Zanzibar 1964 – Part1

Zanzibar, seen first from far out at sea is a long, low shore. It appears insubstantial and almost indistinguishable from streamers of distant cloud which intensify the remote vastness of the Indian Ocean.

(Ed’s Note: This is part 1 of a series of eye witness accounts written by Luke’s Dad who was working in Zanzibar at the time with his family including Luke. Hurley senior was a doctor and a painter.)

As the steamer approaches, the shore becomes gradually more substantial and long beaches become visible backed by screens of palms. The palms are dense but, at intervals, unrolled as it were by the steady progress of the steamer, there are partial clearings giving sight of crumbling Arab villas, thick walls, sightless windows, an air of disuse and decay.

From time to time as the shore unrolls, groups of outrigger canoes can be seen dancing on their reflections like long-legged flies. These lead the eye to discover clusters of huts, the dwellings of fishermen, partly hidden by the dense purple shadows thrown by the palms upon the beach. The roofs are of thatch, dried palm fronds called makuti.

The video below is an eye witness account from the time.

The shore has a listening, waiting quality and is forbidding and mysterious. It seems imbued with a living personality; it seems to watch, it seems to repel rather than invite. The imagination conjures up unseen watchers, silent, aware, hostile. It is like going back in time to an earlier state of the planet or even to another planet.

The harbour is dotted by small coral islands, miniature replicas of Zanzibar herself, and the waterfront presents a limpid white facade of slender buildings and, tall among them, the rambling, massive palace of the Sultan and the filigree clock-tower of Belt el Ajeib – the ‘House of Wonders’.

THE SHAMBAS
It is impossible in this setting not to think of the many many episodes of violence which have clouded the skies of this unhappy island. There are 640 square miles of island and, round about, the heedless sea. Where can you escape? Your skin colour, your clothes, your long grey beard allow of no concealment. ‘Where is no border to cross with your few belongings, there are no mountains to take cover in. The hunters will find you and surround you, you will fail to protect your child and you will see the rising sun flicker on the blades as they descend.

THE STREETS OF ZANZIBAR
The streets of Zanzibar are tortuous and intersect erratically. Walking into any one of them is like walking into a maze. After walking a short distance it is at first impossible to tell the alley by which you entered. Like cracks in dried mud, the streets are little more than canyons whose depths, in places, only know the light and warmth of the sun at the times when it is directly overhead.

Eventually you turn a corner and emerge into an open space. This space, unfamiliar because seen from a different angle, may be your original point of entry or it may be right across the city or indeed anywhere on its perimeter.

The houses form enormous blocks of three to four storeys on average. Each storey is a cube and adjacent houses at first one storey high can clearly be seen to have grown at different rates so that one is three cubes high and the next two. It is this unequal growth which gives an Arab city its characteristic outlines.

When the second house grows up by the addition of another storey, the side windows of the first necessarily become communicating portals between adjacent houses. The walls of the tall houses are of crumbling plaster with a weathered texture of pale pastel shades.

There are rows and rows of windows protected by shutters which are coloured more stridently than the walls and which present fore-shortened lines of rust red, viridian green, cobalt blue, burnt sienna. Beneath them, at street level, shop awnings, gaily striped, cover trestle tables overflowing with a profusion of fruit partly obscured by ink-black shadow.

It is possible to pass through large sections of the city from house to house at ground and second floor level emerging into the street only rarely and then merely to cross a narrow alley. It is also possible to walk across the city from roof to roof and see lively streams of colour flowing along, far below.

Before going down to the street again, pause to take in once more the vast rooftop area which is the uppermost tiers of life. Many families live at this level often under shanties built on the topmost flat surface. There are bui buffs hanging up to dry, saris and scanties hanging on clothes lines, women looking, groups sitting and conversing and even people tending small gardens away beyond. You can see the Indian Ocean between the taller slender buttresses of the mass which includes Beit airport and the Palace of the Sultan.

All the various smells, like the notes of a symphony, are blended into one unmistakable smell – the smell of Zanzibar. The piquant blends with the foetid and the sickly sweet. Individual elements, like solo phrases, emerge from time to time depending on the state of the tide, the shifting of a lazy breeze, or proximity to a particularly powerful source.

An erotic breath of mimosa emanates from a passing hui hui. The nostrils prickle to the tang of smouldering copra. Near the fruit stalls there is a sickly sweet smell from rotting loquats like the breath of a sherry drinker.

