Last Thursday evening when just about to land in Malta on the way back from Rome, the captain announced that a military jet had made an emergency landing and that we would have to circle a bit till the airport was cleared. About a quarter of an hour later he announced that the airport was closed and that we would have to divert to Catania. Mercifully 20 minutes into our detour to Sicily we got the news that the airport had been reopened and that we could go home after all which was a relief for although an unforeseen diversion may sound like fun, normal people have schedules to follow and concerns to run so that this unwanted sojourn in Catania would have been regarded by most of us as little more than an inconvenience to be borne patiently and with resignation.
There are so many loose ends and so many unanswered questions to this huge turmoil…- Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Despite the grumbling on the plane and the grumbling online when a few hours later the details appeared, I cannot but admire the prudence and safety-consciousness of Malta International Airport and Air Malta in this regard and reiterate, not for the first time, that despite most of us keeping eyes wide shut about Libya and the ginormous tragedy unfolding there, we do live cheek by jowl next to a war zone and that things like this do and will happen.
The occasional howls and laments about our supposedly violated neutrality when things like this occur make me laugh at best and tear my hair out at worst. One can only truly be neutral when one is richer than Croesus and also has the Midas touch to sustain it indefinitely; both of which we Maltese certainly do not have. Malta has to work, like most of us do, very hard for its money and in these particular cases, citing neutrality simply does not pay; either financially or politically.
I believe that our search and rescue zone,which is equal to our airspace in size, which is equal to “impressively vast” in real terms, rains money on us like the biblical manna and that, added to the fact that we are currying favour with our European and Nato allies, will ensure that the money will keep coming. The fact that we have actively supported the international no-fly zone decision and that we have extended as much humanitarian aid as possible is a feather in our cap. The government has played its cards prudently and I believe that all’s well that ends well and if and when the Libyan conflict is resolved, we will once again reap the benefits of neighbourhood with such a rich country without having to dance deadly lobster quadrilles with a madman; at least let’s hope so.
With the world’s economy teetering on the edge of an abyss, bearing the responsibility for the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people is no picnic and when one thinks of the millions within the EU for instance and the trillions who are in the maelstroms of the Arab Spring one really cannot help but ask whether we are at war or not.
I believe we are and have been since 9/11; 10 years of violence that have escalated slowly but inexorably into a state where the world looks as if it is about to conflagrate any minute and blow us to kingdom come unless Vesuvius pips everyone to the post; for although the blood of San Gennaro did liquefy last Tuesday without much help from his donne the volcano looks pretty menacing and its cone seems to have grown larger since I last saw it. Who can be afraid of a mere missile or two when there’s Vesuvius?
With all the dreadfully bloody scenarios unfolding around us it is ironic that we manage to carry on with our lives as if nothing had happened at all. I was thinking just that on the ferryboat from Amalfi to Capri last Wednesday. There we were with that incomparably dramatic seacoast unfolding itself like a vast tapestry before us and enjoying the natural beauty of the world while within a few hundred miles of us people are dying for their country in a mortal struggle to achieve what we take for granted; democracy. How can we even contemplate peace and serenity amid scenes of the Lampedusa riots on our TV screens? In Egypt we seem to have drawn a blank while the bloodletting in Syria and Yemen is shocking us more every day. Where and when will it all end?
Can we truly believe that these countries which had so savagely controlled religious fundamentalism with an iron fist for so long will now be able to strike a balance between this same fundamentalism and a fledgling democracy? Will the governments that eventually may be formed in these countries prove to be like that of poor Kerensky in 1917 to be followed by repression that was hard to equal and which outdid, by far, the worst excesses of Ivan the Terrible?
There are so many loose ends and so many unanswered questions to this huge turmoil that rumbles like a distant thunderstorm from the Middle East to the Maghreb.
We regard it with the same fascinating detachment as the people of Naples and the Campania regard Vesuvius. They know and we know that there is a very serious chance of it blowing us all to smithereens; sooner rather than later, yet it is so much better to live in a state of denial and carry on with our lives as if nothing had happened; a fool’s paradise or a psychological defence mechanism that we turn off and on at will or if, God forbid, we are forced to.
kzt@onvol.net