The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War
A deeply affecting memoir of a childhood in Africa and the continent's horrendous wars, which Hartley witnessed at first hand as a journalist in the 1990s. Shortlisted for the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, this is a masterpiece of autobiographical journalism.Aidan Hartley, a foreign correspondent, burned-out from the horror of covering the terrifying micro wars of the 1990s, from Rwanda to Bosnia, seeks solace and solitude in the remote mountains and deserts of southern Arabia and the Yemen, following his father’s death. While there, he finds himself on the trail of the tragic story of an old friend of his father’s, who fell in love and was murdered in southern Arabia fifty years ago. As the terrible events of the past unfold, Hartley finds his own kind of deliverance.‘The Zanzibar Chest’ is a powerful story about a man witnessing and confronting extreme violence and being broken down by it, and of a son trying to come to terms with the death of a father whom he also saw as his best friend. It charts not only a love affair between two people, but also the British love affair with Arabia and the vast emptinesses of the desert, which become a fitting metaphor for the emotional and spiritual condition in which Hartley finds himself.
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The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War
Aidan Hartley
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2004
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003
Copyright © Aidan Hartley 2003
PS section copyright © Johnathan Clayton 2004
Photo credits: All chapter frontispiece photos courtesy of the Hartley family collection except: ‘Feeding the Beast’ frontispiece photo by Jim Hollander; ‘The Sound of Freedom in the Air’ frontispiece photo by Sam Ouma, courtesy Reuters; ‘Lazarus’ frontispiece photo by Aidan Hartley, courtesy Reuters; ‘Herograms’ frontispiece photo by Judy Walgren.
Lyrics from ‘I Whistle a Happy Tune’ by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright © 1951 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright Renewed. WILLIAMSON MUSIC owner of publication and allied rights throughout the World. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Aidan Hartley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 978000651210
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007380268 Version: 2014–09–08
To my wife and my mother
From time to time, God causes men to be born – and thou art one of them – who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news – today it may be of far-off things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best.
Rudyard Kipling, Kim
Table of Contents
The Sound of Freedom in the Air
One Moment, of the Well of Life to Taste
P.S. Ideas, interviews & features…
Journalism and Death in East Africa
MY FATHER WAS THE closest thing I knew to the immortal. ‘Our Father, who art in Africa,’ I prayed as a child of six. He’d always been there. When he died I couldn’t believe it. I had moments when I felt haunted by him in ways that were almost physical. They were a comfort to me. At home on the Indian Ocean coast, I swam off the beach and felt he was in the water all around me. On the upcountry plains, I imagined his bones were billowing up in the dust behind the nomads’ herds of cattle. I clung on but I felt him slipping away. In my stricken state I longed to pluck something back from oblivion.
The day came for us to go through Dad’s belongings. His private territory at home was a coconut-thatched veranda overlooking the beach. He kept his writing desk there and a single bed made of mountain cedar, lashed with thongs of rawhide from an oryx shot many years before. Some of his clothes were still hanging up in there, which described a life of sadhu-like simplicity: a few khaki bush shirts and shorts, the kikoi wraps we wear in Kenya like sarongs, as well as several pairs of camel-skin sandals.
In the corner of the veranda was a Zanzibar chest, carved with a skill modern Swahili carpenters have forgotten. The old camphor box bore a design of lotus, paisley and pineapple and it was studded with rivets tarnished green in the salty air. When I opened the chest lid, cobwebs tore and something scuttled into a corner. In the chest was the skin of a lion Dad had tracked down after it had killed one of his best bulls, a hunting horn, a flute of apricot wood and a stack of files. These last contained reports on missions to southern Sudan, livestock projects for the tribes of Karamoja, botanical studies and copious notes about camels. Always restless himself as a younger man, Dad had spent his last years devising schemes to help Africa’s nomads remain on the move, beyond the reach of those who wanted to settle them.
