A woman who lived through the war and received her doctorate aged 82 is publishing a book about everything that happened in between.

“I wish that whoever picks up this book in 50 years’ time understands that, if a woman born before the war was still living her dreams in her 80s, then they too can make it,” Doris Cannataci, now 84, told this newspaper.

Dr Cannataci qualified to join the university in 1949, just two years after the granting of universal suffrage in local elections. It took her another 49 years to graduate because of a whirlwind of curious events, but she is now the proud owner of a BA in religious studies, an MA in Theology an MPhil in Theology and a PhD.

When listening to Dr Cannataci recount her adventures, you forget she is 84 years old because she projects herself as being at least 20 years younger.

And if you are wondering about this woman’s lucidity, this is her own reply­­­: “One may ask: is your mind lucid enough to go back such a long stretch? If you would like to know, you can join me on my journey,” she says in the introduction to her book called I remember, I remember…

He still persisted throughout the novena, asking: how are the saints voting for me?

The book, penned in the first person, is an account  of a woman who did not always conform to the 1950s’ expectations of women.

“I had decided I was too young to marry at 20. I was happy and well-loved at home, I enjoyed travelling and decided I should not marry before turning 30,” she says smiling.

Flagged by her two best friends, 20-year-old Doris used to walk up and down Kingsway (as Republic Street was then called), making new acquaintances on the way, as was the trend. Her curfew was 9pm, which she once managed to miss by two hours.

“I think all three of us were short-sighted and there was this particular long-sighted young man who would spot us the minute we turned up at Valletta... every single time. We used to refer to him as a ‘real bother’… but he went on to be my husband of 56 years. My friends and I used to say we’ll only marry a DTH – short for dark, tall and handsome – and, with Richard, I did get my D, somewhat T and H,” she adds, laughing.

Richard Cannataci did not start off on the right foot with the young woman and the first time he exclaimed he fancied her on December 8, the feast of Our Lady, she “nearly slapped him”.

“I wanted to tell him no straightaway, instead, as an excuse, I told him I would do a novena (nine-day prayer) and that I would give him an answer after that. He still persisted throughout the novena, asking: how are the saints voting for me?”

Dr Cannataci’s book gives an interesting account of courting 60 years ago and of her marriage in 1957, which she calls “D Day”.

It includes several memories of the late Mr Cannataci, who passed away after battling three illnesses over 14 years.

Some of her anecdotes will serve as inspiration, such as winning a bursary to study at the Université De Grenoble with three teenagers when she was aged 41 – two decades after she had to give up a scholarship at the same city in France. Others will give the younger generations a peek into Maltese life during the war.­­­­­-­­

Doris was the first and only girl after seven boys, born into a Christian family to André and Rosaria Catania, eight years before the war came to Malta.

Despite inheriting no royal blood, she was treated like a princess. When her brother, Paul, complained that on his own birthday she was given as many sweets as he was, his father shushed him and said: “She is just a sample. We don’t have another one like her.”

The girl’s world turned upside down in August of 1939, just before the war broke out, when her father, then Treasury Cashier of Malta, passed away suddenly aged 45. Still, life went on and the family survived the “long, terrible and harrowing” experience of the war.

Evicted from their house in Ħamrun to one in Gozo, which they shared with another Maltese refugee family, she recalls “playing soldiers”. With a piece of cane instead of a gun, propped up on her shoulder, she was proudly assigned the rank of sergeant among her peers.

Their Ħamrun house was unfortunately blitzed and looted, so when they returned to Malta when things were quietening down, they stayed in St Paul’s Bay, from where she had to travel to Valletta every single day for school.

Schooling was, in fact, one of the things that continued unabated during the war and Dr Cannataci remembers rushing to the underground shelters, sirens blaring and the Director of Education saying: “Bombs or no bombs, education must go on.”

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