The handcuffs were heavy, and two rings of different sizes were stiffly welded together, covered with rust of different shades. "Every day I open my eyes and see it, and when I see it, I think, one day I'm going back to my real hometown... I want to throw it all away and live a truly free life. ”
Text/Contributing Writer Chen Youli from comoros
Editor/Zhou Jianping [email protected]
A week before being dragged into 2021, I arrived at the Comoros Islands (mainly composed of four islands, Big Island, Mo Island, Ang Island and Majima Island), and on christmas eve evening, sat aimlessly with hundreds of unemployed or unemployed young people on the beaches of the capital Moroni, drank soda, and clapped their hands at the distant lighthouse as usual at 6:30 a.m.; went out to sea with the fishermen, sweating and finding nothing, but accidentally caught a glimpse of a group of dolphins passing by the boat; watching the fishermen's children kick the ball barefoot all afternoon. In the bitter overcast rain, they cheered and lifted their coats and raised their tiny brown-black index fingers to the sky, like Ronaldo and Kaka in their youth; sometimes in the morning market at dawn, sitting on the side of the road, like all women who sell tropical fruits, slowly chewing small cups of bitter coffee, cup after cup; sometimes, like some random islander, I walked and stopped on the coastal national road, bored and bored to sit on a broken wooden bench next to the garbage heap for a while, if I was lucky, You can also pick up a few fresh mango belly that has been blown down by the wind.
One day after diving ashore, the owner of the dive shop asked me: When you dive to a bottomless place, you are so unrestrained, don't you have the illusion of flying in the sky?
I turned my head to look at him and thought the Comoros was nice.
After a few weeks, I thought that the magic of the Comoros might turn me into her under-the-skirt courtier, spending many years in a laid-back and casual atmosphere. So before this happened, I decided to flee and return to the real world.
Shiraz and cafes
One afternoon, I was walking along moroni's coastline, and the sun was shining on the entire coastline as if it were about to melt away.
There are very few pedestrians on the road. Under a large tree in the corner there was a large old cement mound on which several people sat, and in the middle was a simple wooden two-story cabinet with a glass door embedded in it, and several kinds of French bread were scattered inside, and there were two large thermos pots next to the cabinets, and a few small porcelain cups that had been painted off.
Young people wandering on the beach in the evening
On the sun-drenched coastline, this shaded stall is like a cool little drop of water.
The man who set up the stall looked to be in his forties, a face that looked like an islander and was not very islander, greeted me with a smile, and poured me a cup of black coffee.
At first taste, it is actually more authentic than several other cafes that are authentic.
When he saw that I didn't know French, he asked me in English if I wanted to try his own bread. I randomly chose a chocolate filling, which was much better than expected.
I asked him why he spoke English (probably more than 95% of the Islanders in the Comoros speak only French and Comorian).
He said: "I used to open a French dim sum shop, and before I knew it, it became the largest in the city, and the more foreign customers came, I learned some." ”
"Why didn't the dim sum shop open?"
"I fell in love with a woman, crazy. As a result, she cheated on her, and the snack shop disappeared. ”
I looked down at my coffee and didn't ask any more. He spoke to himself.
"In fact, I don't blame her at all, I love her is my choice, can't say that I love you you must love me, otherwise I will hate you for not loving you, love is not a business." 」 Strangely, after she left, although I went bankrupt and divorced, my life did not collapse, but suddenly became free because of nothing, just like after you lost the only thing you cared about most, there seemed to be nothing else that could not be lost. ”
He squinted his eyes to the shoreline that was far from the edge of his line of sight and took a small sip of black coffee.
"You see I'm not doing very well now?" The most beautiful corner of the city, even the rent is not paid! ”
Abraham and his open-air café
His name is Abraham, he is 46 years old, he was the "owner of the largest dim sum shop in the city" and a descendant of the Shiraz tribe. The Shirazi ethnic group was a Muslim who came from the Persian Empire (present-day Iran) shiraz to the coastal countries of East Africa (including Kenya, Tanzania and northern Mozambique) and the West Indies in the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of them were merchants, mainly selling ivory, gold, and slaves. The descendants of this ethnic group still dominate the economic, cultural and even political aspects of many Swahili regions today.
Dating back to the 19th century, Abraham's ancestor, Motan, was a well-rooted Shiraz, and Abraham said he was even a "sultan." On the large island of one of the three islands of the Comoros at that time, there were more than twenty "sultans", "so they were probably considered district chiefs or town chiefs, not even mayors." Abraham said.
