I could so easily write a scathing piece about the ill-conceived logistics of exam administration, and how absolutely ridiculous it is to have to drive your son or daughter to an O level in the south of Malta when you live in the north. Wouldn’t it be easier, not least for our children, if they didn’t have to venture outside their own town or village and could walk to their exam? Just think what that could do for traffic (and obesity?).
You see, this is the sort of planning that needs to happen on Malta and, given our size, it should really be a cinch. It’s all very well to experiment with tidal lanes and swanky electronic traffic signs, but nothing beats practicality and common sense. If you want to ease traffic congestion, get cars off the roads altogether. Don’t double or triple the congestion unnecessarily.
Our education and transport ministers should sit down with the Matsec board and work out a smart, sensible plan where people from St Julian’s don’t need to schlep to Santa Luċija and those who live in Cospicua don’t need to traverse to Birkirkara and beyond.
Because unless you live in the south or the immediate vicinity, chances are you’ll never have heard of St Thomas More Girls Secondary School. Which can only mean that you – and hundreds of other understandably anxious parents – will clog the roads on the big day, and even before, on practice runs.
You slowly begin to understand why, come April, to the ire of other commuters, our roads are suddenly teeming with curb-crawling parents frantically looking for school signage. The only sign I ever come across is ‘Ċentru Leap’. I have no idea what it means except that it’s the most frequently signposted place in Malta. I just wish I needed to go there.
Admittedly, we’re a spoiled lot. We constantly complain that Malta’s too small, and then we cling to our comfort zones, making it even smaller. Believe me when I say that were it not for traffic, I’d never have raised the examinations issue. I’ve rather enjoyed the O level run – snooping around unfamiliar schools, chatting up janitors and security guards and generally making a nuisance of myself.
Which is how I came to visit the Addolorata last Tuesday. It was either the airport, the Chinese Garden of Serenity or Malta’s necropolis, and I opted for the latter. With a population of 300,000, it is arguably Malta’s largest city.
I know that the place is suffering from deep and serious neglect and, like its inhabitants, is destined to die
I’ve always greatly admired the Gothic spire and sylvan setting of our cemetery, but bereavement doesn’t lend itself to a relaxed sight-seeing experience. In fact, I’ve always been very happy to drive past and rattle off the Requiem Eternam from a safe distance.
Indeed, I had never before stopped to think or even look at Emmanuele Luigi Galizia’s glorious Gothic Revival buildings, so wonderfully out of place and distinguished in the Mediterranean and Marsa.
Ironically, if the Addolorata were anywhere else in the world, the Maltese would flock there in droves to admire its beauty, as would many others. And although Galizia’s lodges, his ascending ramps and stairs, the crowning Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows and many beautiful monuments, are still there – just about – one seriously wonders whether they will survive another 150 years, or even 50.
I’m in two minds about whether I should be writing this piece. On the one hand, I know that the place is suffering from deep and serious neglect and, like its inhabitants, is destined to die. On the other hand, I should not want its faded glory and patina to be whitewashed, tarted up, or God forbid, ‘embellished’.
Yet the fact remains that the stone, which must have been originally of superb quality, is crumbling. Pinnacles and finials have dropped off, and the gothic balustrades – as delicate almost as filigree – are eroded and missing. Somewhere in a corner, you’ll see a pile of rubble, bits of masonry carved long ago by master craftsmen that have fallen to the ground.
The same is true of the family chapels and mausoleums, some of which are very beautiful indeed. Only a handful seem to be well maintained.
The place seems abandoned and forgotten, like much of the really good stuff in Malta, where restoration and maintenance are so sadly lacking. Funds, it seems, are non-existent. This may not be the Knights of St John ‘Heritage Malta’ package, but it is still architecture to preserve and be proud of.
The really extraordinary thing, of course, is that Addolorata is ‘us’ – all of us. It’s authentic not touristic Malta, and it’s the resting place of so many of our relatives and ancestry; a place where history comes together – family names, band clubs, religious orders, men and women of great distinction, the common graves, the children, even the infamous ‘Profane’ division.
And yet, it’s shockingly neglected.
First and foremost, given its architectural importance and its solemn status as hallowed ground, the cemetery needs to be properly safeguarded. I’m talking police presence and patrol.
Secondly, the entire area must be cleaned up – not just the fly tipping that has found its way to the left of the main gate but also the surrounding industrial sprawl and the bewilderingly inappropriate scrap yard of crushed car(casses) across the road.
And as for those ghastly tower blocks on the other side dwarfing the Addolorata, I’d much rather see them dead and dynamited. Again, it makes you wonder where Mepa was while all this was happening. Of course, the dead don’t vote, so that might explain the sanctioning.
The Addolorata really is a microcosm of Malta. Everything we battle over in our lives, all the national narratives and agendas, the slow crumbling of Malta’s masterpieces, the litter, the neglect and the dust – they’re all there. Perhaps the Addolorata is a sermon in stone (and dust) on the way we live our lives. Because perhaps, in the end, cemeteries tell us much more about the living than the dead.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com