FOR YEARS, I’ve been writing essays about my life in Zanzibar, an Indian Ocean archipelago just off the coast of mainland Tanzania.
I spent nearly a decade there—when my friends at home were having babies and growing families and climbing work ladders and attempting to have it all—I was having palm tree days and fresh cut pineapples on the beach.
I wrote dispatches about my life on these islands for an online magazine called “Contrary: The Journal of Popular Discontent,” and for a while, I felt like I had somewhat of a handle on the story as it was unfolding—the story of a woman who left Chicago in her early thirties for a slower life on the Swahili coast.
I still have a selfie I took when I first returned to the islands after a fling with a man I’d met there while traveling—it’s me in a headscarf, sitting in front of rows of old, green post office boxes with stencil lettering—on a weekend trip to Bagamoyo with the guy who became my boyfriend.
I'm wearing a pair of vintage keys around around my neck. How poetic!
This was a time of taarab and tamarind, walks in the ruins of ancient kings, self-guided tours through shipwrecks, motorcycle rides through sleepy Swahili towns, mosquito-bitten, gecko-winked nights with a new love.
I thought I’d gather all the essays I eventually wrote for Contrary and put them into a book—a collection of essays focused on self-exile, faith, belonging, and home. I even had a working title for the book—and hired several editors over the years to work with me on it.
Understandably, they had a lot of questions for me—what was my “why now” and what was the story inside these essays that I really wanted to tell?
Over the years, I got defensive about these questions—postured with an academic stance—I wanted religion to be the thread that ran through this collection. I wanted my first book to address heady questions of faith and belief with the poetic muscle of Didion, the anthropological heart of Behar.
I kept chiseling away at these essays over the years. Added details, took others away, reordered and refined the words as they first appeared, overlaid new paragraphs with perspectives layered by the current me telling me about my past.
This all got very confusing.
I realized how hard I was fighting the story I really wanted to tell—about the men I loved there and the way these relationships shaped my connection to this place.
I didn’t want to tell a boring love story—or even worse—perpetuate the tropes of the foreigner who falls in love with a local and cue the problems that ensue. I wanted to tell a different story about Zanzibar, one about all the ways in which this place—so steeped in Islam—brought me closer to my own faith as a Jewish woman.
Yes, that’s a huge part of the story and it’s woven into every essay that’s survived all these edits and iterations. But I haven’t yet allowed myself to trek the full narrative arc of two men—Ali and Mustapha—who each played a major role in my Zanzibar story.
And I realize now that my book will never feel complete unless I at least allow myself to lay down my heart along this path, and say what needs to be said, with a wildly subjective curiosity.
Do I want my book of essays to focus just on the failure of these absurd entanglements with men who could never really love me because they would never know me? No, I don’t. I want so much for my essay collection to speak to larger questions:
But these two men—their peculiarities in this particular place—have much to do with question two, and by the end of this year, I have given myself permission to write into the details I’d been working hard over the years to ignore.
To tell the truth about why I left home I need to confess it was for a man with a missing tooth and limp.
To tell the truth about what I learned over there, I need to confess it was my involvement with two different mad men that made me learn how to navigate this world without fear.
To tell the truth about how I found my way back, I need to confess that I couldn't leave until I was no longer running from my future, but toward it.
Writing about your own life is fucking hard.
The memories change as we change. We’re making it up as we go along. But some threads need gathering to weave a tale, and without the essential braids, there are inevitably holes in the story we’re trying to wrap around ourselves.
Here’s to editing and writing our way through the uncertainty until we finally find the stories waiting to be told.
I spent nearly a decade there—when my friends at home were having babies and growing families and climbing work ladders and attempting to have it all—I was having palm tree days and fresh cut pineapples on the beach.
I wrote dispatches about my life on these islands for an online magazine called “Contrary: The Journal of Popular Discontent,” and for a while, I felt like I had somewhat of a handle on the story as it was unfolding—the story of a woman who left Chicago in her early thirties for a slower life on the Swahili coast.
I still have a selfie I took when I first returned to the islands after a fling with a man I’d met there while traveling—it’s me in a headscarf, sitting in front of rows of old, green post office boxes with stencil lettering—on a weekend trip to Bagamoyo with the guy who became my boyfriend.
I'm wearing a pair of vintage keys around around my neck. How poetic!
This was a time of taarab and tamarind, walks in the ruins of ancient kings, self-guided tours through shipwrecks, motorcycle rides through sleepy Swahili towns, mosquito-bitten, gecko-winked nights with a new love.
I thought I’d gather all the essays I eventually wrote for Contrary and put them into a book—a collection of essays focused on self-exile, faith, belonging, and home. I even had a working title for the book—and hired several editors over the years to work with me on it.
Understandably, they had a lot of questions for me—what was my “why now” and what was the story inside these essays that I really wanted to tell?
Over the years, I got defensive about these questions—postured with an academic stance—I wanted religion to be the thread that ran through this collection. I wanted my first book to address heady questions of faith and belief with the poetic muscle of Didion, the anthropological heart of Behar.
I kept chiseling away at these essays over the years. Added details, took others away, reordered and refined the words as they first appeared, overlaid new paragraphs with perspectives layered by the current me telling me about my past.
This all got very confusing.
I realized how hard I was fighting the story I really wanted to tell—about the men I loved there and the way these relationships shaped my connection to this place.
I didn’t want to tell a boring love story—or even worse—perpetuate the tropes of the foreigner who falls in love with a local and cue the problems that ensue. I wanted to tell a different story about Zanzibar, one about all the ways in which this place—so steeped in Islam—brought me closer to my own faith as a Jewish woman.
Yes, that’s a huge part of the story and it’s woven into every essay that’s survived all these edits and iterations. But I haven’t yet allowed myself to trek the full narrative arc of two men—Ali and Mustapha—who each played a major role in my Zanzibar story.
And I realize now that my book will never feel complete unless I at least allow myself to lay down my heart along this path, and say what needs to be said, with a wildly subjective curiosity.
Do I want my book of essays to focus just on the failure of these absurd entanglements with men who could never really love me because they would never know me? No, I don’t. I want so much for my essay collection to speak to larger questions:
- Why do you leave home?
- What do you learn over there?
- How do you find your way back?
But these two men—their peculiarities in this particular place—have much to do with question two, and by the end of this year, I have given myself permission to write into the details I’d been working hard over the years to ignore.
To tell the truth about why I left home I need to confess it was for a man with a missing tooth and limp.
To tell the truth about what I learned over there, I need to confess it was my involvement with two different mad men that made me learn how to navigate this world without fear.
To tell the truth about how I found my way back, I need to confess that I couldn't leave until I was no longer running from my future, but toward it.
Writing about your own life is fucking hard.
The memories change as we change. We’re making it up as we go along. But some threads need gathering to weave a tale, and without the essential braids, there are inevitably holes in the story we’re trying to wrap around ourselves.
Here’s to editing and writing our way through the uncertainty until we finally find the stories waiting to be told.