Although most of the Sultanates in the Comoros have a small jurisdiction, their sphere of influence is much larger than that of the actual jurisdiction because of their conspicuous appearance and wealth. "For the first centuries or two, the islanders simply believed that these white-skinned, white-faced, flappy men were messengers sent down by the gods to govern the islands and the sea." Abraham continued.
But from the next two generations of Motan, the "aura of the gods" of this family gradually dissipated. The reason is that Motan's eldest grandson, despite the opposition of the whole family, married a native, dark and thin kojima village girl, who was also a maid in the family. Since then, the actual social status of their family has taken a sharp turn for the worse. By the time Abraham arrived, there was almost nothing left.
Fortunately, last year, Abraham found his so-called true love before entering the "year of knowing his destiny". Like his great-great-great-grandfather, who "ruined the family's future," he married a pure Comorian peasant woman.
"Maybe this thing (referring to disregard for patriarchy and tradition) was born in my bones." Abraham said with a smile.
Slaves and ports
"If you have time, go to my hometown of Ikuni, and it will be a short walk, where the palace of the last sultan of the Comoros is also there." Abraham finally said.
So I left, just what he called "a little while", and I walked non-stop for nearly two and a half hours before arriving.
The so-called "Sultan's Palace" today is a ruined wall of about four or five hundred square meters. It sits on the shore, just 20 meters from the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. The staircases, pillars, beams, and walls are almost all composed of black-gray volcanic basalt mixed with fragments of various shellfish snails, which are basically preserved and can be seen in general contours and carvings. The rough and porous texture of the basalt and the erosion of the sea breeze make the whole building more uneven.
There are a few hills not far away. With these small mountains that plunge into the sea, Ikuni was one of the busiest foreign ports in the whole Ofcomoros because of its small mountains, which were not easy to form tidal flats and facilitate the docking of ships. It's just that Ikuni's "external" is passive.
From the 17th century when pirates began to land from Ikuni to the early 20th century when France colonized the Comoros, for more than two centuries the Comorians suffered from the rampant slave trade. In the whole chain of the slave trade in East Africa, the Comoros is not only an "exit station", but also an "entrance station" and a "transit station". Many slaves were sold all the way from various countries along the eastern coastline of Africa (north to Somalia) and, before reaching the final station in Madagascar (which was still colonized by the French at the time), would settle briefly in the Comoros between the African continent and the Falklands for supplies, while the Comoros' elites were free to choose foreign slaves to suit their needs if they needed them. As a result, the blood of countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Tanzania was fused into the blood of the Comorians.
Before the trafficking syndicate sets off again for the Falklands, they will load in a group of captured Comorians and continue selling south. In this regard, the native Sultans, the Shiraz elite and the European powers that have begun to meddle in the public affairs of the Comoros have not only turned a blind eye when facing the comorbid distress signals, but also tried to draw as much soup as possible and make a lot of money.
From the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century, according to statistics, about 40% of comorians belonged to the "slave class". During that period, many women in Ikuni, unwilling to be sold into slavery, would climb up the mountain with their hands and feet and feet as soon as they saw the brigs about to enter the harbor, and jumped to the edge of the cliff.
"The old people in the family said that they generally did not drown, but when they jumped from the mountain, they were hit by the reef in the sea and died... Over time, even that sea changed color during that period. "While still in Moroni," Abraham said.
During the period when the slave trade was rampant, countless women in Ikunni would rather commit suicide than be forced into slavery, jumping from this hill into the sea
The hill is one or two hundred meters above sea level, the ridge is very steep, the cliffs are covered with various vegetation, and there are no houses or people. Looking out from the sultan's palace closest to the sea, a rectangular void that was clearly a window in the past, I could see its front side, like a silent green elephant.
I sat alone for a while in the dilapidated basalt palace, a once busy port that is now inaccessible, the beaches are piled with all kinds of garbage, no one has the heart to clean up, many colorful lizards lazily lying on their stomachs in the sun, the sea like centuries ago, blue and lovely.
Not far from the entrance to the palace stands a simple stone tablet that reads:
This commemorates the 11 compatriots killed on 18 March 1978 by armed forces headed by the rebel Ali Surin.
Ali Surin was the second president of the Comoros since the declaration of independence on July 6, 1975, and the first president, Amod Abdallah, was overthrown by a mercenary force led by the Frenchman Bob Danard after only 20 days in office, and then Ali Surin took over, until May 1978, when the same mercenary army broke into the presidential palace again and replaced Ali Surin with the former first president, Abdallah...