The sounds are varied and continuous. The curious chants of itinerant vendors blend with the yap yap yapping of small bulb horns on the home-made hand carts of sweet-meat sellers. Bicycle bells ring all the time. The children chant their rhythmic play, babies cry, old men argue. Radios compete with each other from every window. Strange blends of curiously pitched string instruments complete with Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, and news bulletins in Kiswahili.

OUR HOUSE
We lived in a yellow-washed three-storey building, a typical massive piece of Arab domestic architecture, impregnable as a fortress and possibly designed with this view in mind. It could be seen for a distance of almost a mile.

Our ground floor was characteristically bare, like a warehouse or a godown. Access from the street was through a double door of timber, secured by a weathered beam. Up and out of this shadowy space a stairway led into the principal room which was as vast as, and reminiscent of, a Saxon tithe-barn. Another wooden gate at ground-floor level gave access to a small courtyard into which opened the doors of the servants’ quarters. All of this ground floor region had once been the living space for the slaves who slept on stone buttresses. Staples and rings let into the massive walls bore testimony to their past occupancy.

The house was L-shaped with two high stone walls and a small courtyard. From this courtyard wooden steps led to a verandah on each floor. The top floor was freely accessible to the large colony of bush-babies which lived in the trees of Victoria Gardens and there was a clear view of the main road to Mazzizini. I could glimpse a corner of the hospital half-hidden by the trees. From the other end of the verandah there was a view of the street leading into the depths of the town.

WORKING SOUNDS – MORNING IN ZANZIBAR
I have often thought that there is a seemingly haphazard sequence in the life of a street which would turn out to be fully rounded and logical if studied daily. I remember most clearly the mornings or the evenings. Each dawn I awoke to the cry of the muzzein chanting his Arabic prayers, a mournful and weird sound, the cry of a soul lost forever in the depths of an abyss. The whine of the wind in desolate places, the lost and desolate predicament of the human being trapped on an inexorably inimical planet, a cry of loss, a despairing wail of loneliness.

A gardener from the nearby park, taking flowers to the Sultan’s palace, pushed his handcart along the road. His cart sounded as though one of the wheels were square. It made a curious grinding rattle, punctuated by a rhythmic knock, pause, knock, pause, knock which became louder and louder and then approached, deafeningly amplified as he reached the confines of the street and passed beneath the bedroom window. Then the knock, pause, knock, pause, knock diminished into a distant featureless rumble and faded away.

This was the first working sound of the day. The second was a faint rumbling, coming from afar which rapidly increased in volume and became identifiable as the beat of galloping hoofs and the clanking of milk cans. It was a donkey cart drawn by the liveliest donkey possible, beating sparks out of the road, the cans swaying violently and the driver, hunched and indolent, carried along, lost in a dream of his own. This din would also be suddenly amplified as the equipage entered the street and for a lime it sounded like a locomotive and drowned all other sounds.

A group of cyclists came next, houseboys on their way to Mazzizini, their laughter making their balance precarious as they listened with appreciation to one of their number, always the same one, imitating the falsetto pidgin Swahili instructions of his employer who must have talked a lot of nonsense, judging from the hilarity.

Individual sounds became lost soon after and merged into an increasing volume as more and more people and vehicles began to take up the tasks of the day. Time to get up and watch the crows chasing the sparrows.

The streets were almost empty from 2pm to 4pm. All who could remained out of the sun which blazed overhead melting the tarmac on the road and seeming to have weight as well as heat. A short-sleeved shirt and light-weight slacks were all the clothing one could tolerate and, in the office, resting the forearms carelessly on the desk would saturate the papers with sweat and cause them to stick to the skin and come off the table, stuck to the forearm.

1961
The election had been won in fact by a single vote, which gave the Zanzibar Nationalist Party a single seat majority. Cabinet Ministers were chosen and had all the dignity associated with such rank yielded to them, apart from that of final executive powers. It was, as it were, a trainee government. During this period tempers had cooled down, though curfew was still in force.

After about six years I felt I knew everyone of any prominence in Zanzibar, from street vendors to exalted officials. So one of the most noteworthy features of the days succeeding the revolution, after a semblance of normal daily activity had been restored, was the large number of unfamiliar faces to be seen. A great many of these new people, Africans included, appeared to be in positions of authority. This was something which excited my curiosity. I wondered how much of the organisation had originated outside Zanzibar.

