personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

spirits, she was accustomed to the process and agreed. When I returned and began
the tape, she explained:
Many years ago, before I was born but when my father was alive,
there was a very serious drought (mahl) and our family (hayyannâ) all
traveled from Bahla, some going to Khaburah, some to Zanzibar,
and some to Hamra. There was no one of our family here.
Traveling to Khaburah 150 miles away was likened to traveling to Zanzibar
2200 miles away and likened to traveling to Hamra, 30 miles away from Bahla. She
made no categorical distinction of different spatial or political boundaries.
Her father, who had stayed in Bahla, although of a prominent family, was
hardly wealthy.
We lived in “the neighborhood” [meaning one of the main
neighborhoods in Bahla, Hârat al-‘Aqur] and my father worked as a
porter. There were no jobs at that time. He had a donkey and
would ride it, carrying with him water, dirt and manure (samâd). He
couldn’t work with heavy things, but he had a donkey. And, when
my father died, they said: it is better if she marries her cousin [the
son of her paternal uncle]. I did not have a brother. So, four
months after my father’s death, he took me.
This must have been in the early 1950s.
We stayed in Bahla at first, farming: alfalfa (qat), indigo (nîl), chick
peas (dengiû), onions (basal), and sesame (simsim). Within the year, he
came to me and said Zanzibar is nice, let’s go to Zanzibar. Most
people would go to Zanzibar, though, when there was fighting
(ma‘ârik) or drought, but there wasn’t either when we went. They
just told us it was nice (zayna). So, we went to Zanzibar, together
(irbâ‘a), and opened a store.
When I asked about the voyage, how they got to Muscat, where they took a
boat, what happened when they arrived in Zanzibar, Ghania seemed less interested.
Ahmad, she said, took care of all that. She didn’t remember where they took the
boat. She was with the women on the ship and when they arrived in Zanzibar, they
went to the Association house at first. Instead, Ghania wanted to explain her life in
Zanzibar.
We lived in a village where there were plantations (shamba) outside
of Zanzibar town. When Ahmad would go to the town (al-balad)
[Zanzibar town], I would stay in the store and I would buy and I
would sell.
Ghania liked to repeat how she ran the store when Ahmad would go to the
town and, she would add, Ahmad’s brother Abdullah was there too. He also
opened a store and his wife Salma would run his store. In contemporary Oman, it
would have been unlikely that Ghania would run a store: her status as an Arab
woman would have been an obstacle to her partaking in what is sometimes
understood as less than appropriate work. Ghania, nonetheless, took pride in her
work in the store, emphasizing how on the island, it was the women who took care
of such things. Ghania and Ahmad sold, she said, whatever people wanted.
We would sell groceries (samân), sugar, rice (‘aysh). I would make
mandâzî [a type of fried bread] and sell it. We also had coconuts.
Do you know what we did with the coconuts? We would break the
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