“At the age of barely fifteen, I now stood there in the world, fatherless and motherless, similar to a ship which drifts away without rudder on the sea waves, moved by the storm.” - Emily Ruete, 1993.

 

Only when all the poison has gone (The healing of Emily Ruete) is an audio-video installation based on the memoirs and letters of Emily Ruete, born Salamah bint Said bin Sultan, Princess of Oman and Zanzibar (1844-1924), as introduced by E. Van Donzel in An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds: Memoirs, Letters Home, Sequels to the Memoirs, Syrian Customs and Usages.

 

Sayyida Salme/Emily Ruete was a sensational figure in nineteenth-century Germany. Her successful memoirs, the oldest known autobiography by an Arab woman, were originally published in 1886 as Memoiren einer arabischen Prinzessin (Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar). Her collection of letters, posthumous writings, and a new English translation of the memoirs, were published in 1993 by Emeri van Donzel.

 

Sayyida Salme was born in Zanzibar, as the 36th and last child of Said bin Sultan Al-Busaid, Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar (1804-56), and his Circassian concubine Jilfidan. She grew up between Bet il Mtoni and Bet il Sahel palaces, the Sultan’s two largest harems. She spoke Arabic and Swahili fluently, while receiving primary Islamic schooling. According to her memoirs, girls were banned from writing, and she secretly taught herself how to write at the age of nine, with the help of an educated slave servant. At the age of five, she received horse-back riding lessons twice a day by the palace’s eunuchs. Her favorite brother Seyyid Majid taught her how to fence with sword, dagger and lance when she was a teenager. 

 

Salme’s father died at sea in 1856, and Majid bin Said became the first Sultan of Zanzibar. Salme, who was 12 years old at the time, was deemed old enough to receive her inheritance. In 1859, Salme’s mother succumbed to cholera, and she was bequeathed her properties and plantations. That same year, a dispute for the throne broke out between her brothers Majid and Barghash. Because she could write, Salme, only fifteen at the time, was persuaded to act as Barghash’s secretary. The rebellion was soon brought to an end; Barghash was sent to exile in Bombay for two years, and Salme retreated into one of her properties in Stone Town. She eventually made up with Majid, which earned her the undying enmity of Barghash.

 

While living in Stone Town, the expats district of Zanzibar, Salme met and fell in love with German merchant Rudolph Heinrich Ruete, and became pregnant by him in the summer of 1866. When news of her pregnancy reached Sultan Majid, she fled aboard a British navy ship to Aden, where Heinrich joined her on 30 May 1867. On that same day, Salme converted to Christianity, adopted the name of Emily, and the couple married and traveled via Marseille to Hamburg, Germany. She had given birth to a son in Aden, but he died en route to Germany. The Ruetes settled in Hamburg for three years during which they had another son and two daughters. Rudolph Ruete died suddenly in 1870, following a horse tram accident.

 

Alone and destitute in a foreign country, with three small children–Heinrich had lost his business in Zanzibar causing significant damage to the family’s finances–Emily began obsessing about claiming her Zanzibari heritage–the inheritance from the brothers and sisters who were deceased since she had left Zanzibar. Unfortunately, her sympathetic brother Majid had died in 1870 and was succeeded by Barghash, whose resentment of his sister was worsened by her apostasy and marriage. Between 1870 and 1888, the entire duration of Barghash's reign, Emily left no stone unturned in her attempts to reconcile with her brother, in order to access financial relief and the right to return to Zanzibar with her children. She moved to Berlin, and obtained the citizenship of the State of Hamburg in 1872. From Berlin, she began a forceful campaign against Barghash, bringing herself into diplomatic and aristocratic circles in Germany and England, gathering support for her cause, hoping to exert influence over the increasingly belligerent Sultan. In 1883, she wrote a long letter in Arabic to Barghash imploring him to help her and enticing him with her powerful connections. It was never answered. 

 

Emily Ruete’s family and the inheritance she hoped to claim were sandwiched between two major historical events: the unification of Germany in 1871, making her a citizen of the German Reich; and the Anglo-German scramble for East Africa. Under Barghash’s rule (1870-88), Great Britain and Germany divided Zanzibar’s territory between them, securing economic control over it. In 1890 the British proclaimed a protectorate over Zanzibar itself, bringing the 19th-century East African trading empire–whose last heir she was–under British domination.

 

She began writing her memoirs in 1877, as a record for her children but also as a possible means of generating income. The memoirs, letters and sequels, extend from intimate recollections of family life in Zanzibar, to her move to Germany, return to Zanzibar, and journeys in the Near East. They describe existence inside the harems of the sultan, the ceremonies, customs, rituals of births and mourning, the relationship with the household slaves (more than a thousand when she was growing up), and dynamics between the concubines (Said bin Sultan kept over 70 “secondary wives” mostly from Ethiopia and Abyssinia). The memoirs also highlight Salme’s deep love for her father. Said bin Sultan, who left no children by his legal wife, was portrayed as a devout, generous and affectionate family man who doted on his children as well as his domestic slaves.

 

She also bitterly describes her two visits to Zanzibar in the 1880s. In 1885, Bismarck had decided that Frau Ruete’s claims, as those of a German citizen, could be useful to his plans in East Africa. Emily and her children were brought to the shores of Zanzibar aboard a German Navy ship. Barghash refused to receive his sister and her family at Bet il Mtoni. They spent their days wandering about the island and returning to the ship at night. Soon after arriving in Zanzibar, it became clear to the Germans that the Sultan had little power, and negotiations were carried out with British authorities on the ground. Emily’s claims were dropped, and she was coerced into returning to Germany empty-handed. Shortly after the death of Sultan Barghash in 1888, she undertook another voyage to Zanzibar on her own initiative; it was equally unsuccessful. Sayyid Khalifa bin Said, Barghash’s successor, was also unforgiving of her past transgressions. During the 1888 visit, it became clear to her that she would not obtain any help from her family unless she reconverted to Islam, which she absolutely refused.

 

Disappointed by the way she was manipulated by Bismarck and his officials, Emily turned her back on Germany and decided to settle in the Near East. She lived in Jaffa, Jerusalem and Beirut. In 1914 she returned to Germany and lived with her daughter in Jena. She died during the German depression in 1924 and was buried in Hamburg. On her tombstone the following text is engraved: “Faithful in his innermost heart is he, who loves his homeland like you.”

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