The men on the losing side were either killed, or maimed or detained or shipped to where they had come from as slaves had formerly been shipped. One day when overt violence had ceased and it was safe to walk the streets, I encountered Balawai who had formerly been Head of Immigration. He was walking in deep and unseeing dejection along the street, unshaven, unkempt and horribly hungry. He had been summarily dismissed from his post and now had no means of livelihood. He had been in and out of prison several times so I was told.

WHAT YOU SAW
It was embarrassing to walk along and encounter some of these men when the only Arabs who had retained their former status were members of the Umma party who had, if anything, gained ground due to devious methods and leftist affiliations. For the time being at least the doctors were irreplaceable.

The overtones and undertones of the political climate were becoming intolerable. Almost every person of any standing who had favoured the deposed party was in a state of uncertainty about his own future. If he were an Arab, it was virtually certain which party he had favoured. His beard, colour and clothes proclaimed his allegiance to the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. If he were an Indian or a Goan it was likely, but not certain, where his sympathies lay. Most of these people had favoured what they were inclined to call the more civilised crowd, the Arabs. An Arab who enjoyed the favour of the Revolutionary Council was so held because of a common allegiance to a more universal cause, a cause in the furtherance of which the island was to become curtained off from its friend and neighbour Tanganika.

Arabs had been killed, maimed, dispossessed, and sacked from their jobs. Large numbers had been held in detention camps and afterwards shipped to Muscat under the same conditions of privation which had once been the lot of the slaves. Others had been into and out of the prison several times for questioning. Some were allowed to retain their jobs because the jobs in question (doctoring, for example) could not, for the time being, be done by anyone else.

An Arab doctor felt that he worked for an antagonistic master, that he was on sufferance, that his services were retained with reluctance and that he would be dispensed with at the earliest opportunity. There were grounds for such sentiments. An Arab doctor who had daily access to the imprisoned Arab exministers of the deposed government, was treading on dangerous ground. Not only was he carefully watched lest his daily visits to the prison be made use of for counter-revolutionary purposes, but he was probably under constant pressure to make use of his access to the deposed leaders for just this purpose. A false move might be misunderstood with dire consequences to him. He was also at the mercy of any malicious enemy who might destroy him by denouncing him as a spy. In addition, he had such an enemy – a former subordinate, who since the revolution had become a superior.

For reasons of this sort it was understandable that when one of the ministers became seriously ill he should have been especially anxious to transfer the responsibility to me.

BROKEN LOCKS – LOOTED BUILDINGS
The shops remained half-shuttered with their doors ajar ready for instant closure. That they were open at all was due to the fear of disobeying an order of the Revolutionary Council. Some remained closed, however, notwithstanding this instruction which had come over the radio. (The radio had become an instrument of Government.)

There was talk of rape, of houses entered and searched apparently at random by bands of men whose credentials were never shown. Were they gangs of opportunists or were they acting on instructions? I wondered how many of my personal acquaintances had been killed. Locks hung broken and half-dislodged from many doors. There were many broken windows. The Indian pick-up, its windscreen shattered, remained in the street pushed to one side. Its deep black tyre marks were still clearly visible in the soft tarmac. The black official cars with their black, green and blue pennants fluttering passed and repassed over these marks, altering course a little to negotiate the obstruction.

Even then it required courage to walk in the streets. One felt uncomfortably conspicuous, one’s footfalls echoed. The empty joylessness, the long and worried faces and the apparent interdiction of laughter, weighed on the spirit.

The house adjoining mine was empty for a time. The Riamis who had lived there, had left before the Revolution. Further along, another house which had been lived in by a brother of the Sultan was empty too. Its emptiness also antedated the Revolution. It was odd that so many relatives of the Sultan had left during the weeks of Zanzibar Nationalist Party rule. It was odd also that these houses had not been decorated at the time of the Independence ceremony.

However, they were not empty for long. A number of Chinese soon occupied one, a number of girls came to occupy the other. None of the girls was older than sixteen. There was also a little boy about twelve years old.

The Chinese, there were about ten of them, walked from their house every day to their Embassy which was also in my view close to the seashore. They walked in single file looking neither to right nor left. I never saw any one of them smile or address what might appear to be a flippant or a humorous remark to one of his fellows. For the most part they were silent. Joyless, like an empty atmosphere, they came and went like clockwork.

