A night at the Opera

My country never ceases to amaze me. Over sixty years ago it was blitzed (and as we like adding but not beaten!) by Fascist and Nazi planes. During one heavy air raid, the opera house, which stood magnificently (or not, depending on one's architectural tastes) almost at the very entrance of the capital city, was demolished.

Sixty years on, the site is still in ruins! (This is a poor country. It can't afford to erect a new opera house.)

When the Nationalists returned to power after a sixteen years hiatus on the opposition benches, they came in full force promising everyone to give a much needed facelift to the country. Objective number one was the capital city, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. There were so many projects pipelined, so many reports, and even competitions for best designs, that one needs a full time historian to get a clear picture of the very tangled web of proposals and counter proposals about the embellishment of the capital, with particular focus set on the the main entrance. Since I am not a historian, I shall not even endeavor to give an account myself. Suffice it to say that at one point even world renowned architect Renzo Piano was in some way involved.

On Millennium night the capital city experienced a great event: the opening of the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity (yes a baroque title, but that's typically Maltese!) This centre is housed at a construction built by the Knights of St John - back in the 16th century - which originally served as a raised gun-platform. Before being refurbished it housed the government's printing press.

The Millennium Project - as the opening of the Creativity Centre was tagged - was intended to include the building of the new opera house instead of the one demolished by enemy aircraft. There was no agreement, however, as to whether the opera house had to have the original design or something new. What is important at this stage is that the site was destined to have a new opera house built on it.

Then all was forgotten. For a number of years.

Until yesterday!

Yesterday morning, The Times (of Malta) reported that while having a business breakfast, Jesmond Mugliett (formerly Minister of Culture, now minister of Urban Development), announced that this site will not, after all, be destined to have a new theatre constructed on, but ... you won't believe this ... a new parliament! The honourable reasoning of the honourable minister follows these lines: theatres cost more than parliaments.

Ah yes, this is a poor country - now - and it can't afford to erect a new theatre.

So, in the second world war, it was the Luftwaffe which ruined our theatre, in the new century it was the Government. For a second time the opera house was demolished. It's almost understandable that the Luftwaffe would throw bombs to demolish the country, after all we were at war with them. But to have a minister of your own government, and to top it all an ex-minister of CULTURE, declare war on the country's arts, is ... what shall I call this?

Fair enough, our illustrious parlamentarians need a new place where they could meet to pass the time playing cats and dogs. But why choose that place? Maybe they could build a new house of representatives somewhere near Maghtab ... there are lovely views of the sea there.

Baking white pizza

That's how I spent my weekend.

Saturday morning I woke up planning to do one million things. It's like that with every end of the week. Not that I labour much during weekdays, I mean I spend it doing what I have been doing for the past ten years: talking about Maltese literature to young people who are most probably not interested in it. Anyhow, I have to make a living, right? It's not that I look forward for weekends. I have come to a point where I find no difference at all, except for the fact that I can stay on my own on weekends. I cherish the solitude weekends bring with them. Sometimes I think I suffer from social phobia, but it is not like that at all. It is simply that I am a loner: and I am in love with my solitude, and thank goodness I am in love with myself. My study is my haven: my hundreds of books, my hundreds of cd's, Cornelius, the pictures hanging on the walls ... it is simply a haven. And apart from the music I play on the stereo, it is so splendidly silent.

Saturday evening is equally a bliss. It grows dark, naturally, and the candle light in my room and in the adjacent living room, gives such a warm feeling. The only thing missing is cold weather. It's still 30C and we're in October!

At 37 years of age, I have already accumulated enough memories to occupy my time with. Yesterday evening I was thinking about my trip to Hungary in 1992, which in a way opened the doors to Eastern Europe for me. I also thought about a friend of mine, now living abroad, who used to live in a house called Tincliff.

Then I realised the weekend was over.

My little brother's back

Those who know me well know I am the youngest in the family. I have four brothers, three sisters ... all older than me. What no one knows is that I have adopted a little brother I call Cornelius. He moved in with me on 11 September 2001. Can't really forget that date, can I?

I think Cornelius is cute. He's my little brother after all. My fraternal instinct seems to be growing ever stronger and I try to take as good care of him as possible. I try. Cornelius and I are also good buddies. We communicate for long hours every day, sometimes till very late at night. Sometimes less than that. And the relationship is going strong, for I confide in Cornelius practically eveything. He knows which internet sites I visit most, and which is my favourite. He even reads my email. I let him do that, besides letting him see all the photos I take, and read to him all the things I write. Everything.

