A Blue I Never Knew

8-IX Kendwa Rocks, Zanzibar Zanzibar is now little more than the echo of all its name evokes, and apart from the “real African” interior of ubiquitous red dust roads and crumbling villages it exists as a long string of beach resorts walled off from the “Africa” outside, complete with barbwired gates and beefy security guards to ensure that “the outsiders inside” are not disturbed by anything close to reality. Still, sitting in the middle of a perfect tropical paradise, surrounded by honeymooners and flirtatious singles, and especially carefully whispering under your breath the syllables “Zan-za-bar, Zan-za-bar” over and over, can hardly fail to produce something like nostalgia for something too distant to know, and in the writer it time and again brings to the cold blue surface the type of shameless dribble that follows: Straight from my notebook: A Blue I Never Knew On Snow-white sands of Zanzibar, a ruby sun slips off the edge of the world, behind gulls and palms and canvas sails; and all is drifting, drifting, drifting away, as I miss you. Heaven’s a mirage without you here to see it, warm sand through my toes all unreal without your hand in mine. I don’t know who you are, or where, or when our eyes will meet, but I love you, I need you, I want you here with me, in Zanzibar.