Osama Al Shzliaoy (Sunshine)

David Milne writes:

They laid Sunshine to rest on holy Friday in a cemetery crypt on the grounds of the mosque in Paola. Hundreds of people had come to show their respect for this likeable young 26-year old Sudanese man whose life had been cut short on a Paceville morning only two weeks before.

Osama’s life was taken almost casually by a person who, harbouring some small grievance, delivered a fierce push that sent the young man reeling, probably against a vertical steel pole and then the cement sidewalk before the Clique Club on St George’s Road.

Osama lay there in a pool of blood from a fractured skull while inside blood seeped relentlessly into the vital tissues of his brain. He soon lost consciousness and, after three days on life support at Mater Dei Hospital, Osama was pronounced “brain dead” on March 20 and removed from life support.

It is ironic that Osama’s death came not from the violence and horrors of his native Darfur but here in Malta’s increasingly dangerous bar zone of Paceville. Osama thought he was fleeing his homeland violence for a more peaceful life but things turned out to be not quite that simple.

Osama was my friendly neighbour who lived in an apartment below me in the Savoy area of Gżira. Soon he began to share something of his former and current life with me. He was bright, sweet-tempered and conscientious. He wanted very much to resume his studies in medicine that had been interrupted after leaving Libya and I was soon giving him lessons in English to help make that possible.

This was a good experience for me because for the first time I began to meet a real person to replace the stereotype of the dark-skinned migrant that so many of us seem to carry here in Malta. As I listened to him more, I came to understand better both why he had left his native home and the difficulties he continued to face in his new life in Malta.

Osama explained why he and two of his closest friends had decided to leave home. Each, it was said, was being asked by their respective families to kill one another to atone for inter-family grievances. Friendship, in short, was to be sacrificed for “family honour”. Instead, Osama and his best friends chose to leave. No doubt, the horrors of civil war were factors in their decision too, reflected so graphically in Osama’s account of the “brothers’ circle” he and his friends had once made to protect their sisters from rape by marauding militia.

The escape was long and perilous, first across lawless territory in Sudan, then through Libya’s vast desert to Tripoli and, finally, upon the Mediterranean’s cruel seas in a rickety boat. Ultimately, fate led Osama to Malta’s shores. Incarcerated for a lengthy period at Ħal Far, he finally found a place to live and to work in a new and seemingly safe land.

Yet, things were not always easy in Malta. Osama would relate how some Maltese would speak openly of their hatred for migrants in front of him and their surprise when he would smile and reply politely in Maltese.

Yet, many Maltese made him feel welcome here and responded easily to his sweet personality.

He had, for example, an exceptionally kind landlady who bore patiently with the ups and downs of a migrant’s life and prospects.

He once faced an unscrupulous boss in Fgura who sought to cheat him of his pay, just as he had so successfully done with many other migrants before him.

Only the intervention of the Emigrants Commission and Osama’s persistence finally made this deadbeat employer pay up.

Yet, his work elsewhere, mostly in hotels, earned him his employers’ respect and even promotion, though the pay he received was scarcely sufficient to cover his rent and necessities.

Osama, like so many other migrants, learned how to navigate in a new social world of alcohol and women.

He would often marvel at the fascination and sexual attraction shown by Maltese and other European women toward black and Arabic men.

Life seemed to him so sweet in this respect and, yet, it could also bring new difficulties, especially with interested women who also exercised some authority over him.

In time, however, Osama settled down in a steady relationship with a Polish girl with whom he felt much more happily grounded.

Osama’s forte was surely friendship. It was here where he shone.

Hence, it was scarcely surprising that so many friends appeared at this young man’s funeral.

But, in fact, his closest circle of family and friends showed a more powerful proof of friendship by the way in which they handled Osama’s ledger of obligations.

Inside a small notebook they found in Osama’s room were listed his debts outstanding.

One by one, his friends sought out those to whom Osama owed money and offered to pay these debts from their own meager resources so that Osama’s spirit might rest in peace.

Most of his creditors honorably refused this generous offer of payment. This is perhaps the best tribute to the man they called Sunshine, a sad but fitting testament to the man Osama was.

He will be sorely missed.