August is ħobż biż-żejt time. First you need to select carefully the right ingredients. The Maltese ħobża needs to be crunchy on the outside, a richly variegated symphony of browns that protect the pillow-soft bieba (the soft part) inside.
Sourcing is everything. The olive oil has to be cold-press extra virgin, from Maltese varieties of course. Purists will settle for nothing less than sun-drenched tadam ċatt, the squat tomatoes that look like baby Cinderella pumpkins.
Salt from Malta’s saltpans, naturally, and freshly-ground black pepper. Capers picked from your nearest rubble wall, and mint or basil plucked from your kitchen-window herb pot. No foreign rubbish. Best to keep it simple and local.
Once you have all the ingredients in front you, you need to make your toughest decision – do you spread first the oil or the tomato? There are two bitterly opposed schools of thought, each with its own partit, patron saint and innu, so you have to take sides. You are committed.
Last week, while I was going through my own August ritual, I heard that the government had barred entry to C-Star, the anti-immigrant ‘ship of hate’ that was sailing south of Malta with the stated aim of disrupting the saving of migrants from the perils of the Mediterranean crossing. It took the Opposition almost a week to get its act together and mumble a semi-appropriate response.
Well, whoopsy-do. Excuse me for not doing multiple backflips while I sprinkle the salt. As we would say in my far-off youth: “Aħjar minn daqqa ta’ trakk”. What was really funny was the way the NGOs and various editorials were congratulating government on its C-Star stand much like long-suffering parents clap wildly when their child finally manages to get the first spoonful of food in its mouth without spilling. Not because it is a big deal, but thankful that this little step has been done at all, after so much messy and ugly migrant policy.
In August we have a No-Ship policy. No to ships that have saved migrants from possible drowning, and an equal No to anti-immigrant ships such as yourselves
But joking aside, the turpitude of our political class is perfectly understandable. It was Santa Marija week for God’s sake, and the ħobż biż-żejt beckoned. So, a friendly word of advice to the desperate migrants who have staked their lives on a deadly journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean, and the racist rightists who are trying to stop them.
To C-Star and its ilk: don’t be too cast-down by Malta’s official display of moral indignation. You see, in August we have a No-Ship policy. No to ships that have saved migrants from possible drowning, and an equal No to anti-immigrant ships such as yourselves. Nothing personal, you understand. If St Paul’s ship had hit its reef in August, history would have been completely different.
Do you honestly believe this county disapproves of a far-right organisation with its same agenda of keeping migrants out of Malta and, ideally, Europe? In the general election three months ago the migrant issue was either completely invisible (PN) or addressed only in terms of ‘keeping them away from us’ (PL). To hell with humanitarian concern.
Pope Francis is a lonely voice, his call to heed migrants’ rights patently absurd. The terrorism in Barcelona and Marseilles has given you yet more rhetorical cover. Next time your ship is around Malta and needs servicing, do it the Maltese way. Find a friendly racist to quietly service your needs at the right price, as we have done for centuries with the ships of smugglers and of our colonial masters.
To the migrants: next year please make your travel arrangements with the warlords and the people traffickers before or after Santa Marija week. Otherwise, it will be your fault if Malta looks the other way. Any other time, we will be more than happy to wave you on your way to Italy.
In the meantime, both the migrants and the anti-migrant groups can relax by the sea and bite into their own ħobż biż-żejt.
Dump Trump
After President Donald Trump’s latest slew of spectacularly wrong responses to North Korea’s nuclear threat and the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, that’s all I have to say, really. Dear Americans, please do the world a favour and dump the narcissistic, incompetent, Twitter-addicted, morally bankrupt, free-press-bashing, elephant-in-diplomatic-china-shop and environmental/nuclear walking time-bomb that is the 45th President of your wonderful United States. Don’t nuke him; nike him – Just Do It.
Women’s well-being
Bravo to the Faculty for Social Wellbeing at the University of Malta for condemning the femi-violence that reared its ugly head, again, recently. Whether it is the physical violence of husbands demanding sex or supper, sexploitation by wayward priests, or the symbolic kind by the army of voyeurs slobbering over women in various states of undress to make a living, the result is the same. It is the searing image of a naked young woman in a rubbish truck, almost as if that is her proper place and refuge. Literally, ‘saret żibel’.