The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński Page A

center, a temporary captain’s bridge. We, the correspondents, come by here frequently, to pick up something. We already know all the leaders, we know who is worth sidling up to. We know that the cheerful, open Mondlane talks willingly, and that the mysterious, closed Chisiza won’t even part his lips.
    On the terrace one could always hear music coming from below. Two floors down, Henryk Subotnik, from Lodz, Poland, ran the Paradise nightclub. When World War II broke out, Subotnik found himself in the Soviet Union, and then, by way of Iran, reached Mombasa by ship. Here he fell ill with malaria, and instead of joining the Second Polish Army Corps in Italy, under the command of General Wladyslaw Anders, he stayed in Tanganyika.
    His club is always jammed, crowded, and noisy. Customers are drawn here by the charms of the chocolate-colored Miriam, a beautiful stripper from the distant Seychelles. For a show-stopper she has a special way of peeling and eating a banana.
    “Did you know, Mr. Henryk,” I asked Subotnik, whom I just happened to find at the bar, “that there is turmoil on Zanzibar?”
    “Do I know!?” he exclaimed with surprise. “I know everything!”
    “Mr. Henryk,” I asked again, “do you think that Karume is over there?”
    Abeid Karume was the leader of Zanzibar’s Afro-Shirazi Party. Although this party, representing the island’s black African population, won a majority in the last elections, the government was formed by an Arab minority party supported by London—the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. The Africans, outraged by this fact, organized a revolt and abolished Arab rule. That is what had just transpired two days ago.
    “Is Karume there?!” Subotnik laughed in such a way that I knew one thing for certain: he was there.
    And that is all I needed.
    I returned to the airport. Dodging about with Felix so that no one could make out where we were headed, we reached the control tower. Felix asked one of those on duty to connect us by telephone with the tower at the airport in Zanzibar. When a voice answered on the other end, I took the receiver and asked to speak to Karume. He wasn’t there, but was expected at any minute. I put down the receiver and we decided to wait. A quarter of an hour later, the telephone rang. I recognized Karume’s thundering, hoarse voice. For twenty years he had sailed the world as an ordinary sailor, and now, even if he was speaking into someone’s ear, he thundered as loudly as if he were trying to outshout the roar of a stormy ocean.
    “Abeid,” I said, “we have a small plane here, and there are three of us: an American, a Frenchman, and myself. We wanted to fly to you. Is it possible? We won’t write any dirt, I promise you that. I swear—no lies. Could you arrange for them not to shoot us down as we land?”
    A long silence ensued, and then I heard his voice again. We had permission, he said, and we would be met at the airport. We ran to the plane, and moments later were airborne, over the sea. I was sitting next to the pilot, Felix and Arnold in the back. The cabin was silent. Yes, we were happy that we had succeeded in getting through the blockade, and that we would be the first ones on the island, but at the same time we didn’t know what, actually, awaited us.
    On the one hand, experience had taught me that situations of crisis appear more dire and dangerous from a distance than they do up close. Our imaginations hungrily and greedily absorb every tiny bit of sensational news, the slightest portent of peril, the faintest whiff of gunpowder, and instantly inflate these signs to monstrous, paralyzing proportions. On the other hand, however, I also knew something about those moments when calm, deep waters begin to churn and bubble into general chaos, confusion, frantic anarchy. During social explosions, it is easy to perish by accident, because someone didn’t hear something fully or didn’t notice something in time. On such days, the accidental is king;