personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

PERSONAL MEMORIES
REVOLUTIONARY STATES
AND INDIAN OCEAN MIGRATIONS
Mandana Limbert ∗
In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of Omanis traveled on
dhows from Southern Arabia to East Africa. The descendents of earlier periods of
Omani migration, first during the height of the Omani Ya‘ariba dynasty in the midseventeenth
century and then during the move of the Omani capital from Muscat
to Zanzibar in the mid-nineteenth century under the rule of Seyyed Said bin Sultan
al-Bu Saidi, were thus met with a new wave of immigrants. However, unlike the
earlier waves from Oman to Zanzibar, many of those who traveled at the beginning
of the twentieth century were from oasis towns and villages in what is now called
the “Interior” region (al-Dakhiliya) of Oman. They were poorer than their
established predecessors and often worked as farmers, shopkeepers, migrant
laborers and plantation supervisors. And, unlike the previous waves of Omani
migration to East Africa, the early twentieth century wave also included many
women.
This article focuses on one woman’s personal story of life in Zanzibar and
her return to Oman at the height of the revolution in 1964. Although her story does
not detail the procedures of migration as evidenced in other personal accounts and
in the archival record, her story sheds light on the practices and choices of everyday
life among non-elite Omanis moving to and living in rural Zanzibar as well as on
the ways that memories of life in East Africa become meaningful in contemporary
Oman. In particular, her story reveals the importance of “work” in Zanzibar, both
for her and for the ways that social relations and social identities on the farm are
remembered. For herself, she emphasizes her role in running a store, an activity that
her status as an “Arab” woman would have prevented in Oman. And, for the social
relations on the farm, she and her grandson navigate through the pitfalls and
assumptions about labor, servitude and wages as they have been transformed in
Oman and become a lens through which to understand life in Zanzibar. In this
context especially, what the woman chose to describe was as significant as what she
chose not to say. Finally, her story reveals how she and her family survived the
massacres of Arabs in Zanzibar’s rural areas in 1964 and eventually made their way
back to Oman. 1 All these aspects of her past highlight not so much her distinction
from and tensions with her East African neighbors, but the local, Omani, social
divisions. They reveal, as well, her pride in her independence and fearlessness, a
∗ Mandana Limbert is an assistant professor of anthropology at Queens College, City University of
New York. She is currently writing a book about the social life of Omanis in Zanzibar in the first half
of the twentieth century.