personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

coconuts in half and use an iron stick, a “shanga,” that’s what they
would call it, to skewer the coconuts, and we’d put the coconuts
above a fire. I would add to the fire, and when it would go down, I
would add more, and then, when they were cooked, they would be
ready. We would use them to make bags and would sell them.
The process of preparing the coconut husks for drying, a process foreign
to those in Northern Oman and foreign to me, fascinated her and my own
inexperience provided an occasion to describe it. Rather than cloves, whose prices
were dropping, Ghania and her husband focused their business on copra.
I then asked who worked for them.
Omanis. They would work (yishtighilû), sometimes 5 or 6 people.
Ghania’s grandson, Sayf, who was sitting with us, suddenly asked: “You
would rent them (tistagirûhum), the workers, or were they servants (akhdâm) that you had (‘an
andkum)?”
They were workers (‘ummâl), workers. They worked (yishtighilû).
Workers.
Again, Sayf: “From there? You would find them there?”
No, not from there, they were all Omanis, all of them. There was
Su‘ud bin Ali, he worked, and there was Hashu, you know him, the
one who used to work at the hospital, at the doors. Then, Muhsin
bin Shaykhan worked with us (ma‘nâ), and Mohammad bin Khamis.
Sayf: “And you’d give them a salary (ma‘âsh)?”
What’s wrong, yes, we’d give them money.
Sayf: “So, they weren’t servants, they would work (shtughul)?”
We’d give them money. One would carry (yisuq) coconuts, one
would pick up (yatla‘) coconuts, one would go to the town also,
taking and bringing wood. And Su‘ud, do you know Su‘ud who
now fertilizes your father’s date palms? Well, him. He was young
when he came to us. He was young, like Nasr [who was about 10],
when he came to Zanzibar, he worked. First he worked in the store
and then he sold wood, he’d go to the town.
For Sayf, “work” clearly meant getting paid with money, and thus it meant
not being a servant. Ghania, though, does not answer whether or not their workers
were servants (akhdâm). Instead, she says that they were paid, that is, that they were
not slaves, and that they were “Omani”. Ghania, here, is eliding the question of
how people of the servant class, although engaged in wage labor, continued to be
servants.
And then there was the clove season. There, we knew people from
“the neighborhood” (al-hâra) [the village neighborhood], and the
town too. There were many from the town, we got to know. They
would work with us during the clove season. They would put the
seed on one side, and would put, what do they call it? “maqoni”, or
“makroni”, on the other side. And then they would come and we’d
weigh by the kilo, on the scale, and give them money at the price of
the kilo, and then we’d give them their pay (igârathum). And I was in
the store.
http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/
27