INSIDE THE ANTIQUE SHOP, a robed man with a round belly sneezed.
“Al-hamdulillah!” I said, looking up from a dusty shelf of brass coffee pots.
“Are you Muslim?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “But I’ve been living here for a while. Isn’t this what we say when someone sneezes?”
He paused. Took a long breath.
“If you’re not Muslim, you can’t say this word. We take our words very seriously,” he said.
I looked over at Isdi standing behind the glass counter, wrapped from head to toe in black, as the man stormed out of her family’s shop.
We both let out a big sigh.
“He’s crazy,” she muttered in Swahili when he was out of sight. “You’re allowed to bless a man when he sneezes!”
Isdi’s words consoled me, but the encounter still left me feeling sideways.
Now that I was living in Stone Town indefinitely, I wanted to signal that I knew the right lines for the public play I was made to perform each day.
I often looked to my new friend Isdi for clues.
Her Yemeni family’s corner antique shop overflowed with ancient objects—brass coffee pots with long wooden handles, ornately carved wooden treasure boxes, old metal mirrors with painted ceramic tiles—that had traveled from India to Africa to Oman and Europe and back again.
I loved stepping into the cool, quiet storefront and browsing up and down the long aisles that held so much history, chatting with Isdi as tourists popped in and out for a trinket or souvenir.
Isdi went out of her way to speak slowly to me in Swahili, often inviting me to sit with her and her older sister on tiny stools by the open doors, watching the world go by with them.
The soft-spoken sisters always welcomed me warmly into their world, but I sensed there were many layers and aspects of their lives that would never translate.
That morning, Isdi joined me out front after the angry man who policed my greetings stomped out of the shop. I needed to readjust my headscarf to cover my bare shoulders before heading back out onto the narrow streets buzzing with life and stench.
She kept telling me not to worry—that she knew the man, a devout Muslim who bristled at foreigners feigning knowledge of the island's customs—but I still felt ashamed.
I wondered how much longer I could stay in a place that always made me feel like I was breaking some rule—offending god (or devout men in religious robes).
By the time I arrived in Zanzibar in the mid-2000s, tourism had already exploded on the islands—there were wazungu--foreigners like me—everywhere.
But at the height of naiveté, I believed I was different—that if I spoke Swahili enough, covered my hair just right, and walked with the slow, casual confidence of an islander who had discarded clocks as a concept, Icould somehow feel like I belonged here a little longer and a little more than everyone else.
Quite an absurd assumption, I know, and it’s one that kept on caving in on itself the longer I stayed, the more I spoke, the deeper I trekked inside the culture.
Isdi knew how to talk to tourists—her business depended on it—and maybe that’s how she knew just the right words to comfort me enough to keep coming back to visit. I often took my guests to her curio shop, and we always left with bags full of silver charms and chiseled wooden boxes.
But I’ve never stopped wondering what Isdi really believed about me and the way women like me moved around the islands as in-betweeners—not quite tourists (we knew too much)—but not quite locals either.
We were not believers.
I didn’t come to Zanzibar as a seeker or a believer.
I grew up thinking I could make my own rules about god as I went along. But in Zanzibar, Islam sings from every shadow and slant.
Trying to live by the rules stultified me.
Back home, I was used to lingering on the outskirts of faith. But I couldn’t hide out with my doubts in Zanzibar. I found myself on stage, one of many conflicted characters in the island’s story of itself as righteous and pure.
It didn’t help matters much that I’d clung to a man with long dreadlocks coiled like a crown on his head, rebelling against Islam.
I was the pale-skinned, freckled Jewish American woman walking by his side, conspiring with his rebellion.
People like Isdi tolerated people like me—but not the devout man who'd admonished me before storming out. My presence threatened the purity he believed he was protecting.
How would I live so long in a place where belief—or at least the performance of belief—organized every social interaction, when I was an unbeliever?
The Swahili clock is set to divine time. Prayer here is the collective promise of a long, deep breath—a way to reset the social rhythms, five times a day.
