Soaking up Zanzibar's history of sultans and spice

ZANZIBAR CITY, Zanzibar — Stone Town was still asleep at 6 a.m., which surprised me. I had gotten up early to beat the crowds, catch some early morning sunlight and take a cool, leisurely stroll through the maze of Zanzibar's streets as merchants opened shop.

But the sky was gray and the air so thick, the backs of my hands were sweating. The only sign of life came from a small cafe, where a cat eyed the bakery case of mandazi doughnuts. Then a young woman swathed in bright kanga cloth came into view.

"Samahani, bibi — excuse me, miss," I said in halting Swahili. "Where is the cathedral?"

It was the one landmark I remembered from the previous day's tour, but I had lost my bearings in the labyrinth of alleys. She nodded and quickly altered her course. When I apologized for disrupting her work commute, she said, no, this was her morning exercise routine. Sure enough, below her long, patterned skirt, she wore a pair of running shoes.

Zanzibar. Zinj-el-Bar. The ever-so-exotic-sounding Land of Zinj. I got disoriented just walking the streets of the island, a mere 22 miles from the coast of Tanzania. How did the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Omani sailors navigate the trade winds up and down the East African coast to find this commercial post time and again since before Jesus was born?

Over four days in January, I got to see much of Unguja, as the main island of the Zanzibar archipelago is known locally. Thirty miles wide and 50 miles long, six degrees south of the equator, the polyethnic spot of land in the Indian Ocean holds a history as rich as its beach resorts. But its past also is as stark as the slave caves that pock the Mangapwani shore.

Over the centuries, dhows brought Arabs, Asians and Europeans laden with cloth, dates and other goods to the Bantu people, riding the monsoon winds of November. They shipped out on the March winds with ivory, coconuts, spices and slaves.

Human commerce was well under way when the Portuguese arrived in the 1500s. It flourished under the Omanis, particularly Sultan Seyyid Said bin Sultan, who moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1832. African laborers captured on the mainland were packed in the bowels of the dhows to the convenient clearinghouse of Zanzibar, then up the coast to Arabia, Persia and the Mediterranean.

An Anglican church now stands on the ground of the Stone Town slave market and keeps a stark memorial.

On the backs of slave labor, spice production became woven into the fabric of prosperous Zanzibari life until April 15, 1872. On that day, fierce winds brewed into a hurricane that wiped out two-thirds of the Unguja's clove groves.

The clove industry never fully recovered. But I did get a glimpse at the Kizimbani Spice Plantation, a government-sponsored research site. Like a petting zoo for plants, Kizimbani lets visitors see, touch and smell the trees and vines that produce flavorings most of us think grow in jars: clove buds, cinnamon bark, pepper vines, ginger root, coconut milk and cocoa pods, to name a few. Cloves remain Zanzibar's principal export, but 90 percent of the trees are grown on the sister island of Pemba.

To learn how to cook with those spices, I took another walk through Stone Town, the old part of Zanzibar City. This time the midmorning sun shone bright, and Massoud Salim of Ocean Tours led the way.

Originally, my cooking lesson was scheduled at an international resort with a German chef. When the chef canceled at the last minute, Salim contacted the Serena Inn, where Farida Mohammed, her daughter Khadija Abdul-Rahman and cousin Amina Sleiman make snacks. The women invited me to Farida's home for a hands-in-the-dough session on making Zanzibari delicacies.

Arriving at a cul-de-sac after several narrow passages, Salim pulled out his cellphone.

"She said to call when we got close," he said. "The houses here don't have numbers."

Even a professional guide needs directions in Stone Town.

Farida greeted us at her doorway. As my eyes adjusted from the outdoor sun, stone benches appeared against the gray vestibule walls. I recalled Trevor Marchand, an architecture specialist at the University of London, describing how merchants would greet clients with coffee in just such a reception area. In his field talk earlier in the week, Marchand also noted the protruding knobs on the heavy doors. "These were for keeping out war elephants," he said.

Farida led me through the central courtyard and offered a kanga cloth to cover my skirt. Khadija pulled up a low stool for me next to hers. Amina was already grating coconut meat to go into an electric blender to render its milk.

An electric stove against the gallery wall cooked the vegetable sauce for the grilled fish, while we toasted sesame bread and fried mandazi doughnuts over two charcoal braziers. For the signature rice pilaw, Khadija measured an array of local spices: cardamom, cumin, peppercorns and cinnamon bark.

"What about cloves?" I asked.

"Ah, the cloves!" said Khadija, dashing off to get the last packet of spice, wrapped in crisp white market paper.