Clare Azzopardi, Gilbert Calleja, Nathalie Grima:
il-Maltin fl-Art Imqaddsa u lil Hinn
Merlin Publishers, 2015.

This is a handsome and somewhat heavy, volume in a large format. It consists of several short chapters in which Maltese, mainly religious, are interviewed about what took them to the Holy Land, what they do there and what they think and feel about Palestine and Israel, and about the life and work they perform in one of the most troubled areas in the world.

The text is written feelingly and with beautiful lightness by Clare Azzopardi, a well-known author of fiction and of children’s books, and the many, often magnificent, photographs by Gilbert Calleja that give added light to the text and make the whole book a pleasure to handle. Nathalie Grima was responsible for setting up the interviews both in Malta and in the Holy Land and for the actual interviewing.

One or two people were interviewed in Malta where they had returned after several years in the Holy Land, but most of them were interviewed in their convent or home by the authors.

Many readers will certainly be struck by the way in which the nuns interviewed have been, and remain, dedicated to the people of this land they have so devotedly served, a devotion that makes practically all of them declare they do not intend to ever come back to die in Malta, even those of them who still feel they are Maltese at heart. One nun proudly declares: “Rabtija kont u Rabtija nibqa” (I was, and remain, a woman from Rabat), but the fine loving work she does with children and old people makes her feel that her home is now in the Holy Land.

Another nun, coming from a middle-class Sliema family, who suffered great privations and the constant fear of violence during the second Intifada, shows why the desire to remain there is not simply an emotional one. Sr Patricia (Rhoda) Crockford, a nun of St Joseph, teaches music at the University of Bethlehem, which was created following the visit in the Holy Land of Pope Paul VI. She says: “I take time, I take time off for prayer. I need it, otherwise I won’t be able to stay.”

Not all interviewees are religious people. Some live in the Holy Land due to marriage.Not all interviewees are religious people. Some live in the Holy Land due to marriage.

The nuns make it clear that they give loving and dedicated service to all those who need it, whether Christian, Muslim or Jew

A Franciscan nun, Sr Maria Grech, also in Bethlehem, has done a great job in attracting funds for renovating the houses in which many Palestinians live. She gets work for the unemployed and scholarships for students, telling God to stop sending money her way if he wants her to leave. But he never does that.

Some of the nuns reveal they have become mother figures to the Palestinian children they serve, and are proud of the fact that mothers who were formerly the nuns’ students still feel lovingly beholden to them. The nuns make it clear that they give loving and dedicated service to all those who need it, whether Christian, Muslim or Jew. At least one of them sees this as reflecting the ecumenical nature of the mission she sees herself as carrying out. Some of them are nurses in hospitals, such at the Hospital of St Louis in Jerusalem of which Sr Antida Vella is head nurse in the operating theatre.

Azzopardi’s text reveals again and again how she admires them and is touched by their personalities and by the feeling they infuse in what they do. Admiration also infuses Calleja’s frequently first-rate photographs that make us see the subjects always as loving persons and sometimes as semi-heroic figures.

I find the priests to be slightly less impressive figures, perhaps because the interviewers may have delved less deeply into their personality than they did with the nuns, but also because they do not seem to deal half as much with human problems as most of the nuns seem to do.

The Salesian Fr Aurelio Mulè, interviewed in Malta, spent 13 years in the Holy Land, teaching theology to fill a gap. He ended up staying there for much longer than he had thought. He did not feel he was a missionary and his main extra-academic work seems to have been directing a choir, but he never even learned Arabic. His heart does not seem to have been in that land and, though the Salesians have some properties there, none of their members are actually there.

The Franciscan friars, on the other hand, are there and have been there a long time like the Franciscan nuns. In fact, the friars are the Guardians of the Holy Sepulchre and Fr Noel Muscat, one of the book’s interviewees, has been representing the friar who is the official guardian for some time.

Karl Schembri spent years writing reports on the region.Karl Schembri spent years writing reports on the region.

The Holy Sepulchre is controlled by the Franciscans, Armenian priests and Greek Orthodox priests and Azzopardi gives us a straight-faced account of the semi-comical way, to my mind, in which the door of the sanctuary is opened and shut every day. Muscat sees hearing confessions as an important function he carries out, revealing that his penitents have included even bishops.

Like Pope John Paul II, he feels the Holy Land needs bridges and not the forbidding material and mental walls that have been built. Unlike the nuns, he does not seem to be completely happy there, and looks forward to returning one day to his convent in Malta where the important library and archives will receive his attention.

The interviewees not belonging to religious orders include a Maltese women married to an Israeli. Daniela Londner lives a fulfilling life in a fine house. Unlike many of the nuns, who have suffered with the Palestinians and hate the dividing wall the Israelis have built, she says: “The wall was the thing that saved us from more and more suicide attacks.”

The text is written feelingly and with beautiful lightness

She admits she feels more Israeli with the passage of time. One cannot blame her, with her Israeli husband and comfortable living, for feeling this, but one thinks sadly of the nuns who love the Palestinians and long to see them happy.

On the other hand, Marisa Kemper is married to a Palestinian and lives in a nice flat in Ramallah. She is not unhappy, but fears what the future may bring, forcing her to leave with her family to Montreal in Canada, where she was brought up, or else to Malta, which she describes as forti protettiva.

Some of the nuns are nurses in hospitals.Some of the nuns are nurses in hospitals.

Karl Schembri, journalist and author, has spent years in Gaza and Ramallah, writing reports on intifadas and doing jobs such as that of media officer for Oxfam.

He has written greatly respected Maltese verse about living and suffering in Gaza, where he mostly lives. Clearly, he is a supporter of the Palestinian cause but admits he did not find it comfortable to live in Gaza. The people there, who have been cut off by the situation with the rest of the world, are curious about and suspicious of outsiders, prone to envy and great gossips. Schembri was very upset when an Italian friend of his, a pacifist, was murdered and, at present, he is much happier living in Jordan, where he works for Save the Children.

Finally, I can’t not mention Calleja’s very fine pictures of churches, such as those at Haifa or on the Mount of the Beatitudes, as well as the grim ones of the separating wall built by the Israelis.

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