The Riami house, now occupied by girls, never seemed to sleep. They had Arab and African physical characteristics with Arab predominating. They were by no means quiet and spent their time dancing, quarrelling and singing. Judging by the number of times I heard her name called, Silirna was the boss.

One day, after nightfall, I was standing on the high verandah looking along the empty street. There were no guards visible at the time, possibly because they tended to merge with the shadows.

Two young Africans appeared from the depths of the town and slowly made their way along the street until they came to the Riami house next door. They were very smartly dressed and aged about eighteen or so.

They stood and seemed somewhat indecisive. ‘ They talked together in lowered voices for quite a long time. Then one went to the door of the house while the other stationed himself across the street, the better to scrutinise the highest window of the house – the part where, judging from her frequent appearance at that window, Silima lived_

The man across the street then began to shout “Silima” repeatedly, while at the same time, his companion rapped with his knuckles at the door. After quite a time the upstairs window was thrown open and a long, shouted conversation ensued which I was unable to understand. Finally the door below was opened and the men admitted to the house.

Silima’s noisy household was in marked contrast to all the others in the street. Though many were unoccupied, some of them harboured anything from six to ten people. But the occupied houses were as silent as the unoccupied ones. It was as if the inmates feared to do anything whatsoever to attract attention. They showed no lights and they played no music.

I was becoming dull myself. I had no inclination to paint or read. When work was over I returned to my house. Nothing within it had any particular interest for me. I had packing to do and the process seemed interminable. Between spasms of activity in this regard I would scan the streets and open places from one window after another and became, for the time, a curious watcher, a minder of other people’s business.

People did not visit each other’s houses at that time. There were, in any case, fewer and fewer friends to pass the time with. One by one ex-officials were taking the plane and relieved, without exception, to be on their way at last. There was a general exodus going on. Indians slipped away to Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and Bombay. They were free to go, so long as they did not take more than £10 in currency with them. Many of them were shorn of their jewels, some were seized and imprisoned, but the numbers remaining in Zanzibar lessened and lessened as time went by.

KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
It was an hour after sundown. From time to time I could hear muttered remarks which the guards made to each other. They stood close against the wall of the house in the street below but were not visible from the windows. Since they were always very quiet, I sometimes forgot about them and forgot to lower my voice when talking to Hassan or to myself. I sometimes spoke aloud when I was alone because it helped to relieve the tension.

Hassan was late. I wondered what had happened to him because he usually insisted on coming even when I gave him the evening off. I became restless and began to wander about the house from the circle of light, going from room to room and down to the shadowy basement to the stairs leading to the inner courtyard where Hassan lived before the revolution. I thought that perhaps he had come back early and gone to sleep. But there was no sign of him. I found, however, that one of the bicycles was missing. Hassan must have taken it without leave, and this disturbed me a little.

Having made a careful check of all the doors I went back to the small rough table under the naked bulb – a Rembrandt setting – and I took out my pen and diary – `careful what you write’.

`Hassan had changed’, I thought. I would look up suddenly and find his eyes upon me, instantly flicking away. `Have you been there all the time, Hassan?’ Why did he always stand partly concealed in a long shadow, half hidden by a pillar? In fact they all did that. They quite instinctively always placed themselves and some other object in the line of your vision.

“In the Cuban revolution”, a voice on the radio was saying, “they started with only six pistols. In the Zanzibar revolution we had only one gun between us — at the start.” Words to that effect. I wasn’t attending very well.

A few days before Hassan had asked me “What is this socialism, Sir?” in the course of my reply he had drawn me to the centre of the floor, away from the windows, out of ear-shot of the guards. Another time he had said “But you work with your hands, don’t you, Sir?”

*****

The next morning when I emerged on the street below, Mrs Comes was waiting to way-lay me. “We didn’t expect to see you today”, she said. “We thought you had been taken away during the night. There was a loud banging on your door about three o’clock this morning. We thought they had come to get you. They’re after the Europeans now.” I never gave Mrs Comes ‘any change’. Moreover, I was already concentrating on the work before me at the hospital and this was more than enough to engage my whole attention.

NEW ENCOUNTERS, NEW STATUS
Sometimes one forgot about particular people until one encountered them by accident on the street. Such encounters usually meant a brief, silent exchange during which both parties thought for a moment of the recent disorders and wondered about the effects which these disorders might have had.

