Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury by Lesley-Ann Jones Read Free Book Online

woman came some years ago, to look for it. A copy was made out for her, and the original has not been seen since, although it has been asked for on numerous occasions—I presume by his fans. The main problem is that, in 1946, 1947, proper records were not yet kept. Just pieces of paper, which now lie in a jumble all over the place. I will show you.”
    Behind the counter in the main office, the registrar rummaged in filing cabinets and returned with handfuls of loose birth certificates. Perhaps a dozen of these spilled onto the floor and were left there.
    “There is one person, a physician by the name of Dr. Mehta, who is currently in Oman but returning next week. I know he has a copy of Freddie’s birth certificate.” Try as I might, however, I was never able to track Dr. Mehta down.
    My investigations into the family’s roots did not meet with theapproval of all concerned. Perviz’s beautiful daughter Diana was unimpressed, while insisting that she was not at all interested in “Freddie Mercouri .” Why?
    “He went away from Zanzibar when I was only a baby,” she shrugged, her face flushing. “He gave up his family name. He did not live like us. He was nothing at all to do with us. He never came back. He wasn’t proud of Zanzibar. He was a stranger. He was of another life.”
    She declined to elaborate. So there was more.
    Diana’s attitude was in keeping with what I found elsewhere. Although several Zanzibaris now claim to live in dwellings once owned by the Bulsara family, none could offer tangible evidence, and no one, it seemed, really cared. As one Indian shopkeeper explained, “I don’t know anything—and neither does anyone else. Anybody who tells you they do is only guessing. Especially these guides who take you round the island and show you the sights. They just want money. There is no one left here who knows. So many people left suddenly at the same time, a long time ago. But if ever you find out, will you come back here and tell me, please? Because I am heartily sick of people always asking me. Americans. South Americans. English. German. Japanese. Local people don’t understand. Who was this person anyway?”
    Who was Zanzibar’s most famous son? For Queen pilgrims, this island is the ultimate destination. Specialist tour operators run expensive fan-friendly holidays to the singer’s birthplace, where a few restaurants with beautiful views and a couple of gift shops cash in on the connection. But Freddie was never in his lifetime accorded star status here. No Freedom of the City. No official archive entry. No acknowledgment, at the time of visiting, at the local museum. No former dwelling converted into personal shrine. No statue, waxwork, or effigy, no mass-produced ashtray nor fridge magnet, not so much as a postcard bearing his likeness—although there are postcards of almost everything else. Perhaps not even thermometers here have mercury in them. If ever one had cause to seek the antithesis of Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis, this must be it.
    The mystery of the missing birth certificate reared its head again when I got home. Out of the blue, Marcela Delorenzi, an Argentinian— that Argentinian—made contact. She was, she told me, on her way to London with a gift for me. What the Buenos Aires–based broadcaster and journalist brought me was a copy of Freddie’s birth certificate. I hadn’t asked for it. We’d never spoken. I hadn’t tried to track her down, she asked for nothing in return. If there was guilt, this was not discussed. At the time that she obtained it, she insisted, the original handwritten document was still in place in the Records Office. She’d seen it. Perhaps, in the end, it changed hands for vast profit, and is tucked away in a private collection somewhere.
    In 2006, the Association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation (UAMSHO), a Zanzibar Muslim group, protested vociferously against plans to celebrate Freddie’s sixtieth birthday on the island.