’ he said, as if practising the name, and then handed it back. ‘They told me you were coming.’

  There was an awkward silence. Nick became conscious of the breeze from the ceiling fan, stirring the hair on the nape of his neck.

  ‘Well, I suppose I ought to explain your duties – although I should add that your predecessor overreached his role. Frankly, I’m not surprised he came to a bad end.’

  ‘You mean the accident?’

  In his interview, the USAID people had told Nick that the man he was replacing, George Darvil, had died in a boating accident.

  Chikambwa looked at him.

  ‘That is what they told you?’

  ‘Why? Did something else happen?’

  ‘We are not sure. His boat was found with holes.’

  ‘They just said he drowned.’

  ‘It is not important.’

  ‘It is for me! What happened to him?’

  Chikambwa gave him a hard stare. ‘As I said, we are not sure. The reason may be that he did not do as he was told. He cut the nets of poachers.’

  ‘And they killed him?’

  ‘Who knows? What is clear is that it is vital for you foreign workers to remember that you are our guests. We are a socialist revolutionary republic. You are here, Karro-lides, by our invitation. You are not here to tell us what to do.’

  ‘OK,’ said Nick, still thinking about Darvil. Had they lied to him at USAID, to not discourage him from taking the post?

  ‘So now I will show you.’

  Chikambwa stood up and went to a noticeboard, on which was pinned a coloured map of Zanzibar.

  ‘This area is called Nungwi.’

  He fanned his hand across the northern part of the map.

  ‘Here is your responsibility – from the point of Ras Nungwi down to Macpherson Cove.’

  ‘What about those?’ asked Nick, pointing to a speckle of small islands a few kilometres off the coast.

  Chikambwa ignored him. ‘The important reefs are here. You will patrol them, looking out for poachers, pollution and for rare species … I have a list.’

  He went to a drawer and took out a laminated plastic sheet showing pictures of fish and other marine organisms, together with their English, Latin and Swahili names. It looked like a page from a child’s textbook.

  ‘Use the Swahili where possible. It is our national language. The fishermen will not understand you if you use fish names they do not know.’ He paused. ‘It is in this department that your predecessor may have gone wrong. To cut nets unilaterally is forbidden. You must only cut nets and traps with specific permission from me.’

  The Inspector smiled, his teeth gleaming. ‘Personally.’

  ‘So …’ said Nick, after a moment’s silence. ‘Where do I live?’

  ‘A room has been reserved for you at the Macpherson Ruins Hotel.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very promising,’ Nick replied, not sure himself if he was being serious or making a joke.

  ‘It is a good place. You are lucky to be able to live there. You should be grateful to your government. An African, Karro-lides, could not afford to live there.’

  Nick nodded, his expression appropriately contrite.

  ‘You will find the manager, Mr da Souza, a very helpful person. A Goan. There is a boat there, too, of which you will have the use. Although you will have to send dockets to the USAID office in Dar-es-Salaam for fuel, I am afraid. Do not come to me for fuel.

  ‘I suggest you find a boy from one of the fishing villages to help you with the boat. There are very many narrow channels on the coast which are difficult to navigate.’

  ‘What about paying him?’

  ‘The boy? That you will have to meet from your own salary.’

  ‘And how do I get up to this … Macpherson?’

  ‘Dala-dala. It is what we call taxi-minibus. You can fetch one on the street.’

  ‘Right. Thanks. I guess I’ll be seeing you.’

  Nick shook the official’s hand and turned for the door.

  ‘Wait. One thing,’ Chikambwa said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You might see a man, Leggatt. European. He is a clove farmer who also does yacht charters and game fishing. Additionally he meddles in the marine affairs of our country. He is a nuisance. Keep away from him.’

  ‘Right … OK.’

  Perplexed and a little suspicious, Nick made his way outside into the heat.