Seeing a familiar face was the first certainty that the person encountered was not dead. Secondly, you wondered what he or she had been through. Thirdly, now that previous secret affiliations had come into the open, you wondered where the other person stood. Why were the two impecunious Arabs who kept a small huckster shop alive? I often walked to their shop in Stone Town in the afternoon to buy my cigarettes. This was an area where many Arabs had lost their lives. I had seen many in the wards who looked just like the two from the shop. Not only were these two brothers alive and in good spirits but theirs was the only shop whose wares were openly and profusely on display. Arab and Indian-owned shops all around were now shut or half-shut, but the shop in question, typical of shops ?f the Arab followers of the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (Z.N.P.) had passed unscathed through all the troubles.

A man whom I knew equally well, a poverty-stricken Arab petrol pump attendant, had been shot. Being harmless, just as Nzee was harmless, somehow I had not expected him to suffer any harm. He worked for an Indian proprietor who described the pointless manner in which the man had met his end. He had been shot off-hand, the gunman firing with the same sort of action with which one throws away a cigarette-end.

Some acquaintances had been changed terribly and had looked blankly at the ground before them. They recognised me only after a momentary hesitation and seemed ashamed to have me see them in their altered state. An airport official, for example, who had always been very friendly and effusive passed me by within a few feet, unshaven and harrowed looking. When I greeted him I instantly felt sorry I had done so. He had seen me but had not wished to talk to me. He was ashamed. I was possibly a reminder to him of former happier occasions when he was gainfully employed and full of the importance of his position.

Members of the Ruwehy family, patients of mine, passed by with looks of introspective despair. Mister Suchak had achieved what he and I had finally agreed had been impossible – he had visibly lost weight. But he was anxious to speak to me and greeted me in his usual way – “Yes, Doctor”, to which I replied “Yes, Mister Suchak”.

A NIGHT CALL
The telephone was ringing at 2.30 in the morning. It was Saturday 14 January 1964. The voice at the other end, though familiar, was not a voice I ever heard outside of office hours. I was alarmed at this, even before I got the message.

“There’s trouble. Stay where you are for the moment. It’s big this time, touch and go I understand, and heavy casualties expected, but not just now. We are doing all that’s necessary. Stay where you are and get some rest.”

I put down the phone feeling a fierce resentment. I did not look forward to hours on end, case after case and going from one operating theatre to the other. The work was tiring and worrying. I had had it all before. I had come to abhor violence, to be frightened by it, to be overcome by the uselessness of it.

I walked into the shadowy living room which was open to the night on all sides, and the night was full of noise like that of an immense firework display. I looked for but did not see rockets in the sky. I was struck by the sinister import of the alarmed cawing of crows. My anxiety was of such great intensity that it benumbed me. I stood in the dark and listened, all thought and motion eliminated by the enormous din. I went to one window after the other and looked out into the black sky, still half-expecting bursts of coloured light, but I could see nothing. The night was black and there was no moon or stars.

At one moment bursts of gunfire seemed to come from very near at hand, the next from far away. There would be a fusillade of shots, then a single shot, then another, then a pause, then another fusillade. With each shot I imagined a man dead under the trees or wounded mortally and crawling amid the tripping, snake-like roots and the haphazard graves.

When I arrived at the hospital, light was everywhere, cars were converging, the matron, superintendent and assistant matrons were all at their posts and in uniform. Even the Director of Medical Services was there, unfamiliarly unshaven, his face white and worried.

Extra beds were being set up, extra stores were being checked, ambulances were rounding up off-duty nurses, theatre attendants and laboratory staff. Great activity prevailed amid the constant noise of gunfire and a sense of uncertainty and anxiety.

A few casualties had appeared and were being dealt with. They were men who had minor injuries, and men who had been able to make their own way to the hospital. It seemed that the battle was engaging the attention of the antagonists to the exclusion of all other considerations. The fact that the government forces were not transporting casualties to the hospital was regarded as definite proof that things were really serious. It meant that they were fully occupied.

Telephone messages to police headquarters had been of little use. The Commissioner of Police had been contacted but seemed breathless and preoccupied. His replies had been drowned by the noise of splintering glass and loud, amplified detonations, making it clear that he was in the height of trouble.

Previous experience of multiple casualties had taught me that I would go into action last of all, and continue longer. So I drove back to the house to get some food and to alert the family. Daylight was breaking by now, and though my ears were filled with gunfire and the clamour of the crows, there was nothing for the eye to see.

