Presence, absence, proximity. The paradox of writing alone with a mind crowded with faces. Riding a wave hoping to be seen by adoring crowds on the faraway shore. I close my eyes and imagine the expressions of those I’ve loved and lost to time or death, they defy any known science of the body, their ongoing, continuous insistence on being felt, if not seen.
An island inevitably invites encounter. Whether you are stepping onto its stage or already an actor in the play, the split between land and sea draws a boundary around everyone, and we meet—in coffee shops and hotel lobbies, beach parties and midday living rooms, the office supply shop, the leather shoemakers’ hovel, the daladala depot, boisterous markets clucking with chickens and hawkers selling silverware—we face each other in the heat and wipe our brows as we greet and say goodbye.
Salam alaykum, I practiced with the utmost reverence to the sheha with the protruding belly and a huge mole on his cheek. Mambo vipi, I shouted to the fishermen seated on broken red buckets in a shady spot under a friendly tree. One always called me mwalimu—I worked at the university—and he knew the romance between me and his mate wouldn’t last long, but he continued to say hello to me with genuine respect, long after I had to file a restraining order against his friend.
These guys would wait by the shore in the early morning when the day’s promise hadn’t been weighed down yet by stifling, debilitating heat. The birds chirped, tourists rambled in flip flops and bathing suits, hoping to catch a boat ride to prison island to see the ancient tortoises. My ex and his buddies had a beautiful command of the sea and often took groups out for the day with fresh cut pineapple miraculously appearing on silver trays. The way these guys orchestrated a fantasy that unfolded like a slow-release pill for wary travelers was just remarkable.
Something about prison island bothered me because of its history, perhaps, or its vapid current state. It was set up as a love affair between tourists and tortoises, pay to feed them but not ride them, was the promise. But the prison held the haunted stories of enslavement and disease. I never got over how the tortoises themselves were prisoners of a kind—they’d been brought to Zanzibar as gifts from the Seychelles.
I remember dizzying arguments with my ex on this island when I’d catch rides with him and the innocent tourists he’d take for the day. We’d get there and realize we didn’t have enough food or water for ourselves; the hotel always seemed to be closed or at least closed off to me in my mind. I resented him for taking me out there without a plan, when all he could do was point to the starfish and tell me not to touch it. He offered me smokes and we ate them like bread.
I see his face when I don’t want to see his face, because the encounter closed in a series of violent episodes still too embarrassing and murky to reveal with any clarity. But when these faces from our past lives come into focus, I try to look back as if looking in a mirror—the fear, the fury, the fallibility. And when I do, which is not often, I marvel at the clever ways I found beauty in those days, even when I was suffering and refused to admit it. I'd place a frangipani flower behind my ear and pose for a portrait for a future self.
One last thing I’ll say before I take the dog for a walk this morning—I was often sea sick on these rides. The diesel fumes. The sticky sand on my sunburnt skin. My face puffy with regret. I threw up more than once into the roiling ocean. My stomach would flip if our engine stalled, my mind immediately flooding with fear that we’d be stranded indefinitely. And I have to say, I learned over the years that my ex and all his friends who organized these rides—who called themselves fishermen—knew exactly how to convey a sense of shwari—of total calm.
Even if I never trusted him on land, I always trusted him in the middle of the ocean.
Transit Slips, #20
An island inevitably invites encounter. Whether you are stepping onto its stage or already an actor in the play, the split between land and sea draws a boundary around everyone, and we meet—in coffee shops and hotel lobbies, beach parties and midday living rooms, the office supply shop, the leather shoemakers’ hovel, the daladala depot, boisterous markets clucking with chickens and hawkers selling silverware—we face each other in the heat and wipe our brows as we greet and say goodbye.
Salam alaykum, I practiced with the utmost reverence to the sheha with the protruding belly and a huge mole on his cheek. Mambo vipi, I shouted to the fishermen seated on broken red buckets in a shady spot under a friendly tree. One always called me mwalimu—I worked at the university—and he knew the romance between me and his mate wouldn’t last long, but he continued to say hello to me with genuine respect, long after I had to file a restraining order against his friend.
These guys would wait by the shore in the early morning when the day’s promise hadn’t been weighed down yet by stifling, debilitating heat. The birds chirped, tourists rambled in flip flops and bathing suits, hoping to catch a boat ride to prison island to see the ancient tortoises. My ex and his buddies had a beautiful command of the sea and often took groups out for the day with fresh cut pineapple miraculously appearing on silver trays. The way these guys orchestrated a fantasy that unfolded like a slow-release pill for wary travelers was just remarkable.
Something about prison island bothered me because of its history, perhaps, or its vapid current state. It was set up as a love affair between tourists and tortoises, pay to feed them but not ride them, was the promise. But the prison held the haunted stories of enslavement and disease. I never got over how the tortoises themselves were prisoners of a kind—they’d been brought to Zanzibar as gifts from the Seychelles.
I remember dizzying arguments with my ex on this island when I’d catch rides with him and the innocent tourists he’d take for the day. We’d get there and realize we didn’t have enough food or water for ourselves; the hotel always seemed to be closed or at least closed off to me in my mind. I resented him for taking me out there without a plan, when all he could do was point to the starfish and tell me not to touch it. He offered me smokes and we ate them like bread.
I see his face when I don’t want to see his face, because the encounter closed in a series of violent episodes still too embarrassing and murky to reveal with any clarity. But when these faces from our past lives come into focus, I try to look back as if looking in a mirror—the fear, the fury, the fallibility. And when I do, which is not often, I marvel at the clever ways I found beauty in those days, even when I was suffering and refused to admit it. I'd place a frangipani flower behind my ear and pose for a portrait for a future self.
One last thing I’ll say before I take the dog for a walk this morning—I was often sea sick on these rides. The diesel fumes. The sticky sand on my sunburnt skin. My face puffy with regret. I threw up more than once into the roiling ocean. My stomach would flip if our engine stalled, my mind immediately flooding with fear that we’d be stranded indefinitely. And I have to say, I learned over the years that my ex and all his friends who organized these rides—who called themselves fishermen—knew exactly how to convey a sense of shwari—of total calm.
Even if I never trusted him on land, I always trusted him in the middle of the ocean.
Transit Slips, #20
