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| Bohemian Rhapsody - the superb Freddy Mercury biopic which triggered this post |
Baggage handlers are on the tarmac unloading suitcases from a plane.
A longhaired, buck toothed, leather jacketed handler pauses. He was distracted by an eye-catching striped bag covered with stickers that hinted at its travels around the world.
Handler 1: “Oi, you missed one, you Paki.”
Handler 2 (Farrokh Bulsara): “I’m not from Pakistan!”
These are his first words. Farrokh Bulsara, soon to become Freddy Mercury, announces himself in his (excellent) biopic Bohemian Rhapsody with “I’m not from Pakistan”.
So, where is he from?
From Zanzibar.
Except that that doesn’t actually answer any questions. Why was a middle class Parsi family in Zanzibar? What was Freddy Mercury's back-story?
It turns out that the Bulsara family's back-story parallels that of the Gujaratis who were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin.
Zanzibar was a British protectorate in the mid twentieth century. Bomi Bulsara, Farrokh’s dad, worked for the colonial government as an officer in the Zanzibar High Court. Farrokh was born in Stone Town, Zanzibar. The family were comfortably off. They lived in a spacious apartment (now a Freddy Mercury museum) and employed a live-in nanny. They sent their son to boarding school in India, to St. Peter's in Panchgani. This wasn’t unusual. Indian boarding schools were designed for the children of colonial officers stationed in far-flung outposts of the Empire.
The Bulsara family’s comfortable Zanzibari base dissolved along with the Empire.
In 1963, the British Empire transferred power to the Sultan of Zanzibar, Jamshid bin Abdullah, who was to rule as a constitutional monarch. The Arab Sultan held power for less than a month. He was overthrown in the Zanzibar Revolution, led by a charismatic former brick-layer called John Okkelo. The Socialist Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba was declared.
An orgy of violence was unleashed. Arab and Indian minorities were targeted. A BBC story says 17,000 people (out of a population of about 250,000) were slaughtered on the streets. Genocide claims are still being debated. Those who could fled.
Six months later, the Socialist Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba ceased to exist. It was merged with Tanganiyka to create Tanzania (a synthetic coined name). This was eight years before Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda.
The Bulsara family arrived in the UK in 1964 as refugees from this chaos. Freddy was 17 then.
How did that tumultuous backdrop shape Freddy Mercury?
Freddy didn’t talk much about politics or about his family’s heritage. We can only conjecture. My conjecture is that that Zanzibar taught him the truth of Jim Morrison’s immortal words at the end of Roadhouse Blues:
“..Alright! Alright! Alright!
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| Jim Morrison. Freddy's philosopher? |
Hey, listen! Listen!
Listen, man! listen, man!
I don't know how many you people believe in astrology...
Yeah, that's right...that's right, baby, I...I am a Sagittarius
The most philosophical of all the signs
But anyway, I don't believe in it
I think it's a bunch of bullshit, myself
But I tell you this, man,
I tell you this,
I don't know what's gonna happen, man,
But I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.
Alright!”
Farrokh Bulsara was a Virgo, not a Sagittarius. But it seems he came to the same philosophical conclusion as Jim Morrison: that it isn’t all about how long you live, that it is about how much life you live while you’re still alive.
Thanks Farrokh/ Freddy. For being a Paki, a Zanzibari, a Parsi, a Brit, a hero.
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| Farrokh Bulsara in Panchgani |
