Although diplomacy is not what you are best known for, nevertheless you have dawdled on its fringes for most of your life. How did you react to the farewell by the US Ambassador?

I greatly regret the rapidity with which he tendered his resignation, especially because the motivation given was fear that due credit would not be given to his interpretation of Maltese affairs if he was under some sort of cloud with the State Department.

No doubt, many Maltese would have deemed it a small price to pay for the continuation for some more time of Douglas Kmiec’s contribution to our culture. As for myself, in my role as literary critic, I could only interpret the text by the State Department Inspector as a minor masterpiece of Pynchonian irony.

Developments in North Africa gave to his post in Malta, as was highlighted in the ambassador’s letter of resignation, an extra interest as a privileged Mediterranean observatory.

Actually it brought about the curious situation that Kmiec was no unique exception as a diplomat who fell under a very odd meteorological darkish phenomenon. It happened to practically all his diplo colleagues.

The sniffing capacity of their supposedly hound-like nostrils is being underrated in the media, if not by the State Department, for their failure to catch a premonitory whiff or two of the soon-to-burgeon Arab Spring.

I have already named here several academics, demographers and sociologists, who had, on the contrary, smelt out the fumes steaming from the potent brew that was being at the time semi-consciously concocted in Maghreb and Mashrek. I did not, however, mention the site where the harbinger signs were easiest to detect: Arab cartoons.

Some years ago, I read a paper at a Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (Medac) seminar, called ‘To joke or not to joke – a diplomatic dilemma’. The then Swiss director of Medac had introduced my talk by saying that he had learnt from Umberto Eco’s first novel The Name of the Rose, that some clerics had problems with laughter provocation (with the Gospels recording Jesus weeping, but not laughing), not diplomats.

It did not cross my mind on that occasion that having a dig at the faithful might be a professional propensity of diplo-monitors; so I proceeded as planned to quote sundry instances of diplomats who had got into hot water through indulgence in national-stereotype jokes.

My main point, however, was rather that while Jewish farceurs were hugely appreciated, there was only niggardly awareness of the decisive political influence wielded by Arab comedians, especially cartoonists.

Admittedly, in France a word has been coined for them: beur, yet the broadest hints of the Arab awakening in the cartoons (despite my talk!) were apparently not grasped by the relevant diplomatic corps.

One reason for this selective blindness might well be the notorious difficulty of getting the point of a joke in a foreign language, even if in the form of caricature.

In this connection a Maltese perspective was advantageous because of not so much geographic as linguistic proximity.

One necessary key to nuanced understanding of illusive Arab humorous subtexts surely is an ecumenical grasp of the tangled web of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, perhaps even more of the segments of the spectrum of Islam, from the fundamentalist to the reasonably tolerant and dialogic.

That is why my only reading of the Inspectorate’s remark that concern with respectful interfaith relations was a distraction from the core business of the American Mission in Malta is that it must be a brand of US humour.

Why is it that many Maltese were disappointed at the turn of events?

I am certain that hardly anyone of us wants to advise the big shots across the Atlantic on how they should do their job, but I cannot help feeling they may not have appreciated how brilliant a move the assignment of Kmiec to Malta was.

Everyone could guess that his blend of Catholicism and public law expertise would make him exceptionally welcome to the Christian Democrat Party in government, but his having incurred some bishop’s censure for his support of Barack Obama gave the opposition also unusual scope to empathise with him.

You said that personally you regarded the emerging plot of this story as a joke. Does this have any logical connection with the view you expressed some weeks ago of God’s governance of history having the structure of a comedy?

An experience which incited me to this way of thinking was the first occasion when I visited Libya.

A two-man delegation consisting of Fr Dionysius Mintoff and myself had been invited to Tripoli in the 1970s (at the behest, I was told, of Muammar Gaddafi himself) to discuss with a top official development of cultural relations with Malta.

When we arrived at our rendezvous, we were firmly told that the top official could not see us.

When our insistence got no results, I resorted to the Maltese ambassador, who was Evarist Saliba. He taught me that the appropriate way to react was with a sense of humour.

He assured me that there had been no change of policy on the Libyan side. It was a clear illustration of the Pynchonian view of history.

The top official really could not have been the gracious host he surely meant to be, because the space was too restricted wherein he had found himself confined within the last 24 hours.

The humour in the situation was not even black, because the dark cloud of the moment would soon pass away.

At that time I never thought that the lesson would be useful with regard to an American ambassador in Malta.

All this leads to only one possible conclusion in only one possible (clerihew) format:

Douglas Kmiec
got a tweak.
It did not please
many Maltese.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.