Childhood

Freddie Mercury was an eclectic mix of cultures. He was born on the African island of Zanzibar and was thus enmeshed in the Arabic-African culture; yet within his Father's house, he was bound by the strict rituals and regime of the Parsis faith. If you then compound this with his father's 'Englishness' brought about by his work with the British Court in Zanzibar, you can see in even the young Freddie the beginnings of an internal clash.

Most people belong. Most people have a social or cultural 'spot' which they know is their own. Whether this is Scottish, or English, Australian, American or Chinese is irrelevant. It is this culture to which they cling, the thing which gives them their initial identity. As they grow, the cultural influences will be influenced by their environment, but again these will be fairly static for most people.

Freddie, on the other hand, had to deal with a multiplicity of cultures as a child. Not only did he have the cultural

influences as mentioned earlier, but he was born into a time that was at the end of British Colonialism and the beginnings of Nationalism, the beginning of the end of religion as a dominant force in much of the world, and also into the beginnings of the fastest-changing technological and social period in history.

His ancestry was Parsis (also nown as Pharisee or Parsee), the followers of the prophet Zoroaster and an independent people with their own belief, their own language and their own culture. They initially came from the area of Persia, but are not Persian as a Persian identity did not exist at that time: the area, like most of the others, being that of independent tribes or states. Freddie is, on his Birth Certificate, listed as being of Indian nationality, yet even this is technically incorrect as his parents' culture and language are not Indian. The Parsis, much like the Romany and the Bedouin, were a 'tribal' group which was independent of any country of origin or nationality.

His name, Farrokh or Farookh (the first on his Birth Certificate, the second by use ) can be either Arabic, Parsis, or Hindi. Farookh, in Arabic,