Mr and Mrs Gomes and Mrs Balucci, our neighbours, appeared from across the road. Mrs Balucci asked me if it was safe for her to go to Mass. I opened my mouth to say “Yes”, and I said “No”, and was glad afterwards. How could she have asked? I was terrified, though made myself appear otherwise. As we spoke, the sinister blasts of gunfire went on, seeming at one moment to be all around us, far far away the next.

What I recall at this time most of all is the craving for knowledge of what was going on. I tuned the radio to the local station, Radio Nguja (the correct name for Zanzibar). It emitted a high-pitched signal but this would, I hoped, give place, sooner or later, to a voice – probably telling everybody to keep calm.

The police, some two hundred trained riflemen who took the place of the military in Zanzibar, had the firearms. Their opponents had pangas, the silent weapons.

The police had learned from the recent riots – when they had been too slow to act vigorously – and were now acting with firmness, ruthlessness, and decision. It was only a matter of time before the rising would be crushed.

Suddenly the radio fell silent. It seemed to give the lie to my wishful thinking and implied with great force that all was not well. Two single shots exploded with terrifying noise very close by, and then there was a period of silence into which a new sound gradually crept, increasing rapidly in intensity until it became recognisable as a loudspeaker van. I got to the window in time to identify it as a police car, which sped towards Mazzizini. It was a reassuring sight for all its evident haste. I made out the words ‘curfew’ and ‘houses’, and ‘stay off the streets’.

The real development was the sound of voices shouting in the distance. On looking out I could make out a group in the middle distance between the house and the hospital. Seven men intermittently concealed the trees which lined the road. It was obvious that they had emerged from the cover afforded by the shrubs of the park known as Victoria Gardens. There was something about them which aroused uneasy suspicion. ‘They looked like riot police who were neither smart nor properly equipped. Two of them had steel helmets and wicker-work shields, like the tops of circular laundry baskets, and carried police riot sticks. Another carried a service rifle. He was constantly peering up into the trees and shifting his position scanning the road in both directions, and scanning the cover on either side.

As a consequence of the riots and civil disturbances which had occurred the previous year and which had not been firmly crushed at the very beginning owing to the tardiness of the police – who were slow, well-meaning, peaceful chaps – a specially trained emergency unit had been formed. I had seem them at work on various occasions, notably when they had charged and dispersed the demonstrators outside the court room in which Barn had been sentenced.

There was no certain means of knowing whether these men were riot police or not. They were dressed in tatters, long-tailed shirts hanging untidily outside their khaki shorts. They were very vulnerable, right on the main road and were bound to be engaged by a police patrol. The degree of dishevelment and the incompleteness of their equipment might have been accounted for by a surprise attack, leaving them time only to dress hastily and grab what equipment they could. Furthermore, the Special Branch often dressed themselves deliberately in nondescript clothing.

They were talking together in rough, angry-sounding voices and while they talked, they kept moving around the same spot. The rifleman had been a few paces apart from the others, and his voice was louder than the rest. But he set my doubts at rest by leaning his rifle against a tree and moving away from it, separating himself from it by a good six or seven paces. This was irregular, I thought. No service rifleman would leave his rifle in this manner. Therefore, they were revolutionaries. I became certain in that moment that I was observing a group of violent men who had taken the law into their own hands. Their possession of so many items of police equipment indicated that some success had attended them and suggested that the regular police force must have sustained a setback at their hands.

The group moved closer very slowly, shouting to each other very raucously, glancing all around, each man slowly gyrating and the group as a whole constantly changing in relationship to each other.

Hassan had come quietly some moments before and had been inspecting the men with silent concentration. He said to me now in a whisper, full of anxiety, “These are bad men, sir, very bad men” – he was adding something more when my attention was distracted from his words by the sound of a vehicle. I caught the words “Makonde” and “toka Kenya” but the sound of the coming vehicle held my attention. The men shouted loudly and angrily at the car which must have been running straight at them.

The white Anglia swerved violently as the driver made to turn off the main road, aiming at the side road which passed by the open aspect of our house around the enclosure where the family of graves was situated. The rifleman fired as the car, tyres screaming, barely made the turning and raced away out of earshot.

The explosive sound set us all trembling. The sound set the crows to renewed raucous clamour, and as the shock of it diminished, the men were even nearer, their faces quite distinct now and dark with an anger such as I had never seen on a human face before. It was probably compounded with fear, the sort of fear which drives a man to rain blow after blow on a victim already dead.