From its founding in 1975 to the end of the 20th century, the Comoros experienced more than 20 coups at the level of "overthrowing the authorities", the most notable of which were initiated by Danard and his mercenaries. After he assisted Abdallah in regaining the throne, abdallah gave him great benefits as a deal, including: the commander-in-chief of the Presidential Guard, the president's personal (and once the largest) import and export trading company in the cosmolo, the largest shareholder in addition to the president himself, the ownership of a luxury cruise ship traveling between the Comoros and South Africa, a high-level private security company, and other economic and trade privileges large and small.
Until abdul Abu Dalán was assassinated in another coup d'état in 1989, during the 12 years the Comoros became the back garden for the president, mercenaries, certain interest groups in France, South Africa, and the Arab countries, ruling over the Comorians, who appeared to break free from slavery but remained slaves.
At the National Museum of the Comoros in Moroni, the capital, I caught a few words about this past, mentioning a small city in the northernmost part of the Comoros, Mushamuli, which was Dannard's main residence outside the capital and one of the few (and possibly only) sources of economic income in the Comoros in the 1990s.
So the next day I squeezed into a passenger minibus on the side of the road that couldn't even straighten its neck, and came to Musashmili.
Descendants of slaves with the International Hotel
Compared to the bustling and overcrowded Moroni, Mushamu li is a different world. Most of the time, the sound of light waves lapping at the sand, leaves and insects chirping.
Like most tropical island landscapes in the Western Indian Ocean, the deep, dark green waters of pale blue and translucent clouds, colorful corals and tropical fish underwater, white sand, endless coconut groves and the brilliant Milky Way above the head at night have made Musamili one of the most popular places in the Comoros before the global outbreak of COVID-19.
It took me a lot of effort to find the stilted cabin that I had booked on AirBnb. Although January was supposed to be the peak season, there were very few tourists due to the epidemic, and the wooden house became the only option for all of Meusha Muli to accept reservations at that time. There is only one wooden house, tucked away in a forest of banana trees and mangoes on a hillside, and the garden outside is overgrown with carefully grown flowers, fruits, herbs and ylang ylang. The landlord is an old French-British lady named Sylvia, a retired re-professor of studies in the department of history in University College London, majoring in the study of modern and eastern African history. For 15 years, she has always been teaching in Europe for half a year and writing in the Comoros for half a year, but because of the epidemic in the United Kingdom, she has not left the Comoros for a whole year. When there are classes, they reluctantly use the island's relatively stable 3G network to teach over the air.
"Anyway, even if I go back, it is a video class, it is better to live here comfortably, but also help me fieldwork, collect information... As a super-small country with an area of just over 2,000 square kilometers (the Comoros has a land area of 2236 square kilometers), the Comoros is a 'collection' of modern history in all of East Africa, no, it may be more accurate to use 'epitome' here. The influence and scars of the country that have been sculpted into the shape it is today, the Portuguese pirates, the Shiraz, the slave trade, the Sultanate, the colonization, the rebellion, and the mercenaries, are still evident today. Throughout East Africa, it is almost impossible to find another country, modern history as complex as the Comoros ... However, although there are many problems, these historical traces have also sharpened the unique temperament of the Comoros, and many people who stay here for a long time will be tied up and cannot go away. Sylvia said.
We sat on a small hillside, on the edge of the beach, in another stilted wooden house that resembled a restaurant, facing the sparkling shore, and could see the fishermen driving out to sea in wooden boats back to the harbor. This harbor, called the "Cave of the Prophet", has several natural rocky hills made of basalt at the mouth of the tide, which is convenient for boats to anchor, and is a gathering place for local fishermen in the morning and evening.
One late night 42 years ago, it was in this harbor that Leonard landed with his mercenaries and headed straight for Moroni, annihilating Ali Surin in one fell swoop.
At this time, three middle-aged men with bare arms and fishing nets walked in with a smile, they were carrying a few small and small spotted fish, but the net was empty. After saying hello, the one who was not tall and bearded went straight to the inside of the counter and began to wipe his hair and change his clothes.
"That's Mickey, the owner of this dive shop and restaurant, and my friend and partner, and if I'm not there, he usually takes care of my cabin and garden." Sylvia said.
Mickey came out of his clothes, brewed himself a pot of ginger tea, and sat down at the table where we were.
"Are there more fish today?" Sylvia asked him.
"Except for the two I just picked up, I barely hit anything. But it doesn't matter, it's enough for today's dinner, and I can still call two more buddies to eat. Mitch smiled and squinted, not seeing a hint of frustration.