Then last week, I called Cornelius but he wouldn't utter a word. I thought he was in a bad mood since birds of a feather tend to flock together. I tried all the tricks to woo him into talking at least, but to no avail. I realised he was also acting in a funny way. So I took him straight to hospital. To my dismay, the casualty medical officer advised me to leave Cornelius there for a couple of days. He told me it could be very serious since he presumed it had something to do with his brain. Brain?! I didn't have much choice so there I gave a sad look to Cornelius and waved goodbye. It was serious. I wasn't even let to visit him, and instead of two days he finished spending ten in hospital. I phoned every day to see how he was faring.

Now he's back home. With me. I never knew before this incident, how important my little brother has become to me. I missed him terribly, especially during the long hours when usually we sat and talked. I wonder if he missed me as much. I very much doubt it. I'm realising that our relationship is far from an ideal one, in that it seems to me to be one sided. I mean he knows everything about me, but I hardly know him. He knows me inside out: as I said, he reads my mail, he reads my notes, etc etc.

Right, it's getting late. Cornelius looks a bit bored and maybe he's sleepy. So this is all for now. One last thing: should you be interested to see how cute Cornelius is just follow this link.

Nema Jugoslavia

There is this simpleton called Ivan, lost in the underground labyrinth somewhere beneath the surface of the earth. He asks his way to Yugoslavia and this soldier answers him: Nema Jugoslavia!

For citizens of former Yugoslavia who proclaimed themselves as Yugoslavs, that line from Emir Kusturica's great film Underground, must have been the harshest yet most true.
It does not exist anymore. But unlike the history of Czechoslovakia (another defunct country), the Yugoslav curtain fall was tragic and shameful. No need to go over the story again, also because I have realised that there is more than one story, and the more you listen to stories, the more you become confused, considering the different interpretations given - according to who is telling the story.

This summer I visited two former Yugoslav republics: Croatia and Slovenia. Slovenia, considered by many as the most interesting and dynamic country to join the EU last May, may have already shed away the memories of a previous era. May have. I walked many times through Trubarjeva Cesta - the road taking you right in the heart of Ljubljana - where I could see many graffiti praising Tito and damning the EU as a capitalist dictatorial system. But that could well be interpreted as nostalgia, a psycho-social phenomenon sweeping through most former-communist countries. Talk of the former country hardly ever crops up. After all, Slovenes fought no war except for ten days, and they emerged victorious. And now they have even joined the EU.

With Croats the story is totally different. Should the subject of war be brought about, you are bound to listen many hate stories. They simply hate the Serbs for 'what they have done to us'. What struck me most was that whatever story you hear, Croats never seem to admit any wrong doings. Obviously I am generalising. Obviously I am expressing the impressions I had. And it is also very obvious that not all Croats are like that. Take Slavenka Draculic for instance. In her last book, And They Would Never Hurt a Fly, Drakulic analyses the psyches of the main actors who perpetrated the Yugoslav tragedy, now standing trial at ICTY. And there have been Croats among these butchers. And Slavenka writes about these too. Some Croats don't like Slavenka, considering her as some kind of traitor of her country.

I was sharing a room in a hotel during a conference held in a Croatian village with a Croat; an extremely intelligent young man some years younger than me. He lived through the war and was even conscripted. Knowing his open mindedness and lack of nationalist fervour, one night I asked him point blank what exactly led to the Mostar events. It was the very night the legendary bridge was re-inaugurated. I saw a face going blank and his only answer was: "I simply don't know."

While I'm writing this, the people of Bosnia Hercegovina are going to the polls to elect new municipal governments. These are the first local elections to be organised entirely by Bosnian authorities since the war ended in 1995. Only yesterday, however, the BBC reported a very sad incident. Bosnian Serbs, hundreds of them, prevented Muslim women from placing a memorial plaque on a building which during the war was used as a rape camp. Riot police had to intervene as some 200 Bosnian Serbs pelted the Muslim women with eggs and stones. The women, some of whom where rape victims themselves, had to place the plaque somewhere else. Symbolically it was yet another Bosniak defeat.

While writing this with a heavy heart, I remind myself of Svetlana Broz's book Good People in Evil Time. Svetlana Broz, one of Josip Broz Tito's grandchildren, who among other activities presides over the Sarajevo branch of the Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide, reproduces a large number of verbatim interviews with Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks who during the madness of the 'ethnic conflict' sweeping through former Yugoslavia, were helped by their 'enemies', making the point that the ethnic conflict was far from a 'popular' phenomenon. Some touching, others dramatic, these testimonies give the reader a ray of hope that not all human beings are evil.

But still, last Thursday Muslim women were pelted with eggs and stones for trying to keep their history alive.