My family and I and Hassan were now in a group in the middle of the floor, afraid to approach the windows, trying to keep the small one quiet. We could hear the men who were now in the street outside the main wooden door. Hassan had slipped down and secured it minutes before. Even so simple an act required the highest courage.

Another blast sounded, this time amplified a hundred times by the confines of the street. From this time onward shot after shot sounded, giving me the impression that the shot fired at the Anglia was the first shot of the campaign as far as that particular gunman was concerned. From then on he seemed to fire at random into the eaves of the houses. All the houses were shuttered and the group of seven had the street to themselves.

There was an ominous noisy debate going on outside, the men sounding angry and violent with each other. We waited for them to batter at the door with their clubs. At one time the voices seemed to come from the floor directly beneath us. Was the smaller door secure? Had they found their way in without hindrance? We waited for another explosion, for their feet on the stairs, for violence beyond imagination, but they passed on along the street surely into a trap of opposition. Where on earth were the police? In one of three situations – amongst the dead and the wounded, helping to lead the revolution, or sailing away into the open sea on the Sultan’s boat, the Said Khalifa.

Again there was the sound of another vehicle approaching the town at a headlong speed. It was a small pickup full of Indians. There were three adults crammed together in the front and there were children on the back clinging together as the vehicle swayed, almost leaping off the road. They were fleeing from some danger into the safety of the town.

The driver cannot have seen what was awaiting. The pickup passed into the street, passed our house in amplified sound, and then there was a scream of skidding tyres and the crash of broken glass, a violent explosion, loud angry shouts and children screaming.

I placed myself cautiously so that my back was pressed against the wall near a side window, and I was able to get a view along the street. I saw the shattered pickup and the children cowering in the back. Then the children were obscured by the group which encircled them, clubs raised. I heard the children whimper as the clubs struck them repeatedly, and I saw them thrown violently onto the ground.

There was no doubt about the identity of the next vehicle to appear. It was a police lorry, a reassuring sight. It was moving soberly into the town following the direction taken by the group and by the pickup. I could see the steel helmets of the men it carried. Obviously the rising had been contained and mopping up operations were on foot. I looked forward vindictively to the retribution which was in the offing for the group of violent men.

I called out to my family that there would be a battle and that they should stay away from the windows – they were in the bedroom because it seemed to offer a modicum of additional security. I myself, however, resumed my observation point at a window which overlooked the street. From here I saw the lorry pass and had a clear view of the men in the back, some twenty-five or thirty, fully equipped for combat.

But they were not policemen at all! They were allies of the group first seen, who had positioned themselves and were waiting by the broken Indian pickup which was now a roadblock. The men in the police lorry cheered and raised their right hands giving the V sign – index and long finger separated, the sign of Winston Churchill – to their comrades-in-arms. The comrades-in-arms replied in like manner. There was no purpose at all in ringing the police.

This fact may be divulged at the present juncture though naturally I did not know about it until later. My immediate problem was to come to terms with the fact that there were no signs of any resistance to the revolutionaries. I imagined that a regrouping of Government forces was being carried out or that our area happened to be behind revolutionary lines. I had been told that a message had been sent requesting aid and, like everybody else, I frequently glanced at the sky and looked out to sea. But sea and sky were both empty – and were destined to remain so.

As far as I knew at the time, however, the streets and the open spaces between myself and the hospital were bristling with revolutionaries, and I had to call for transport and for any information available from the Hospital Superintendent.

I went to the telephone, looked at it, and paused. It lay there black, squat and silent. It had taken on a sinister aspect. I was afraid to pick it up and had to summon all my willpower. But as my fingers touched it and before I could grasp it, it came to life of its own accord. The person at the other end was a female and she was so frightened that she could hardly speak. “There’s shooting in the street, there are men everywhere. They’ve shot our Askari, through the chest.

I think he’s dead or dying. I can’t get through to the hospital. You must come.” She was gasping, making articulation difficult. “You must come at once.” She showed a touching faith. What the hell could I do? What did she expect me to do? To my certain knowledge there were already eight people lying dead or half dead in the street. With every shot I imagined another. I’m sure if I had had a gun just then, I would have leaned out of a window and fired it. And that would certainly have been the end of all of us.

In view of the danger in the streets, it was decided that an ambulance should come and fetch me and the family. In this way I would be able to do my work untroubled by the thought of them besieged in the house or at least cut off and very much a prey to unspeakable anxiety.

(To be continued. 1 of 8 in Part 1)