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Id al-Fitr on the Spice Island

Tanzania, June 1984
The Indian owner of the ship was a scoundrel who had hopelessly overloaded the vessel. At least he too had been on board. He refunded the price of the tickets and hopefully resolved to be a better person in future. I guess it is too much to hope that he compensated the crew that had saved his life, clad in rags.

Around noon, I walked over to the office of my friends to tell them my story, Before I had finished I had nodded off in my seat. They showed me a place to rest and took me to their house that night. Hamed’s sisters had prepared a lavish meal of vegetables cooked in a creamy coconut sauce, ugali, stew, sugarcane juice, fresh red papaya and mountains of citrus fruit. “You’re the Guest of honour,” they smiled and I truly felt honoured.
Hamed told me that they had been worried about me and barely slept that night himself.
“You were right about your premonitions,” I said: “I’ll make sure I’ll catch a dhow next. Any bad feelings about that?”
“Not at all.” He smiled: “You’ll be in Zanzibar tomorrow!”

The following day there were much fewer passengers in the harbour and there was indeed a dhow about to sail. The weather was calm and we left on time, gliding out of the harbour without a sound.

As soon as the lights shrank in the distance, the big sail was raised and an invisible hand pushed us out to sea. The sky above us was the same clear starry sky, fluorescense glistened in the wake of our little bow-wave, a gentle breeze bellowed the sail. We had left the shore behind and were passing the Russian vessel. I dozed of and briefly woke up near the point where we had been in such peril only a few hours before. The dhow glided past it with calm speed.
A splashing noise startled me briefly; the crew had been bailing since we left the harbour, tossing the odd bowl of water overboard without any sense of urgency.

I was lying on deck along with the other passengers and enjoyed the sensation of gliding across the sea with barely a noise other than the gentle splashing of the water. There was one other white person on board: Riek, a medical student who had worked at a hospital in Dar for a few months and was on his way to Zanzibar for the weekend. We chatted for a while and some of the sailors shared their fruit with us.

I woke up as the sun rose golden and warm over a deep blue sea. There was a dot of land ahead — Zanzibar. Soon we glided past the palm-fringed shore and the first houses of Stonetown came into view. At ten that morning we stumbled from board. At long last, I had arrived at the Spice Island.

Stonetown is a labyrith of narrow alleys winding between ancient Arab houses. Every stroll through the city is a new adventure: you can never be sure where you’ll end up but you’ll discover dozens of tiny shops, teahouses and street vendors lining the narrow alleys. I got lost at least three times on my first day, especially as we had been thrown out of our first choice of hostel because we had no money declaration forms. That was our luck because the next hostel we tried was much nicer.

Riek said the trick to get around town is to navigate by the sun and at night by the southern cross. It works; following this advise I did not get lost once.

It was the 29th day of Ramadan and during the hottest part of the day the streets were largely deserted. This night everybody expected to see the first sign of the new moon which would herald the end of fasting. There was a prickly feeling of anticipation all over town. One of our friends told me excitedly that the two day Id el Fitr feast was just like Christmas. But if the moon was not seen that night, there would be another day of fasting.

That night we gathered on the beach opposite a large mosque. The scent of BBQed corn on the cob and skewers of meat assaulted our nostrils. Dozens of stall holders were offering nuts, sweet, sugarcane juice and squid — a particular local delicacy. Several hundred pairs of eyes looked up to the sky, even a TV crew was in attendance. When nothing had happened by ten o’clock, we retreated to our hostel. It appeared that the Islamic world would have to fast another day.

At two thirty in the morning, a fraccas erupted in the streets. I thought at first the hostel was ablaze and woke up with a start, then recognized the wailing as that of the Mu’azzin from the mosque: “Allaaaah-uh-akbar!”
It was a long time since I had heard the call to prayer and it was a welcome reminder even though the Mu’azzin was somewhat hoarse.
“They’ve seen the moon,” Riek mumbled and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, a van with a screeching loudspeaker trundled down the street under our window, broadcasting the happy news at full volume. The Mu’azzin wailed and sputtered twice more before it was time to call the final prayer of the night and then the prayer at dawn. At about the time when you could begin to tell the difference between a white thread and a black theat, I was wide awake and stepped out into the hazy morning. People had begun to emerge from their houses, but despite the early hour there seemed to be nothing unusual about this morning. Only when the sun had risen completely did I realise that this was the first time in a month that I had seen devout muslims eating and drinking in broad daylight.

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