Ħadd Ma Jista’ Jidħak Jew Jiekol Pastizzi Tal-Piżelli
by Trevor Zahra
Merlin pp 142
ISBN: 978-999091369-9
Sarcastic, witty, funny and playful, Trevor Zahra’s latest work throws its spotlight on the Maltese language, whose speakers seem to have forgotten or rather taken for granted just how flexible their mother language is, twisting and turning with good-natured raillery and teasing riddles.
Ħadd ma Jista’ Jidħak jew Jiekol Pastizzi tal-Piżelli opens with a description of Kartaksan, the country where the story is set. The name of the country suggests a play on words, echoing kartanzjan (the pass for the elderly), Borat’s Kazakhstan, and the word għaks, meaning misery or low standard of living.
The story sets off when the king, young Karl VII falls in love with his first wife Prima (meaning first), who has a fixation with eating ice cream.
One of the most brilliantly executed pieces in the book is when the king writes Prima a romantic letter using her name as the key word of all the reasons he can come up with for loving her: “Int il-Primavera ta’ qalbi” (you are the spring in my heart) and “Int in-numru tal-Prima tiegħi” (you are my ‘prima’ in the lottery).
The king’s second wife, aptly named Sekondina (the second one) is a dark version of Rapunzel.
Mr Zahra dedicates a chapter, entitled Xuxa Fatali (fatal mane), to her – in this chapter, poor Sekondina meets her tragic end after she dies smothered with her own hair which grows and puffs out the size of a large Australian bush, after a maid employed specifically by the king to help wash the queen’s hair, uses a different kind of shampoo.
Terzetta (the third one), the king’s third wife, hails from a country called Kċina, which in the vernacular means kitchen but is also a reference to China.
Terzetta gathers her long curly black hair on the top of her head and instead of using rubber band and clips, uses kitchen utensils made of pure gold. She also dies after an unfortunate accident involving her cow-like pet.
However, the main storyline revolves around a man named Baldu Baldakkino, who is bald, obese, loves to eat pastizzi (cheesecakes) and has an insufferable laughing fit condition. Baldu takes care of his 12-year-old niece Grancella. The latter is highly intelligent yet suffers from a strange condition called Reverse Osmosis, which makes her walk backwards.
After the king’s favourite pet, his parrot Vit-Kin-Xtajn (Wittgenstein) dies after swallowing his own tongue repeating a rhyme the king taught him (taken from one of Mr Zahra’s books) for two weeks on end, the king issues a proclamation that laughing in Kartaksan is banned. Whoever breaks this law will be sent to prison.
If the prisoners laugh while incarcerated, they will be given 30 beatings. And if prisoners insist on laughing, their body would be morbidly cut into pieces and buried in six different places.
Given his laughing fit condition, Baldu is the first to be arrested, despite Grancella’s desperate attempts to cover his face with gauze and other material. Grancella decides to go to court to defend him, where she is challenged to a public game of charades on the following day.
Mr Zahra’s shabby-looking mop-haired heroine and her bat-pet friends (everybody in Karzakhistan seems to have a pet) appear the next day amid a throng of crowd with banners reading “Grancella Two Say Bella, Grazjoza e Znella” (Grancella you are beautiful, gracious and slim) and “Grancella ju ar di wann end ownli ekspert off di Hagi-Moghgagijiet” (Grancella you are the one and only charades expert).
Mr Zahra’s masterful use, appreciation, pride and love for his mother tongue blooms throughout the book as he plays and jokes with the Maltese language, using it wisely and humorously throughout. The glossary at the back of the book is comically ridiculous, not to mention the solutions to the riddles and charades (also at the back).
Those who love reading in Maltese and enjoy a certain comic flair should definitely have this on their must-read list.
• Ms Gatt is a teacher of English at St Augustine College.
A review copy of this title was supplied by Merlin Library Ltd.