Uncovering Zanzibar's unseen 19th-century history in Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin’s Samahani

Literary fiction novels exploring the slave trade in Africa often focus on the Western side of the continent, detailing the rise and impact of the brutal European transatlantic project. 

However, enslavement practices abounded throughout Africa and were not exclusively the purview of Western Europe. 

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin’s latest novel, Samahani, takes us to 19th-century Zanzibar, where Omani Arabs ruled the East African archipelago. 

“I wasn’t planning to write about Zanzibar at all,” the Sudanese writer-in-exile told The New Arab.

Samahani — translated by Mayada Ibrahim and Adil Babikir — explores race, class, freedom, history, and sexuality, while bringing English-speaking readers a new take on these urgent contemporary issues with dark, ironic humour. The novel has been released just in time for Black History Month.

Born in Kassala, Eastern Sudan, with roots in Darfur, Baraka Sakin’s previous novels have largely focused on his country of origin. 

However, his interest was piqued after he took an interest in Omani literature.

“They have great writers,” Baraka Sakin continues, “such as Mohammed al-Shahri, Layla al-Blooshi, and others.” 

By chance, he happened to come across two books which planted the seed for Samahani; the autobiography of Princess Sayyida Salme bint Said titled Memoirs of an Arabian Princess (1888), and the other on Tippu Tib, a slave trader who worked for the Omani Sultan. 

According to legend, the nickname derives from his rifle's "tiptip" sound. 

“What caught my attention,” Baraka Sakin says, “was the tragedy that the Omanis she described lived like kings and did nothing, while the Africans planted and harvested, working in homes and doing everything.” 

The author was struck by how despite the evidence before her, the Princess believed “Africans are lazy,” and that they viewed the “Omani as their natural masters.” 

Tippu Tib’s disdain and cruelty toward the Africans were similar and spurred Baraka Sakin into wanting to write an alternative narrative.   

“I said to myself that it’s time. It is time for the lion to write the history of the jungle, not the hunter.” 

While Samahani — Swahili for ‘forgive me’ — depicts enslavers' great depravity and brutality, Baraka Sakin’s signature satirical voice wryly lightens the unbearable. 

The tone is of a sardonic knowing, deadpan as it describes intimate daily humiliations. 

The Sultan lectures his castrated personal servant Mutei while Mutei washes the Sultan’s rear post-defecation. 

The Princess shares her body with her personal servant Sondus, the eunuch son of Mutei, blurring the lines between enslavement and devotion. 

The result is a narrative constantly surprising the reader, writhing impatiently, unwilling to be pinned down. 

This, Baraka Sakin says, is the domain of the novel. 

“Reality is very painful,” Baraka Sakin told The New Arab.

“I always say, the novel is not only the story but the art of writing the story, or the art of the plot.” 

The tools of humour, sarcasm and irony are what separate the novel from history books. 

“Reality is unbearable, so we have to mock it and laugh such that we can tolerate it and it can tolerate us,” he adds.  

But mockery of history comes with risks, and Baraka Sakin is no stranger to the dangers of his choices. 

Many of his books were banned by Omar el-Bashir’s regime in Sudan, and upon its release in Arabic in 2022, Samahani was banned in Oman. 

“All the books I wrote are cursed,” Baraka Sakin jokes. “But I don’t write to satisfy certain people. When I write, I only write what I want to write. No matter how much you try to satisfy the reader, you won’t, so I just try to please myself.” 

Baraka Sakin has lived in exile since 2012 and these days has sought refuge in Paris, where he continues writing about Africa and its rich, complex history.

His brave detachment from the reactions to his work seems to have allowed him to tackle some of the more taboo topics in literature from the region. 

In Samahani, Islam is treated with the same sharp eye as Christianity, understood as part of an imperial project. 

Arabs “used Islam the same way the Europeans used Christianity,” Baraka Sakin said. 

“They introduced Islam but they misused it for their benefit. The Omani’s did not come out of love for the Africans. They sought to steal the wealth of the people, they wanted the land, the wealth, the money, and we Africans were used for trading.” 

Does Baraka Sakin distinguish between European colonisation and that of the Arabs?

“All types of colonisation are the same,” he says, “and no colonisation is better than another. Some are worse than the other, there are degrees, but in the end, they are all harmful.”

While readers may take Baraka Sakin’s narrative as a wholesale denouncement of Islam itself, that would be a misunderstanding.

Even within the text, the nuance between the faith and its followers is explicitly drawn out. 

"The Sultan has never built any schools. The fact that he spread Islam didn’t mean he taught good principles and work ethics. He once said to his Arab Muslim ministers, in a rare moment of clarity, 'We have not done justice to the teachings of Islam. For that, we must answer to God on Judgement Day. We spread Islam as far as we could, but we didn’t practise it in our own lives. We didn’t forgive or show mercy. Life lured us away, and here we are today’ (p173)."

But as in his writing, Baraka Sakin’s views on religion defy easy categorisation, a perspective tangling Islam irrevocably with the legacy of colonialism. 

While no group or faith escapes his laser critique, there does exist a strong pull to revert to a pre-colonial way of life. 

“We had our own cultures, our own cultural heritage and our own African religions,” he says. 

“We had everything. We don’t need someone to impose their religion or culture on us.”

Indeed, the character who most embodies freedom in the novel is Uhuru, “the only free negro in Unguja” (p20) and “one of few the masters couldn’t tame” (p155). 

Wearing a goat skin loincloth and little else, she danced and sang in the market, “My Homeland is a Heaven for the Occupiers and Hell for the Natives”. 

The only woman on the island to have a “home that belonged to her”, and the only Unjugan not to “have any ties to the slave trade” (p155).

“Uhuru in Swahili means freedom,” says Baraka Sakin, describing the woman who through self-embodied liberty, ensures her own safety and would eventually open the path for the safety of others. 

“She got her freedom through the myths, by returning to her origin.”

In Samahani, only the woman, without a formal place in the absurd hierarchy, has any hope of peace. 

The woman is “as free as the wind and the seagulls who crowded the skies” (p155). 

I ask Baraka Sakin if that is what the message of the book is, and his response is as light and wry as his prose. 

“The reader creates the story they want,” he says, and I wonder what that says about me.

Samahani is out in the UK through Foundry Editions

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a writer, broadcaster and award-winning speaker

Follow her on Instagram: @yassmin_a