What is Zanzibar? An Indian Ocean archipelago off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa? Certainly. But it is also the title and subject of a novel, the first by the French author Altaïr Despres who, starting from the evocative power of this territory – synonymous with enchanting stays for people who, on the planet, have the means to afford a holiday there – offers a fiction that runs counter to this imaginary.
“This book is not just based on real events. He tells, through literature, a true story, “warns the novelist in the preamble. Let those who dream of romantic images pass on; here, on the contrary, it will be a question of opening your eyes and agreeing to scratch where it hurts.
At the start, however, and for most of the book’s protagonists, it all starts with a dream: the one that we build by projecting ourselves into a vacation as soon as we start believing in the promotional images of tourist agencies. So it is for the two Norwegian students Helle and Dina: “Helle’s parents had offered her the trip as a reward for obtaining her master’s degree. The young girl had offered her best friend Dina to accompany her. It didn’t take much effort to convince her. All she had to do was open her computer, type “Zanzibar” into the search bar, and show him the photos. »
Western girls and Zanzibari beach boys
First of all, the stay of the two friends perfectly confirms their expectations. They are entitled to the “grand slam, heavenly beaches (it was the base), visit to Stone Town (UNESCO World Heritage), spice plantations, Prison Island and its giant turtles, dhow cruise, taarab concert (local music), kitesurfing on the east coast, swimming with dolphins and all the rest. »
The two young girls are also preparing to participate in the “full moon party”, a party organized every month on the beach of their hotel, which has become an essential ritual of the place. The owners have planned things very big this time: opening concert by the Tanzanian star Diamond Platnumz in person, thundering music, abundant food and a well-stocked bar to mark the twenty years of their establishment in an exceptional way. In the evening, a crowd of regulars and newcomers go into a trance in an atmosphere of collective madness, under the bright spotlights and the speakers from which the best hits of the moment come out.
To the pleasure of dancing is then added that of seducing – or more exactly of allowing oneself to be seduced – for the dozens of Western women present, gradually disinhibited by the consumption of alcohol and drugs. Because the many “beach boys”, beach boys and Zanzibari and Tanzanian guides mingle with tourists and expatriates in the hope of taking advantage of the situation: in other words, obtaining money or material favors in return for their sexual services.
Here we reach the heart of Altaïr Despres’ remarks. Indeed, from this party that opens the novel and is its matrix, the novelist begins to decline a series of portraits of women whose backgrounds and especially relationships allow to compose little by little a real sociological puzzle of Zanzibar. Thus Helle, the student, who very quickly became Dolce’s girlfriend, is unaware that, behind her smile, her “lover” hides a family and two children to support. A cultural animator in France, Mathilde has been living in the archipelago for a year after her decisive meeting with the handsome Khamisi… who, however, proves unable to earn legal income.
All losers
We still meet Ethel, Dina, Vanille, Doria, Inès, Juliette, so many women who have fallen in love with the island in one way or another thanks to or because of one or other of its full beach boys. charm. They have taken the plunge for a week or for life, but must resolve to take stock of their situation at one time or another. And like the aftermath of a party when the nocturnal drunkenness fades away to give way to a hangover, reality then appears in broad daylight, dirty and disenchanted, like the banal reverse side of a beautiful postcard.
“Helle realized that the little hiding place cut off from the world, the protective sanctuary of the day before was in fact this vast, ragged expanse between the beach and the first houses of the village. The area was dotted here and there with palm trees, but also with plastic bags, empty bottles and old torn fishing nets, carried by the tide and the wind. »
By multiplying the protagonists, Altaïr Despres manages to give complexity and subtlety to what she denounces: the futility of mass tourism based on an economic imbalance between its actors and which never turns to the advantage of the population of southern countries. Contrary to all sentimentality, money forms here the backdrop of all relationships which basically boil down to transactions. On the one hand, we see women, aware of their freedom and made powerful by their financial capacities. On the other, young nationals of a poor country, reduced to surviving on meals or the meager pocket money obtained thanks to their sexual abilities.
Before becoming embodied in characters, Zanzibar was Altaïr Despres’ “field” of anthropology. Having become a novelist, the author knows what she is talking about. His choice of a raw and cash language, as well as an omniscient narrator whose scathing irony we perceive ends up serving his project. Helle returns somewhat bitter to Oslo with deep in her heart the secret memory of her fifteen days of distraction. Even before his departure, Dolce and his comrades “beach boys” set out again to conquer new prey to seduce. In the beautiful tropical archipelago of Zanzibar, those who are passing through and those who stay are all losers. “Post coitum, sad animal. »
