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While Ghania was in Zanzibar, they would also hear about what was going on in Oman. My mother died while I was in Zanzibar. Someone brought the news in a letter, as there weren’t telephones (tilifûnât) in those days. People would come from Oman with letters. And, the war in Oman too, we heard from people who came. We were in Zanzibar then, but we heard about it. We heard that they bombed the fort. 17 And, we heard about how they tricked my sister into selling the house. She was there but they sold it behind her back (khafûhâ). In telling this list of tragic and dramatic events in her life, Ghania focuses not on the pain, sadness or shock that she felt, but on the means of communication: letters rather than telephones. Her mother died, the town’s fort was bombed and her sister was tricked into selling their home, but Ghania simply lists these events. Then, there was the war in Zanzibar. At first we began to hear of people getting killed when they would go to the plantations and other villages, they would be kidnapped and killed. We heard of injuries. Then, one day, they attacked the store. I was not in the store that day, but Ahmad’s niece was there. They came in and started cutting everything and they cut her and she jumped under the table and they were going to kill her, but they thought she was already dead. They said “she’s already dead, let’s go.” She still has a scar, but they sewed her up. Ghania explained how she could not find two of her children, Zouayna and Said, or her husband for three days. There were places, where there were schools (madâris), schools (skûlât), that’s what they called them. I don’t know. They’d put them there. And the women, also, they would take them. I spent the next three days with our neighbors and we tried to escape (shardîn), first to a place called “Bunda” near the water. A group of men saw us and asked what we were doing. We explained to the men that we needed to save our children. Then, we went to a place called “Bikunguna” and I went to speak to the head of the neighborhood who was “from there” (bû hunâk) [that is, from Zanzibar] and who was a friend of Ahmad’s. The head of the neighborhood told me that they had looked for the children, but I protested to them. I said: the children are young and if they see your men; they’ll be scared, they won’t come out. The next day, the head of the neighborhood sent one or two men, “Gumma‘, whatever they were called in those days” and we went out into the plantations to look for coconuts and bananas to eat. Sayf, turned to me at this point, explaining Gumma‘ – but with uncertainty – meant “police” (shurta). The men said that they found my children, in Mtuni, Maqumbira. So I went there, where the plantations were like prisons, and found my children and took them. Then Ahmad returned. His hand had been cut and he had been beaten up, he hadn’t gone to one of the Vol. 5, Fall 2005, © 2005 The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 28
prisons because he was in the hospital. We still, however, hadn’t found Ahmad’s brother Abdullah. Finally we tracked him down, hiding in a neighborhood mosque. Ghania and her group (her family, the neighbors, and Abdullah and his wife and daughter) decided that it would be best to go to the town, where there was a hospital and where they could go to the association house, Bayt Gam‘îya. Ahmad and his brother Abdullah went first, perhaps making sure there was room, and returned the next day. When Ahmad started to cover us up, I asked what he was doing and he said: “do you want to be killed?” I said that I wasn’t going to go without our neighbors (gîrân). I said I would not leave my neighbors! Ahmad said that he wouldn’t come back the next day to get them, but would send a driver. So, the next day, a car came and took me, my children, and a neighbor and then another car took the other neighbors and we went to the town, to the association house. We stayed there for a bit, but then decided to “take” [rent] our own house in town. They came and said that it was safe now, whoever wanted to return to his houses (baytû) could go, but we were afraid that we would be killed, so we stayed in town and rented a house. We would get some money from someone who would come from our farms, but he wouldn’t give