A warm salty breeze bathed my face as a canvas of crimson colours danced lightly over the old Stone City of Zanzibar and the dying sun bled like a Bayram lamb into the westwardly waters of the Indian Ocean. Little by little, the motorised dhow drew closer to the shoreline and the yellow flickering lights in the houses and restaurants around the port started to emerge through the mists. The sound of the engine then slowed to a small chug, blending with the rhythm of the lapping waves and for a moment I thought I heard the call of a muezzin coming from some far off mosque being carried to me on the ocean breeze. It was a mournful sound, like the soft song of a Swahili fisherman on one of the boats shambling home at dusk or maybe it was the call of the wandering spirit of some slave who remembered another sunset. For many centuries, Arab and Persian traders sailed these waters, trading along the furrows thrown up by the monsoon winds in the pursuit of spices, ivory and slaves. They traded porcelain and fabrics from Yemen, travelling with the winter monsoons before returning to Arabia laden with gold, ivory and slaves when the winds changed their direction many months later. Other people said that Zanzibar was part of the fabled land of Sheba and it is known that the tales of Sinbad the Sailor are allegedly based on Arab sailor’s adventures along this part of the African coastline. The trade with Africa continued until late in the seventh century when religious wars caused many Muslims to flee south and history documents that Sultan Abi Ben Sultan Hasan of Persia arrived on the coral island in AD 975. Nearly a century later, Sultan Seyyid Said moved his sultanate there from Muscat and his descendants ruled the islands for over one hundred years. The Omani Arabs eventually lost the islands to the Portuguese but regained them with the help of the British in 1695. The British later turned against the Arabs and bombarded the island in an effort to stop the slave trade and probably also use Zanzibar as a staging post during their attempts to colonise the interior of Africa. It is known that the explorers Livingstone, Burton and Stanley used the island to start their colonial expeditions and the houses where they once lived can still be seen, albeit in a state of disrepair. Travellers that I had met on Tiwi beach in Kenya told me that the Anglican Church on Creek Road still contained a small wooden crucifix fashioned from the wood of the tree under which David Livingstone had died in Chilambo. Over the next few years the slave trade disappeared and the island of Zanzibar fell into economic ruin as the British East African port of Mombassa gained in prominence with the construction of the railway to Uganda.

Meanwhile the sun could haemorrhage no more and listlessly sank below the horizon as its dying crimson fell upon the white coralite houses that lined the edge of the port. I watched it disappear, silhouetting a small groups of vendors who had assembled beyond the Custom and Immigration Area, readying themselves with samosas and minerals for our disembarkation. Sometimes while travelling, I would sit and endeavour to absorb the magical essence of the African evening, listening to the sounds that come at dusk, smelling the special scents that are released before darkness falls, but I could sense there was something different in this sunset. Maybe it was the smell of turmeric or cinnamon that lingered in the still humid air or maybe it was the buzzing noise of the small mopeds that disappeared into the labyrinth of alleyways that led to the centre of town, either way, the essence of this dusk was Arabic. I stood under the shadow of the old clove distillery and listened again to the orchestra of sounds, fascinated to hear the Islamic call to prayer melting back into the welcoming cries of ‘Jambo Mzungu, and Habari!’ As I made my way on the back of an open dalidali towards the hotel in the Humurzi area of the town, I looked at the overhanging balconies and thought for a while about Baghdad.

I woke early and made my way through the alleyways to spend a while in the curio shops near Creek Road. The air was hot, the soft sounds of voices drifted down to me from the open latticed windows and the shadows changed in the morning light, making me feel that I was strolling through the musty pages of an old storybook from my early school days. Many of the older coralite buildings appeared to be decaying, dissolving in the salty humid air and dying as the ravages of time took their toll. The government of Zanzibar had apparently tried to preserve some of the structures but they fought a losing battle and the crumbling edifices were being replaced by newer buildings that gave a very chaotic appearance to the decaying architecture. Some of the buildings had ornately carved wooden doorframes, which were an indication of an Arab family's wealth and status in former times. Before UNESCO made Stone City a world heritage site, antique collectors had removed quite a number of these doors and some of the most impressive architectural pieces had been lost forever. One feature that mercifully remained outside of many of the houses was the ‘Baraza’, those low stone benches where the old Zanzibari men were wont to sit and chat about the day’s events. It went without saying that they probably also functioned as a raised sidewalk when the heavy Masika rains came and flooded the dirty streets of the city. There were other parts of Zanzibar's cultural heritage that the government had thankfully preserved including the Portuguese Fort, the House of Wonders, the Sultan's Palace and the Anglican Cathedral, which stands on the site of the old slave market. The guidebook mentioned that the altar now occupies the spot where the whipping block used to be. I also visited the house, which Sultan Seyyid Said gave to David Livingstone for a few weeks when he was fitting out his last expedition to the African mainland in 1866.

The House of Wonders, ‘Beit-el-Ajaib’ is the tallest house on the island and was one of the first buildings on the island to have electric lights. It is referred to as the "House of Wonders" because of the grand scale of its architecture and was built by Sultan Seyyid Barghash in 1883. A British fleet bombarded the building in 1896 in an attempt to make the Sultan abdicate and the free-standing lighthouse at the top of the building was damaged and later replaced by a clock tower. It was here that Bomi Bulsara, Freddie Mercury’s father used to work as a High Court cashier. Freddy was born in the Government Hospital on September 5, 1946 and lived in a house in a square behind the Post Office. It was there that I rested for a while and as the sun started its journey back around the sky I recalled how the Islamic influence of Zanzibar could be noticed in some of his songs and began humming some lines from his immortal Bohemian Rhapsody

"He's just a poor boy from a poor family,

Spare him his life from this monstrosity, Easy come easy go, will you let me go,

Bismillah! No, we will not let you go, let him go Bismillah! We will not let you go, let him go"

The word, ‘Bismillah’, I knew was taken from ‘Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim’ a term that occurs at the head of nearly every Chapter (surah) in the Holy Qur'an and means ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful". For a moment I was overcome by a feeling of deja vu, and with heightened senses, I thought about an old Arabic Proverb, which said "When you play on the flute in Zanzibar, the rest of Africa dances".  Yes, Freddie, everybody danced.