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Most people come to Zanzibar looking for palm-fringed beaches and tropical breezes. Martin was looking for something else.

We Don't Sell That Here

Martin
2003-11-11 22:50:59

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My pulse quickened just a little. I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t want to do it. Hesitating for a moment, I paused outside the shop, watching people walking in, walking out. Finally, I stepped inside.

It was a small shop, no bigger than my bedroom at home. Three aisles cramped in the center and a counter in the back, where a woman stood, looking at me expectantly. I looked away, down at the shelves and the neat rows of small boxes. Some were labeled in English, most I couldn’t understand. Still scanning the labels, I paced through the first aisle, then the second, and the third. I couldn’t find it.

Reluctantly, I approached the woman at the counter. She was young, perhaps twenty or twenty-five, but it was hard to guess the exact age—her head was covered with a blue veil and her body wrapped in a white sheet. She wore the same clothes that most women did on this predominantly Muslim island.

I leaned in close so the other customers wouldn’t hear and whispered the question.

She turned away, then looked back at me uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, but we don’t sell that here,” she said. Her voice implied a trace of disapproval.

“Do you know where I can find it?” I asked again.

“There is another shop near the bank,” she explained hastily. “You can try there.”

I left the shop, turned left into the busy street, and walked toward the bank, dodging the hustlers and hecklers who cried out from both sides of the road. I didn’t need a new hat today, or new shoes, I was looking for something much more important.

The other shop was nearby, on the ground floor of a decaying concrete building. The shelves were packed with postcards, soft drinks, film, batteries, everything a traveler could want. Well, not everything.

Again I asked ...