us everything, just a little bit, just enough to eat and drink. For three months, we took from our farms in the village. Ahmad then heard that a travel ban might be imposed from Zanzibar so it would be better if they signed up to get their papers to leave. Ghania, though, wasn’t sure about going back to Oman. “What would I have there? I didn’t have a father, or mother, or brother. I didn’t have anything. So, I said to Ahmad, give me the farms, and I will stay here with my children.” Ahmad had, several years before, married another woman, Thuraya, the woman he now lives with in Muscat and it was perhaps with her that Ahmad lived when he would go to the town, leaving Ghania to manage the store. Although her husband hadn’t divorced her – probably due to his own devoutness and piety – she knew that she had “no one”. But, Ghania explained, she realized that in fact she would not receive enough money from the farms to provide for her children. “What could I do? I delayed. But, in the end I signed our names and we boarded the ship, the “mail”, and went to Oman.” Since Ghania’s return to Oman, she has been moving back and forth from Muscat to Bahla. She once explained that when they got to Muscat, her husband at first wanted to return to Bahla. “I should not have gone, but what would I do? So I went. I did not have anyone there.” In the end, though, they returned to Muscat where her husband bought apartments and started a small-scale construction company. Ghania continues to travel back and forth from Muscat to Bahla, her birth place but to which she was – since her first departure to Zanzibar – always reluctant to return. http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/ 29
Page 2 and 3: FOUNDER/EDITOR Maha Yahya BOARD OF
Page 4 and 5: BOOK REVIEWS REVIEW ARTICLE Leo Str
Page 6 and 7: FRONTIER GEOGRAPHY AND BOUNDLESS HI
Page 8 and 9: and the Arab-Muslim communities in
Page 10 and 11: Among those scholars who do write p
Page 12 and 13: involved and the view that “Islam
Page 14 and 15: history. Such a focus would indeed
Page 16 and 17: in “conditions of change and cont
Page 18 and 19: “multiple sites.” People in Eas
Page 20 and 21: 43 Cooper’s reading of Sacred Mea
Page 22 and 23: local and personal politics of the
Page 24 and 25: mainland. As most of those who were
Page 26 and 27: spirits, she was accustomed to the
Page 30 and 31: MEMORY, LABOR AND VIOLENCE Ghania
Page 32 and 33: ENDNOTES In addition to the support
Page 34 and 35: BEING BAYSAR (IN)FLEXIBLE IDENTITIE
Page 36 and 37: Sulayman corrected the slave. He wa
Page 38 and 39: When Tippu Tip (properly Hamed bin
Page 40 and 41: town afterwards, however, and may h
Page 42 and 43: 35 When Wilkinson carried out his r
Page 44 and 45: socialists and anti-Arabs led a suc
Page 46 and 47: Arabs who had been arriving on the
Page 48 and 49: Zanzibar’s printing press provide
Page 50 and 51: especially among Arabs, and galvani
Page 52 and 53: INTERWAR ZANZIBAR: THE IDEOLOGY OF
Page 54 and 55: 1 Al-Rayyis was moved by the Swahil
Page 56 and 57: Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republ
Page 58 and 59: 71 Al-Mughayrī stated that the Ara
Page 60 and 61: The first Christian missionaries to
Page 62 and 63: In reality, however, while Steere e
Page 64 and 65: Farsy wrote that of all the Muslim
Page 66 and 67: other Steere’s Swahili translatio
Page 68 and 69: His word, “I will praise the Word
Page 70 and 71: virtue. The barbarians of Rome and
Page 72 and 73: miraculous light that appears over
Page 74 and 75: 23 Heanley, A Memoir of Edward Stee
Page 76 and 77: turned from there, and went toward
Page 78 and 79:
Saudi Arabia, under the title Taqri
Page 80 and 81:
REVIEW ARTICLE Leo Strauss: Philoso
Page 82 and 83:
(pp. 43-46) are apocryphal. To be s
Page 84 and 85:
Eva Hanebutt-Benz, Dagmar Glass, an
Page 86 and 87:
His publications (described in an e
Page 88 and 89:
Lebanese Christians of the middle s
Page 90 and 91:
investigation in a stand-alone form
Page 92 and 93:
journey towards rationality: Ariel
Page 94 and 95:
ambitious title as “Tocqueville i
Page 96 and 97:
consumption. Yet within the context
Page 98 and 99:
had very precise categories, three
Page 100 and 101:
necessarily partial and provisional
Page 102 and 103:
family business in trouble,” disc
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