This is a story set in Malta and Europe in the near future. In the form of a letter from a mother to her daughter Maddy, it shows a family trying to navigate the crisis in the region caused by a rapidly warming climate.

See previous chapters in the story and read a note by the story's author.

This was in the summer of 2035, and we had nowhere to go. To make matters worse, Maddy, by then I was pregnant with you.

I’ve already started telling you a bit about your Dad, and by the time you read this, I’ll make sure that you know as much about him as I do. Riccardo was from Calabria in southern Italy. With the land failing down there, and no job prospects at all in his hometown, he was traveling northwards like everyone else, picking up jobs wherever he could. He was with us during the flood that killed off our last hopes of saving the olives, and stayed on for a few months after that, trying to help us drain the land and salvage the trees.

I’m not sure that we had too much in common, but he had the same smiling eyes that you do, and he was always helpful and kind. 

I can’t say it was some great romance... we just took to chatting after our evening meals, and I guess we were both quite lonely. Eventually he moved on when it became clear that there wasn’t enough work for him on the farm. Neither of us was too cut up about it.

If I had known then that I was pregnant I might have told him to stay; or maybe not. I’m sure he’d have tried to help if I had asked; but I’m not sure I’d have wanted that. 

Whatever the case, we said our goodbyes a good month before I realised you were on the way.

*       *       *

I was six months along when we had to leave the farm. 

I didn’t want to move too far – by then we knew a local doctor who had promised to help me through the birth. And Tom had some work in a construction gang excavating a new reservoir by the nearby town. 

We tried to find lodging but there was a clear reluctance to rent to foreigners by that time, and we didn’t really have enough money to stay for the few months we’d need until I was ready to move again. 

In the end we had no choice but to move into a makeshift migrant camp at the edge of a forest, a few kilometres away from Anselmo’s farm. 

Tom and I managed to fashion a crude shelter of sorts for the first few weeks – some wooden pallets covered by cardboard as a floor and a rectangle of foam that two of us could sleep on at any one time. We covered it with some plastic sheeting that I managed to buy at a local store, draped between the ‘roof’ of the neighbouring lean-to and a rickety framework of wood and sticks that we put together ourselves. It had a horrible habit of falling in on us if the wind blew too hard.

It was not a good time for us. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find work. Since I had been a trainee teacher back home, I tried to see if I could find any teaching jobs in town, including teaching English; but self-improvement didn’t seem to be high on people’s agendas right then. 

When that didn’t pan out, I tried to look for some farm work, but there were simply too many people coming up from the south competing for too few jobs. Nobody wanted the hassle of a by now heavily pregnant worker who looked as if she might pop at any moment.

It was not a good time for us

I also suffered from severe nausea for what felt like endless hours every day and felt completely washed out by the pregnancy most of the time. I felt useless because I wasn’t earning anything and was constantly worried that I wasn’t eating enough for you, or enough of the right things. 

Worst of all, I lived in constant fear that there would be complications with the birth, given that I did not have access to a proper hospital.

On top of all this, Mum was worrying me.

She must have caught some horrible cold there in the camp, maybe pneumonia. For a time, she was seriously ill, and I was afraid she wouldn’t pull through. When she eventually did, for weeks she still couldn’t shake off a dry cough that racked her body every few minutes. 

I had to look after her but was constantly worried that one of us might catch one of the new post-pandemic coronavirus variants that were ripping through the unvaccinated migrant population. We hadn’t managed to get any booster shots in a while, and I was afraid that some nasty virus could push one or both of us over the edge.

Even when she had recovered from the worst of her illness, her state of mind remained negative. I suspect she might have been suffering from some form of depression after the whole unpleasant episode with Anselmo and his daughter. A light had gone out of her eyes, and she became lethargic, oblivious to nearly everything going on around her. 

The one exception was the pregnancy – she became animated only when we talked about the baby I would soon have – you. I tried to keep her focused on you, even though the subject of the actual birth made me extremely anxious.

It wasn’t all bad. 

There was a Senegalese family living in the shack next to us – Ramatulai (Rami) Diallo was a mother of three kids all under the age of eight. We went from being distrustful neighbours to firm friends in the space of a fortnight. 

We came to an arrangement whereby I would try and teach her kids to read and write; in return she looked in on Mum when I went out to look for work, and instructed her husband, a vast and silent man-mountain called Babacar, to help us make our lean-to a little more weatherproof and less prone to spontaneous collapse. 

She was also a great source of pregnancy advice, and she made me laugh. 

Part eleven of We are not angry enough will appear on Tuesday, Febryary 1. See previous chapters in the story and read a note by the story's author.

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