  It was twenty minutes before he could find a dala-dala heading to Macpherson Cove. He cheered up during the journey. The further north he progressed, the more beautiful the landscape became. Now there were palm trees and spice farms and monkeys and all those other elements – pieces of the jigsaw of every dreamer’s golden land – that he had been eagerly expecting, that the name ‘Zanzibar’ had summoned in his head before he came. Even so, he also saw, from the cracked window of the motorised dustbox that was the dala-dala, things he hadn’t been expecting – like a man riding a bicycle, with an enormous pelagic fish, perhaps a tuna, tied to the back. His heart soared, and his eyes grew dazed from squinting into the radiant light.

  *

  The dala-dala turned off the main road onto a sandy track. Here the leaves of the palm trees grew larger and, as if the sky were opening its robes to the sea breeze, the light changed perceptibly. He could tell he was by the ocean now. The wheels of the dala-dala jived in the sand, and then a sign flashed up. Macpherson Ruins Hotel. The remains of an ancient building stood in gardens nearby. It was more as if the garden was in the ruin. Lianas twisted about in the roof tiles. Big red blooms burst out between the masonry, covering the blocks and slabs with a network of shadows.

  It was, in spite of the breeze, piercingly hot. Nick paid the driver and carried his bag down a sandy path to some newer buildings. These were simple constructions except for their roofs, which were tall, sweeping cones of straw thatch. He could feel the heat through the soles of his trainers. He entered one of the straw-hatted buildings, under a teak lintel into which the word ‘RECEPTION’ had been carved out.

  Inside, it was cool and very dark. Relief from the sun was a gift given bodily – the skin round his eyes relaxed, his scalp and hair altered minutely as, like some finely calibrated scientific instrument, they took account of the change in atmosphere. There was no one behind the desk, and nothing on it save a leather-bound ledger and a battered bell, the kind you press to ring. So this was it then, this would be home for a year. He thought of his mother, of Dino at the dive shop, his work at the lab … the life he’d left behind. Then, with some panache, he pinged the old brass bell.

  For a few moments there was silence. Then a voice came through the gloom.

  ‘Guest!’

  ‘Guest!’

  He heard a door open. The hiss of a match. A small, elegant figure appeared, glowing in an off-white suit.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Nick rather smartly. ‘I am a guest.’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ the match-lit figure replied. ‘You misunderstand me. I was simply happy to have a guest. Bookings very down. I knew it was you. Chikambwa from the marine … he telephoned me.’

  ‘So you are Mr da Souza? Aren’t there any lights here?’

  ‘Your first question, sir: yes, I am da Souza.’

  He reached out and touched Nick’s sleeve by way of introduction.

  ‘To your second question, I am afraid I must offer a negative reply. No generator, sir, being fixed tomorrow.’

  ‘You do have a room?’

  ‘Yes, of course. A room. The room.’

  Nick wondered if the manager was mocking him, imitating his previous tone.<
br />
  ‘Please – come this way. Let me take your bag.’

  ‘No, it’s OK.’

  The strange little man led him through a warren of corridors, each as shadowy as the reception, then out into a garden. Nick blinked in the sunlight. Enclosed by trees – mangoes, jacaranda, frangipanis – it was a kind of courtyard. Bordered by flowerbeds, paths of crushed pink coral radiated from a central gazebo. Each path led to a chalet beyond the trees. It was to one of these that Nick was led. As they walked, he saw that da Souza was, quite apart from being very short, extraordinarily beautiful. He had a smooth, mahogany-brown face; his tiny ears were set flush against his skull; his eyelashes were rather feminine; and his neatly parted black hair looked as if it had been oiled as well as combed.

  He led Nick across the courtyard and up a flight of creaky wooden steps to one of the chalets. Da Souza walked, Nick noticed, like a dancer.

  ‘This is the room,’ said the manager, taking a key from his pocket and opening one of the doors.

  Following him inside, Nick dumped his bag on the floor. Again, it was dark. But there was enough light filtering in through the open door and the inadequate curtains – big French windows behind them – for him to see that the room was neat and decent. The bed had its sheet crisply turned down and a couple of blankets folded at the foot. There was a table with an old-fashioned wooden chair pushed underneath it and, on the surface, leaning against the wall, a few marine biology textbooks and a novel called The End of Eternity.

  ‘The room of the gentleman before,’ explained da Souza, seeing him look at the books. ‘The gentleman from United States like you, sir.’