Zanzibar's soul: Wandering the alleys of mysterious, moody Stone Town
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ZANZIBAR, Tanzania - The day fades in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean. Crimson reflections slice the waves.
We sit on a dock watching the flicker of leaping fish and the flying feet of little boys, skittering like crabs over the sand. The soccer ball escapes them, a knot of neighbors taunts "Ho, ho," and somebody splashes into the darkened waters. Down the island, lights quiver to life one by one. Orchestra music scratches from a transistor radio.
Strictly speaking, we don't do much in this antique port town. We watch the mornings rise up to the decrepit rooftops, wander our days away and sit back down for sunsets. The fishing boats roll out at dawn, lumber home at dusk. We watch and walk, little more.
But that's Zanzibar - like falling asleep to colored and complicated dreams. In this city of shadows and spice, we feel like children who've sneaked into a museum after hours.
Zanzibar. The Spice Islands. A coral archipelago rising from the Indian Ocean 25 miles off the eastern coast of Africa.
The name reminds us of something, but what? Some vague, tropical and half-forgotten idea, some scrap of history more intricate than the ornate doors of Stone Town. Something glimpsed years ago in the pages of an old storybook.
For centuries, Arab and Persian traders came sailing on the monsoon winds, hunting spices, ivory - and slaves. As many as 50,000 mainland Africans a year were stuffed into boats at the Zanzibar docks and shipped off to a life of bondage.
We stay in Stone Town, Zanzibar's aptly named historic port city. After centuries of tumultuous history, stone is the skeleton and the soul.
A crumbling city
Stone Town is giving way under the weight of years. Lavish homes built from native coral rock beg for repair. The government of Zanzibar is struggling to preserve Stone Town before time and salt have their way with its architecture.
But for now, decrepitude is part of Stone Town's mystique. Years have stained the walls with dingy streaks; yellowing political posters peel from ancient gates; thick vines and strange mosses smother balconies.
This town is used by its people - children loll on great staircases, men bend in prayer on the floors of mosques. Stray dogs sniff for breakfast on street corners as boys haul sacks of fish to market. The smell of the ocean is everywhere, and the women move slowly, draped in black, silent as shadows. Mopeds are all the rage.
If you're looking for debauchery, don't go. Zanzibar is a traditional Islamic land, and social norms are conservative. Many restaurants don't serve liquor, and drinking in front of strangers is a faux pas.
Local women leave only portions of their faces uncovered, and female tourists who wish to avoid harassment should consider following suit. Our skirts reached our ankles, but we still felt naked.
"Dear tourist ... Please no mouth kissing," pleads a sign typed in English and tacked to a gate by the Palace Museum. "Street love is highly offensive."
A living city
Most of Zanzibar's travelers trickle in after a trek on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, a Kenyan safari or both. Almost all are headed for the resorts and the many glistening white-sand beaches lapped by turquoise water. The wise ones schedule a few days in Stone Town beforehand.
Our days are sleepy: We rise and breakfast at our hotel's rooftop restaurant, salted winds punching at the crisp canopies framing our table.
After strong coffee and pungent melon, we wander off to the market to haggle over ebony chess sets, combs and salad tongs. At the endless textile booths we finger vibrant bolts of cloth. Some of the fabrics are nice, some are not. All are cheap.
"I want a piece of this," my sister says, dropping to her knees before a pool of pearled silk.
"Let's keep looking and come back," I suggest. We do. When we return, every stitch of the fabric has been sold. We've learned a lesson.
We keep walking, duck into a cool alley to avoid the zipping bicycles and slithering children packing the main streets. The shaded passage leads to a courtyard surrounded by high, white walls. Roosters scratch around. A man is stretched beneath a shrub, snoring.
We take another alley, then another. Through a window, a glimpse of children hunched over school books. Garden, alley, alley. We push back into the streets, lost in the clamor and squalor.
Every guidebook warns that Stone Town is a living city. The afternoon streets are raunchy with the smell of people sweating and fish wilting. Raw chemicals rise in great clouds from the underbellies of minibuses. When the heat reaches its pitch, everything seems to be rotting or sagging or falling apart.
We pass a tourist who is gazing around in horror. She grimaces.
"I don't like this - it's just gross," she says, "and dirty, and broken."
But we love it. It's a mineral landscape overrun by frazzled animal and sweet, sticky vegetable.
'My tours are the best'
At the enthusiastic urging of our guidebook, we wend our way through the labyrinthine streets to find Mr. Mitu, Stone Town's celebrated tour guide. After a lengthy hunt we find his office - little more than a stone closet with a single table - tucked away on a street so narrow cars can't pass.
Mr. Mitu is something of a local legend, a portly, gray-haired man who pats his stomach as he fires off encyclopedic knowledge of Zanzibar's history.
"Did you hear I am dead?" he demands upon meeting us. "They tell rumors that I am dead. But Mitu is very alive. See? They lie because they want my business, because the tourists come to me. Because my tours are the best."
We are among a handful of visitors who pack into Mitu's van and bump out of town, bound for the ruins of old Zanzibar. Persian baths, mosques and the remains of a sultan's harem sink slowly into the soft soil of coconut groves. Plantations of clove and peppercorn roll off to the sea.
The concubines' bedrooms
The first Middle Eastern sultan arrived in A.D. 975, when Abi Ben Sultan Hasan of Persia (now Iran) sailed off into the Indian Ocean with his family and followers. A century later, Sultan Seyyid Said moved his sultanate from Muscat to Zanzibar, where he and his descendants ruled for more than 130 years.
It was Sultan Barghash who built himself a pleasure dome at the fringe of the clove fields, though today you could drive right past the ruins and never know it.
Trash stands thick on the brambled overgrowth of an old garden. Within the gate, graying columns rise. There is a tree with leaves that shine gold in the sunlight. Natives whisper that a tea brewed from its leaves can cure malaria.
This was the home of the sultan's 100 concubines - their bedrooms stretch on, one cool stone compartment after the next, cramped and interchangeable.
The women swam here, in the garden's raised stone pool. Mitu is practically giddy as he describes it, his face sinking deeper into its creases.
"Right here they swam," he says for the third time, sweeping an arm toward a dilapidated fountain base. "Oh, you can imagine it. All the beautiful women swimming with the sultan."
Night prayers
On the way back to Stone Town the roads are red, slicing and dipping through tangles of pineapple and clove. Old men are curled in the doorways of huts, children wave wildly at passing cars like all children do, everywhere in the world.
At night, we sample curries in one of Stone Town's bayside restaurants. Shortly after sunset, we'll hear it. We won't be expecting it, because by day we forget. That strange wail startles us for a moment every night.
It's an evening song of prayer, broadcast over the city as the world rolls the island deeper into night. The cry to Allah rings off moldering walls, skims out over the inky waters. In the cafes and on corners, eyes are cast low, waiting. Stone Town is still and listening.
Then quiet falls down from the starry skies, and Zanzibar sleeps.