I exhaled with my neighbors.
“Al-hamdulillah!” I said, looking up from a dusty shelf of brass coffee pots.
“Are you Muslim?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “But I’ve been living here for a while. Isn’t this what we say when someone sneezes?”
He paused. Took a long breath.
“If you’re not Muslim, you can’t say this word. We take our words very seriously,” he said.
I looked over at Isdi standing behind the glass counter, wrapped from head to toe in black, as the man stormed out of her family’s shop.
We both let out a big sigh.
“He’s crazy,” she muttered in Swahili when he was out of sight. “You’re allowed to bless a man when he sneezes!”
Isdi’s words consoled me, but the encounter still left me feeling sideways.
Now that I was living in Stone Town indefinitely, I wanted to signal that I knew the right lines for the public play I was made to perform each day.
I often looked to my new friend Isdi for clues.
Her Yemeni family’s corner antique shop overflowed with ancient objects—brass coffee pots with long wooden handles, ornately carved wooden treasure boxes, old metal mirrors with painted ceramic tiles—that had traveled from India to Africa to Oman and Europe and back again.
I loved stepping into the cool, quiet storefront and browsing up and down the long aisles that held so much history, chatting with Isdi as tourists popped in and out for a trinket or souvenir.
Isdi went out of her way to speak slowly to me in Swahili, often inviting me to sit with her and her older sister on tiny stools by the open doors, watching the world go by with them.
The soft-spoken sisters always welcomed me warmly into their world, but I sensed there were many layers and aspects of their lives that would never translate.
That morning, Isdi joined me out front after the angry man who policed my greetings stomped out of the shop. I needed to readjust my headscarf to cover my bare shoulders before heading back out onto the narrow streets buzzing with life and stench.
She kept telling me not to worry—that she knew the man, a devout Muslim who bristled at foreigners feigning knowledge of the island's customs—but I still felt ashamed.
I wondered how much longer I could stay in a place that always made me feel like I was breaking some rule—offending god (or devout men in religious robes).
By the time I arrived in Zanzibar in the mid-2000s, tourism had already exploded on the islands—there were wazungu--foreigners like me—everywhere.
But at the height of naiveté, I believed I was different—that if I spoke Swahili enough, covered my hair just right, and walked with the slow, casual confidence of an islander who had discarded clocks as a concept, Icould somehow feel like I belonged here a little longer and a little more than everyone else.
Quite an absurd assumption, I know, and it’s one that kept on caving in on itself the longer I stayed, the more I spoke, the deeper I trekked inside the culture.
Isdi knew how to talk to tourists—her business depended on it—and maybe that’s how she knew just the right words to comfort me enough to keep coming back to visit. I often took my guests to her curio shop, and we always left with bags full of silver charms and chiseled wooden boxes.
But I’ve never stopped wondering what Isdi really believed about me and the way women like me moved around the islands as in-betweeners—not quite tourists (we knew too much)—but not quite locals either.
We were not believers.
I didn’t come to Zanzibar as a seeker or a believer.
I grew up thinking I could make my own rules about god as I went along. But in Zanzibar, Islam sings from every shadow and slant.
Trying to live by the rules stultified me.
Back home, I was used to lingering on the outskirts of faith. But I couldn’t hide out with my doubts in Zanzibar. I found myself on stage, one of many conflicted characters in the island’s story of itself as righteous and pure.
It didn’t help matters much that I’d clung to a man with long dreadlocks coiled like a crown on his head, rebelling against Islam.
I was the pale-skinned, freckled Jewish American woman walking by his side, conspiring with his rebellion.
People like Isdi tolerated people like me—but not the devout man who'd admonished me before storming out. My presence threatened the purity he believed he was protecting.
How would I live so long in a place where belief—or at least the performance of belief—organized every social interaction, when I was an unbeliever?
The Swahili clock is set to divine time. Prayer here is the collective promise of a long, deep breath—a way to reset the social rhythms, five times a day.
I exhaled with my neighbors.
