The intimacy of an island
There's nothing like an autobiography to get to know a country intimately, especially when it's as astonishing as the one Sayyida Salme, now Emily Ruete, published in 1886 under the title Memoirs of an Arab Princess. Daughter of Saïd ben Sultan, then ruler of Oman and Zanzibar, and one of his concubines, Jilfidan, she was raised in the harem where she was born in August 1844. At that time, not so long ago, the archipelago was an Arab sultanate where slavery and feudal power reigned. At the age of 7, she moved in with one of her brothers, Majid, who gave her a great deal of freedom, which she never relinquished. When her father died in 1856, she became heiress, while her siblings began to show the first signs of discord. Her eldest son, Thuwaïni, became sultan of Oman, and Majid sultan of Zanzibar. Sayyida Salme enjoyed a relatively independent life, although she was caught up in the family's misunderstandings, and met a German merchant, Rudolph Heinrich Ruete, with whom she became pregnant. Fleeing opprobrium and even the death penalty, the 22-year-old left her island in a hurry. The child survived only briefly, but Sayyida Salme married and was baptized in 1867. Now Emily Ruete, she went into exile in Hamburg. But her destiny did not end there. Now a widow and the sole breadwinner of three children, she had to deal with nostalgia for her native land, which was itself in a state of upheaval. First published in Germany, her autobiography caused a stir when it appeared in French in 1905 in La Revue des Deux Mondes, at a time when the Orientalist movement was gaining ground. And although it wasn't until 1977 that her memoirs were published in her native language, Emily Ruete remains one of the first Arab women whose writings were published in Europe. A certain freedom of tone that may come as a surprise in a country where her fellow women seem to be subject to many diktats, but which is also to be found in another register, also viscerally linked to Zanzibar: taarab.
Of course, Zanzibar has its own body of legends, but it is undoubtedly in the music that the quintessence of its oral tradition lies. It is said that this art form was imported from Egypt at the end of the 19th century at the request of Sultan Bargash, who was also Sayyida Salme's brother. At the time, culture was a force to be reckoned with in the face of mounting pressure from the British Empire. Taarab has been accused of all manner of evil, including inducing unholy trances, but it is above all a poetic form that leaves a great deal to improvisation, and doesn't hesitate to be scathing with allusions and riddles. Traditionally reserved for men, it's two women who have made it known abroad: Siti binti Saad and Bi Kidude. The former was born on the island of Unguja in 1880 into a modest family. Her good fortune came when she met a group of men in the city of Zanzibar who agreed to take her in. Very popular at the Sultan's court, she also traveled to the British Empire to make precious recordings. She made Bi Kidude her protégé, who had also been born into a poor family at the beginning of the 20th century. A free woman, the "taarab thief", who had learned by listening to Arab sailors sing, gained notoriety over the course of her long career, which would not end until her death in 2013.
Literature of the intimate and of exile
At the time of independence, in Tanzania in 1961 and in Zanzibar in 1963, a vernacular language was chosen to become official, to replace English on the one hand, and to avoid ethnic conflict on the other. This was Kiswahili, used as a first or second language by enough people to qualify for this conciliatory role. It is thought to have emerged in the 10th century, when the Bantu peoples of the coast came into contact with Arab and Persian merchants, and to have been standardized in written form from the 19th century onwards, thanks to Western missionaries. Kiswahili has always been used by writers.
Zanzibar is home to a number of important authors who will be rare to read in French, especially as their writing uses a specific style and vocabulary, no doubt deliberately, which makes it difficult for them to be understood, even by continental speakers. In 1972, Mohamed S. Mohamed published Kiu(Thirst), followed by Nyota ya Rehema(The Star of Rehema) four years later. In these two psychological novels, love and violence are intertwined. At the same time, Farouk Topan, professor emeritus of Swahili literature, published his best-known play, Aliyeonja Pepo(Who Has Tasted Paradise), translated into English and Italian. Their colleague, Said Ahmed Mohamed, took up the historical vein with Asali chungu(Bitter Honey), which evokes the 1964 revolution, followed in 1980 by Dunia mti mkavu(The World is a Dry Tree), which deals with the colonial era. He continued to go back in time, becoming a contemporary in Kiza katika nuru(Darkness in the Light) where, through fiction, he criticizes the corruption of the 1980s. Indeed, he does not hesitate to take a political stance, worrying in turn about the situation of women and the ravages of an overly strict education. Adam Shafi Adam is also an activist, when he writes about the 1948 general strike in Kuli(Docker) in 1979, or about the Revolution in Les Girofliers de Zanzibar (Le Serpent à Plumes).
At the dawn of the 2000s, writers seemed to lose interest in societal issues in favor of a more imaginative approach, exploring magical realism, as in Said Ahmed Mohamed's Babu alopofufuka(Quand grand-père ressuscite). Finally, Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, has chosen to write in the language of his adopted country, the UK, although his works are imbued with melancholy and love for his native land. His three major novels - Paradis, Près de la mer and Adieu Zanzibar - have been published in French by Gaalade and Serpent à Plumes. Abdulrazak Gurnah also continues to explore his favourite theme, colonization, through essays and articles.
