I DIPPED IN AND OUT of the United States somewhat irregularly for about a decade in the years between 2008 and 2018, when my mother called me from Sarasota to tell me that this was it—that she was dying—that I should come home now to say goodbye.
I stared out at the sea a few weeks before I bought my ticket, wondering if I had it in me to make the trip back to a country that was becoming less and less recognizable to me. A friend urged me to go despite my reservations. “Do it for yourself,” he urged, “You might regret it if you don’t.”
So I booked a ticket to Miami and instead got stuck in Doha, with time to check out a calligraphy exhibit and walk through the old market, due to a wild blizzard in New York. My fellow passengers were pissed and swarmed the staff counter, pressing for answers and food vouchers. But I was content with the delay—I wasn’t sure where I belonged.
These were the years when my body was still cooperating with my whims to pick myself up and leave at a moment’s notice. I didn’t have to think much before a flight, though I’d developed a pretty intense prayer habit by then. Whenever a plane took off I had to stop what I was doing and name the people I loved like I was counting sheep.
In Doha, I determined to make the best of it, distracting myself with trips to the oil and oud shops, marveling at the most expensive wood chips in tiny glass jars lined up along the walls. I preferred the yellow resin nuggets of frankincense that wafted from the counters—the whole reason why I’d even stopped at these shops, I was following a scent.
Eventually, I would make it to the hospital where my mom had commanded a presence with impossible requests made to unassuming young men in food service who were inexplicably forced to wear black ties as part of their uniform. At some point, it was I who took to the streets of Sarasota to source my mother’s last food wishes—burgers and turkey clubs, for the most part, though they never seemed to get it right, no matter who was making it.
I missed out on a lot, I realized, while living in Zanzibar—cultural stuff, I mean. I contemplated this a lot while sitting bedside with my sleeping mother—the TV blaring her favorite show, “Wheel of Fortune.”
The United States had changed and so had I. I returned without a valid passport or license, I was living what felt like a fugitive’s life, in between legalities and identities. It’s why I still have a Florida number—I had to get a new SIM when I was there to even begin to find my way around, and eventually, the weird number grew on me and I have yet to change it, though I have nothing to do with Florida anymore—it was just a blip, really—a vortex.
For most of the years I spent in Zanzibar, I felt a sense of political security in the brackets of Obama. I spoke with pride to my Swahili colleagues about gay marriage, the dawn of a new era. I typed out furious me-too monologues from my laptop with shitty WiFi thousands of miles away from the nexus of this particular revolution. I thought I could live over there and still participate the wider conversation—and I did, or at least tried.
But it wasn’t until much later when I realized how much an entire generation had been sucked down the drain of a digital spiral that left us all bereft of any assured connection or coherence. It’s still sinking in how much we lost in the meme years, how much we gave up to the machines who now own much of what we shared and have positioned themselves to sell it all back to us, one soulful nugget at a time!
Those months in Sarasota with my mom made me think hard about where I was going next but Zanzibar kept calling me back. I would return several more times before the pandemic ejected me and spit me back out in Skokie, in the childhood home where I grew up.
For a while, I still texted in Swahili with old lovers and a few friends, even a taxi driver or two. But the self who spoke on those terms receded as this present self stepped forward and took the wheel. I think now about how that decade in Zanzibar shielded and protected me from the dismal disconnect of the digital age—how we were still sticking our toes in the sand and collecting shells while Facebook became a new kind of hell.
Everyone I knew there stayed curious about social media but didn’t throw themselves into it the way it was happening in the US. Farmers and fishermen still woke with the rhythms of the sun and the sea to keep each other company and bring home the goods.
At the guest lodge where I often stayed because I was smitten with the owner who became my love for a short time, I chatted with the young women who came sauntering into the compound midday carrying blue plastic buckets full of fresh fish still flapping in the fury of their fate. They’d come to hawk these treasures and usually sold out by the end of the afternoon.
I remember hearing "consultants" tell fisherfolk about special apps that could help them maximize on their profits and better predict the weather. But a lot of the ones I knew fished the way they’d always done it—in collaboration with god and waves—and I hope it stays that way.
It’s hard to believe that I haven’t been back to Zanzibar now in nearly six years. My mind-body-spirit no longer turns in its direction. I am more drawn to the chair in my backyard where I read books and drink coffee sometimes in the early morning, before the lawn-mower terror begins.
When I close my eyes and think of that place, I think of the generous sunlight on my skin, the way the day unfolded according to the heat, the way I didn’t—couldn’t—check my phone for anything, because all I wanted was right there in front of me.
Every once in a while I consider changing my Florida number to a local one. But keeping it holds me to an enduring truth I can't deny—that every detail of our lives is circumstantial—linked and woven into a reality we're tasked to make sense of, one strange circumstance at a time!