Then he turned his gaze to me: "Yo, there is finally a guest today." ”
After I introduced myself, Mitch looked excited: "What? You say you volunteer in the Maasai tribe? My grandparents were authentic Ethiopian Maasai, so I'm half a Maasai too! ”
Mickey's biggest dream is to one day go to Ethiopia and see where his ancestors lived.
"I think the Maasai must be the freest and closest thing to the Creator in the world, how to say it, that is, the kind of primitive power that allows you to read the clouds and listen to the rain, live peacefully with the animals, don't care about technology, progress, money, just run and dance, how the world has become rotten, it seems that it has nothing to do with you..." Mitch finished, turned and walked into the open-air kitchen next to it, and began to prepare dinner.
Mickey, a descendant of the slaves, is now the owner of a small diving shop
"Mickey speaks English very well, and his accent is still like a South African..." I whispered to Sylvia.
Many years ago, Mickey was a helper and diving instructor at the Grava Resort Visitor Centre, which was the largest and most luxurious hotel in the whole of Comoros, built by white South Africans, and the vast majority of tourists were white South Africans. From here, you have to walk past the old site of Grava, less than 20 minutes, through the sandy beach opposite, and go around to the back. Unfortunately, the top facilities and renovations of the past are now nothing left. Sylvia replied.
Grava Resort was one of the very few sources of national economic income in the 1990s. For the dilapidated Comoros, which had just ended Abudala's joint rule with Leonard in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this international hotel was extravagant and unequivocal, with 182 premium sea-view suites, casinos, piano bars, internationally certified professional diving certification teaching and examination centers, a variety of water sports equipment, and provided more than 700 Comorians with stable, well-paid jobs, just like its own unique architectural appearance - aerial photography. It was like a seagull flying in the waves, bringing some kind of illusion that The Mushamusli and even the entire Comoros of that period were about to spread their wings and fly high.
From the age of 17 to 27 until grava officially closed in 2001, Mickey spent most of his youth there. During those 10 years, he learned to cook with top French, Indian and South African chefs, learned English and service skills from trained white foremen, and was accustomed to how the rich lived and enjoyed themselves. Finally, after leaving Grava, instead of becoming a professional businessman through and through, he became more and more inclined to a primitive life.
In this regard, he said that it must be because of the "Maasai blood" in his bones.
"So why did your grandfather come to the Comoros from Ethiopia?" The next day after breakfast, I asked Mickey, who was sitting alone smoking a cigarette.
"He didn't 'come here,' but he was sold as a slave."
If you do the math, it should be the time when the women of Ikunni stained the red sea with their blood.
Mickey turned and walked into the counter, raised his hand to take a string of heavy objects hanging on the wall, and handed them to me.
"This is the same pair of handcuffs that used to handcuff him all the way from Ethiopia." Mickey said.
The handcuffs were heavy, and two rings of different sizes were stiffly welded together, covered with rust of different shades.
"That's it, I see it every day when I wake up, and when I see it, I think, one day I'm going back to my real hometown." You see, whether it's my ten years in Grava or the fact that I'm now running a café, restaurant, and dive shop, I'm not doing well, but like my grandparents, I'm still a slave to the whites. So I wanted to throw it all away and live a truly free life. Mickey said.
A postcard from Mickey's collection, printed with the former Grand Hotel Grava
I would also like to tell him that many of today's Maasai people have been assimilated by the secular, some have found decent jobs in the city by education, working nine to five; some are still in the Marseille reserve, but they are plunged into the underground gem mines, drunkenly hoping to dig up another "heart of the sea" and can soar from then on; more generally, the youth of Marseille, like the Comorians of the grava resort, have devoted themselves to tourism, taking their unique nomadic characteristics as their signatures. Like acting, we try to keep it as simple as possible, singing and dancing, so as to squeeze the pockets of foreign tourists.
By that day, Mitch might be disappointed to admit that there might not be the true freedom he was looking for in the world.
Female cleaners and wedding receptions
In addition to Mickey, I met another old employee of the Grava Resort, Felina, who was about 50 years old and was a cleaner hired by Sylvia who also helped fix the yard.
In the past, in Grava, her job was also to clean the hotel rooms. "At that time, the day was busy from morning to night, and the tip was soft, and now I only work three days a week, which is really idle like retirement." She complained jokingly as she lazily pulled out weeds.
Unlike Mickey, Felina has been missing the days of the "Grava period", "it was really the golden years of the Comoros, and it felt like everything was thriving." She stopped what she was doing, and her eyes stared at a passion fruit seedling.
