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After a week of traveling through Tanzania with my parents and two brothers, my patience had reached its last reserves. We'd spent three days on safari and two days in Arusha -- the town where I lived and taught English -- and were now in Zanzibar, where the smell of cloves drifted through our hotel window.

I needed to get out and be alone, so I climbed down the uneven stairs of our hotel, passed under the low arches and stepped into Stone Town. As I walked through the narrow streets, cars and bicycles raced past me, horns blaring and bells ringing. I waded through armies of aspiring young tour guides with their inquiries: "East Coast?" "Spice tour?" "Change money?"

I headed toward the sea and soon found a quiet spot where a staircase led down to the water's edge. The lower steps had been worn away, and the waves rolled under those left hanging and exploded in the cave underneath. Each wave sent a spray of white surf back into the air. I sat dry and aloof.

Down the shore a little, two old men stood with fishing lines in the water. When I sat down, they stopped their conversation and looked over at me, then resumed talking.

Alone, I stared out at the scattered dhows, wooden boats with ancient sails pointed across the water like arrows.

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"Do you mind if I talk with you?" I turned to see a young man approaching cautiously. He couldn't have been more than 18, was slightly built and wore nice tan pants with a white button-down shirt.

"Not at all."

He sat on the step next to me. I waited for him to ask if I needed transport or wanted to see the monkeys of Jozani Forest, but he didn't. Instead he asked where I was from and what I was doing. I told him, and asked the same.

His name was Ahmed, and he was on his way home to Pemba, the Tanzanian island north of Zanzibar. His mother, he said, was a doctor and his father worked for the Ministry of Education. He had just finished Form 5 at a Muslim school in Morogoro, and was going home for the summer before his last year. Then he would go to university, where he had great academic ambitions. He wanted three degrees: biology, physics and chemistry. Ahmed wanted badly to exceed the achievements of his parents.

"But first," he said, "I want to work as a 'guidi.' Do you know guidi?" he asked.

"You mean to take tourists to the East Coast?"

He looked disappointed. "No, guidi means ... in Swahili ..." He struggled for the words. "You don't know guidi in English?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said.

"You know ... how do you say? ..." He went into a lengthy explanation, half in English, half in Swahili, about what I understood to be the person who goes into a house first, in secret, to throw bombs. I told him I understood, but wasn't sure what the word was in English. "Where do you want to do this?" I asked.

"In Palestine," he said.

"You want to throw bombs at Israelis?"

Next page | "I want a tough life"