I stared out at the sea a few weeks before I bought my ticket, wondering if I had it in me to make the trip back to a country that was becoming less and less recognizable to me. A friend urged me to go despite my reservations. “Do it for yourself,” he urged, “You might regret it if you don’t.”
So I booked a ticket to Miami and instead got stuck in Doha, with time to check out a calligraphy exhibit and walk through the old market, due to a wild blizzard in New York. My fellow passengers were pissed and swarmed the staff counter, pressing for answers and food vouchers. But I was content with the delay—I wasn’t sure where I belonged.
These were the years when my body was still cooperating with my whims to pick myself up and leave at a moment’s notice. I didn’t have to think much before a flight, though I’d developed a pretty intense prayer habit by then. Whenever a plane took off I had to stop what I was doing and name the people I loved like I was counting sheep.
In Doha, I determined to make the best of it, distracting myself with trips to the oil and oud shops, marveling at the most expensive wood chips in tiny glass jars lined up along the walls. I preferred the yellow resin nuggets of frankincense that wafted from the counters—the whole reason why I’d even stopped at these shops, I was following a scent.
Eventually, I would make it to the hospital where my mom had commanded a presence with impossible requests made to unassuming young men in food service who were inexplicably forced to wear black ties as part of their uniform. At some point, it was I who took to the streets of Sarasota to source my mother’s last food wishes—burgers and turkey clubs, for the most part, though they never seemed to get it right, no matter who was making it.
I missed out on a lot, I realized, while living in Zanzibar—cultural stuff, I mean. I contemplated this a lot while sitting bedside with my sleeping mother—the TV blaring her favorite show, “Wheel of Fortune.”
The United States had changed and so had I. I returned without a valid passport or license, I was living what felt like a fugitive’s life, in between legalities and identities. It’s why I still have a Florida number—I had to get a new SIM when I was there to even begin to find my way around, and eventually, the weird number grew on me and I have yet to change it, though I have nothing to do with Florida anymore—it was just a blip, really—a vortex.
For most of the years I spent in Zanzibar, I felt a sense of political security in the brackets of Obama. I spoke with pride to my Swahili colleagues about gay marriage, the dawn of a new era. I typed out furious me-too monologues from my laptop with shitty WiFi thousands of miles away from the nexus of this particular revolution. I thought I could live over there and still participate the wider conversation—and I did, or at least tried.
But it wasn’t until much later when I realized how much an entire generation had been sucked down the drain of a digital spiral that left us all bereft of any assured connection or coherence. It’s still sinking in how much we lost in the meme years, how much we gave up to the machines who now own much of what we shared and have positioned themselves to sell it all back to us, one soulful nugget at a time!
Those months in Sarasota with my mom made me think hard about where I was going next but Zanzibar kept calling me back. I would return several more times before the pandemic ejected me and spit me back out in Skokie, in the childhood home where I grew up.
For a while, I still texted in Swahili with old lovers and a few friends, even a taxi driver or two. But the self who spoke on those terms receded as this present self stepped forward and took the wheel. I think now about how that decade in Zanzibar shielded and protected me from the dismal disconnect of the digital age—how we were still sticking our toes in the sand and collecting shells while Facebook became a new kind of hell.
Everyone I knew there stayed curious about social media but didn’t throw themselves into it the way it was happening in the US. Farmers and fishermen still woke with the rhythms of the sun and the sea to keep each other company and bring home the goods.
At the guest lodge where I often stayed because I was smitten with the owner who became my love for a short time, I chatted with the young women who came sauntering into the compound midday carrying blue plastic buckets full of fresh fish still flapping in the fury of their fate. They’d come to hawk these treasures and usually sold out by the end of the afternoon.
I remember hearing "consultants" tell fisherfolk about special apps that could help them maximize on their profits and better predict the weather. But a lot of the ones I knew fished the way they’d always done it—in collaboration with god and waves—and I hope it stays that way.
It’s hard to believe that I haven’t been back to Zanzibar now in nearly six years. My mind-body-spirit no longer turns in its direction. I am more drawn to the chair in my backyard where I read books and drink coffee sometimes in the early morning, before the lawn-mower terror begins.
When I close my eyes and think of that place, I think of the generous sunlight on my skin, the way the day unfolded according to the heat, the way I didn’t—couldn’t—check my phone for anything, because all I wanted was right there in front of me.
Every once in a while I consider changing my Florida number to a local one. But keeping it holds me to an enduring truth I can't deny—that every detail of our lives is circumstantial—linked and woven into a reality we're tasked to make sense of, one strange circumstance at a time!