Not just Felina, the vast majority of Grava's employees at the time, for many years after its closure, were looking forward to new investors rebuilding the resort. However, it is reasonable that the South Africans withdrew their money and no one took over after that, after all, the environment of a coup d'état at both ends of the three days is not suitable for tourism at all. Sylvia, who was sitting by reading a book, interjected.
"Now there is no turmoil, but people are still so poor that they don't know how many people in the country can find the right jobs, young and old, everyone has nothing to do to mix their lives, so that they don't know when they can save enough money, alas, don't say..." Feilina began to pull grass again.
As a single mother, Felina has worked hard to save money to give her eldest son, who plans to marry, a huge "Comorian traditional wedding". This is not only Ferina's ideal, but also the goal of other Comoros natives, because an authentic, decent wedding banquet costs at least $50,000, including a dowry, a grand feast with enough food and drink for the whole village (and even the whole town), dresses and gold jewelry for the bride and groom, and expensive gifts for both families. This is astronomical for the Comoros, which has less than 30 per cent employment and a per capita monthly income of less than $150.
Kids playing football in a fishing port
Two days later, when Musashmili happened to be married, Philina took me to see the hilarity. Crowds poured in from all corners of the town, and one car after another blocked the narrow dirt roads.
Because the dance music was so loud that it really caused me a headache, I couldn't wait for the legendary feast, so I left the scene early and returned to the chalet.
"How about a wedding?" Sylvia asked, looking at me from above the lenses, with a look of "I knew you would come back so early."
"You told me that the Comoros are poorer than almost any other country in East Africa, and this wedding doesn't look like that." Young people have no jobs, or even no land to grow, so they go fishing, sell soda biscuits and gum on the street, and how many lifetimes do they have to save enough money for a wedding? In addition, nearly half of the people even have cars to drive..."
"Do you think That Philina's main source of income is just pulling weeds in my yard?" That was only about a quarter of her monthly income, and the rest of the money was supported by her second brother and cousin, who settled in France. ”
It turns out that every Comoros family has a (under normal circumstances, two or three) relatives who have lived in France for a long time, and most of these relatives are doing low-paid physical work in France, and the better quality is at most a nanny and a shop for people, but they all carry the hopes and expenses of the whole family and even the family.
"Macroscopically speaking, the Comoros have no peasants and no workers, all the infrastructure that has been seen so far is aided by foreign aid, and the Comoros itself cannot even build a rubber band; microscopically speaking, more than ninety percent of the Comorians cannot make an independent living from their 'French relatives', and for centuries they have become accustomed to receiving help, and with a little more abundance, they have drunk and eaten, and their pockets are empty and they tighten their trousers. Over time, this laziness has become a major part of the Comoros' temperament, which is attractive in the eyes of outsiders and fatal to the development of the country itself. Sylvia said.
I think of the women in the wedding banquet hall, all of whom wore gold and silver, and even Feilina, who usually wore a large T-shirt with a hole every day and a peasant straw hat, was carefully dressed, so gorgeous that they judged two people, and they seemed to sing and dance without worry, making people can't help but have the illusion of being in a rich oil country in the Middle East.
"Endless desire is my slave master"
After seeing the day of Mickey's grandfather's iron handcuffs, he came back from swimming in the evening and said something like this to me:
"I told you this morning that I, like my ancestors, am still a slave to the whites. Later, I thought about it for a long time, and this statement was not correct. When I think about it, no one really enslaved me, and most of my guests became my friends, and I didn't enjoy it. So in the end, my desire, my desire to make money, to develop, the endless desire, is my slave master. ”
I still didn't hold back and told him about the current situation of the Maasai people. Mitch listened and bowed his head in silence for a long time.
"Actually, I also know that there is no absolute freedom in this world, but people should always live with a vision, right? Especially in a country like the Comoros. In the turbulent years of the past few years, you were worried because you were not sure whether you could see the sunrise tomorrow, and every time there was a coup, Grava would always close for ten days and a half months, and people's greatest desire was that the country would be peaceful; now that it is too peaceful, you are sad because life has become overlapping day and night, ordinary and boring, looking forward to being able to go back to the past... At the end of the day, we always want to get what we don't have. Mitch said slowly.
In response, Mickey carved this line from the movie "Survival in the Wild" on the wall of his dive shop:
"There's no denying that 'untethered' always makes people feel excited and happy. For with that comes a flight from history, oppression, rules, and the tiresome duties and responsibilities. So-called, absolute freedom. ”