Out of the silent planet

It is extraordinary how one’s life can be transformed radically in the twinkling of an eye. A chance word, a chance meeting can turn one’s life upside down and inside out. Brilliant films like Atonement, Sliding Doors and the most celebrated, The French Lieutenant’s Woman are all superb literary examples of this, so much so that we forget that it happens in real life too.

If each and every one of us thinks back carefully we are sure to find similar instances that determined the course of our lives far more than we realised at the time. Transpose this to the world and the human history that unfolds as I write and as you read and there we have it: an ever-changing kaleidoscope of events, personages and words that somehow make up this chaotic maelstrom of a world we live in.

I am sure that many of you have wished that they could start again; a clean slate where you could carefully avoid the mistakes and not be gulled by the pitfalls that are sometimes comparable to those frighteningly real computer games our young people are so addicted to. Sadly, our lives are not subject to an author’s whims or the imagination of a film director but are determined by ourselves and those around us.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s land of milk and honey is none other than tired old Europe

What one does most of the time is try to make silk purses out of sows’ ears.

Last Friday, was the feast of St Francis of Assisi and the world news dwelt on the Pope’s visit to the saint’s birthplace and reported the inspiring words of hope with which the Pontiff comforted a fraught world full of affliction and woe.

I do not think Pope Francis would wish us all to divest ourselves of our worldly goods as radically as the Poverello did but, yes, he certainly does not mince his words about “having too much” being a burden and not a blessing and, if he could, he would take us down a path not unlike the Buddhist quest for a much higher spirituality wherein material goods are a hindrance if not completely unnecessary.

The feast of St Francis coincided with yet another terrible human tragedy that took place not far from us in Lampedusa, which is light years away from Malta, the Utopian Republic of Malta where the sun always shines and the people are seraphically happy; a tiny island sovereign nation formed by a unique and enviable history but full of people who are torn between being witnesses to what was said about us in the Acts of the Apostles in the true sense of the word and being one of the most notoriously xenophobic nations on earth. How can we, on both a personal and a national level, reconcile these two extremes? Difficult.... impossible?

We hear the word ‘invasion’ being used constantly with reference to the influx of irregular immigrants and one and all feel isolated and alone, abandoned to our fate by a Europe we joined precisely to assist us in solving problems like this but, to date, have singularly failed to do so because Europe too is torn in half by precisely the same problem; one that you simply cannot throw money at to solve and maybe, one day in the distant future, will be regarded as one of the seismic migrations that changed the course of human history.

Therefore, when successive Maltese prime ministers lobby the great and good of this world to look towards the Central Mediterranean and not switch off the TV set, they are merely drawing the world’s attention to the logistical impossibility of our particular situation, bound by our morality to give till it hurts and bound by our financial and logistical limitations to draw lines.

We all know it is virtually impossible to stem the tide of Somalis and Eritreans who risk their lives in their bid to attain freedom and a better life. From the beginning of history, such humans have traversed the world for precisely the same reasons like the Jews making their way to the Promised Land.

Think of America full of the descendants of Irish immigrants escaping the great famine, Italians escaping post-war depression and Jews escaping Nazi persecution, to mention just three ethnic groups that make up the polyglot US.

The difference today is that there is no great empty country like America and Australia to receive immigrants anymore. In fact, both these countries have very strict immigration laws and, therefore, Sub-Saharan Africa’s land of milk and honey is none other than tired old Europe with all its inherent problems and ancient cultures, which has been dragged kicking and screaming into yet another social convulsion that it is little prepared or equipped to cope with, especially when one remembers that it was a mere couple of decades ago that the east and west of Europe, once divided by a chasm as unbridgeable as that between Lazarus the Beggar and the unnamed rich man in the parable, were reunited.

I always wondered why the rich man is nameless but, then, one only has to listen attentively to the Franciscan message that has just been renewed and revived by a Pope, who truly believes that Christ’s parables are far more meaningful than Puss in Boots and Cinderella, to realise the world is moving inexorably to a collision course of ideologies and that the bankers of this world, epitomised by those nameless swillers of champagne on the balconies of Wall Street looking down at the protesters, are doomed to be taken over by sheer force of numbers as the entire world, afflicted as it is by terrible tragedies, will, sooner or later, simply implode.

What will be left of the silent planet will then be a matter of speculation.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona is Artistic Director of the Valletta International Baroque Festival.