More memories of Manwel Dimech

Allow me first to thank and congratulate Fr Mark Montebello for his substantial new contributions to Manwel Dimech studies (The Sunday Times, April 10, 17). I would like to add another hitherto unknown Dimech source to those uncovered by Prof. Henry Frendo and Fr Montebello.

A renowned Turkish general kept imprisoned by the British in the Qasr al-Nil Barracks in Egypt wrote and published his detailed memoirs, later translated into English. Esref Kuscubasi (1873-1964), a highly controversial figure, had been captured and arrested by the victorious British forces, suspected of having been active in the Armenian massacres in World War I.

During his period of detention, some time in March-April 1917, he met and, from a distance, be­friend­ed Dimech. In his pen portrait, the Maltese exile strikes me as particularly stoic, distressed and noble.

“As I was passing another room, somebody greeted me from inside. I asked the British sergeant who was accompanying me who this man was. ‘He is a Maltese journalist – a nationalist who opposes the British. He is named Dimek and has been a prisoner in that room for the past two years.’

“The fellow seemed to be in very sad shape. I took advantage of the humanitarian Englishman in the barracks to send him some clean linen and tobacco. He had not received one single cigarette from anyone since his imprisonment.

“Having suffered from the British far more than I had, he got word to me that he accepted my gifts with thanks. The British soldier who acted as my messenger told me that the Maltese newsman had taken some of my gifts for himself and had distributed the rest, including the tobacco, to other prisoners”. (Esref Kuscubasi, The Turkish Battle at Khaybar, Istanbul, 1999, pp. 213-214).

When Kuscubasi met Dimech, the former was in transit to Malta, where most of the Turkish prisoners of war were detained for the duration of the hostilities.

He remains a hero to the Turks and a villain to the Armenians.