In December 1986, I was just a little child having yet another scuffle with my older sister on a breezy Sunday afternoon.
Dad demanded us to stop and we clambered into the car, petulant, in grief. No one would have ever predicted what we would experience in the next couple of hours.
Dad drove the 1.2-litre, Soviet petrol-engine car with pride. On that day, a sense of secrecy and immediacy prevailed. Continuing to bicker at the back of the car, we finally arrived at our destination.
To give context, Malta in the 1980s was highly politicised with a volatile environment with a threat of constant violence.
Party politics was at fever pitch, and yobs were dotted across the island, rubbing shoulders with the establishment.
For those readers old enough, they would recall most Sundays were filled with dread, anticipating injuries or deaths.
That was the Malta we lived in.
Stepping into a packed Gudja cemetery, dad held both my and my sister’s hands firmly, while mum was sweating, trembling and repeatedly asking dad “are you sure?”
Raymond Caruana, a PN activist, was murdered in a drive-by shooting while he was at the Gudja PN club and dad wanted to pay his respects at his funeral.
Not long after we entered the cemetery, we started hearing flippant remarks: “Too late, dott”, “what are you doing here?”, “you are not one of us”.
The hostility was palpable.
Amid all that hostility, belligerence, and hatred stood out the best attributes of humankind
Our earlier fraternal dispute became frivolous. Head down, we clasped our dad’s hand even more firmly.
As young children, you could not fathom why people were spewing these vicious comments. However, we were acutely aware of the political scenario in Malta for we experienced insults on countless occasions, based solely on who we were.
Amid all that hostility, belligerence and hatred, stood out the best attributes of humankind.
Within a few minutes, we were welcomed and surrounded warmly by several people ‒ people of a different political ideology, a different “colour of blood” ‒ spearheaded by the then PN MP, George Bonello Dupuis.
Those people understood the rationale behind my dad’s gesture. The gentle crowd circled us, hushed the insolent remarks, and the hecklers and superseded them with words of kindness, praise and even applause. That gentle crowd only grew bigger and bigger.
To this day, I still remember vividly that dad’s intention was not to get any adulation or affirmation.
He was from the “opposite side”.
His sole purpose was to show us all what hatred brings along with it and how an act of kindness can prevail and beat hatred any day when humans find common ground.
A hard lesson to understand as a 10-year-old ‒ perhaps not the best teaching methodology one might argue ‒ yet the lesson stuck for life.
You can never be “too late” to show kindness. Thank you dad for showing us the way.
Joe Brincat, the former Labour Party deputy leader and MP, died on Friday at the age of 80.