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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 DECEMBER 2022 8 INTERVIEW Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt 'Nothing new under the sun' With hindsight, 'Taht Il-Kappa Tax-Xemx' appears almost 'pro- phetic', in some respects. One of the stories is about a proposed golf-course right next to Ggan- tija temples; another (It-Torri Tal-Kummerc) accurately fore- shadows the mad scramble for high-rise, in the wake of the Portomaso Hilton Tower. And yet, the initial critical reaction wasn't exactly very 'positive', was it? Writing in the Sunday Times, Paul Xuereb noted that: 'Like most satirists, [Schembri] sometimes lets his fancy run away with him'. Looking back: why do you think there was much resistance to your 'dysto- pian future vision', at the time? And how much of it do you feel has been vindicated, since? In a way, it does feel like I've been vindicated. Because as you said, the book was dismissed, at the time: first of all, on the grounds that it 'wasn't really lit- erature': but more like 'journalis- tic commentary about what was going on'; and even then: only my own 'warped projection of reali- ty'… Not all the initial reactions were negative, however. Here, I'd like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to Mario Azzopardi [Il- Mulej]: who was my mentor; and without whom I would never have written the book at all. But coming back to what it felt like to me, at the time: I don't think it was all that 'prophetic', really. I was just a 23-year-old, frustrated journalist, who was commenting – in a very thin- ly-veiled fictitious way – about what I was seeing all around me. So if everything I wrote about, is still happening now… it's on- ly because it was also happening then. You mentioned Ggantija, for instance: one of the [real] stories I worked on, was that a sports complex had been proposed - and was being backed by Fenech Adami's administration – to be built right next to the temple it- self. So really, all I was doing was taking things that were already happening, and giving them a satirical bent to make them look ridiculous. So my conclusion, 20 years on, is that… the faces have changed, but we're still stuck with the same old 'skeletons'. The Tumas Fenech empire, for instance – that seems to have allegedly led to the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia – wasn't built 'today'. It's been going on forev- er. Another story I had worked on, back then, was about Charles [ic-Caqnu] Polidano, who had stopped paying his employees – from one day, to the next – be- cause the Planning Authority had imposed a fine, over a planning infringement. These things not only hap- pened, in 2002; but I could also see that they were being taken very lightly, at the time. As a very young, very inexperienced journalist, I had done quite a lot of work as a court reporter… and I remember being stunned, and shocked, by the sheer incompe- tence of the police, and the judi- ciary; and by the disdain shown by most lawyers towards their own clients (whom they very of- ten completely misrepresented). It was, quite frankly, the order of the day. And now, 20 years later, the same law-courts set the date for a domestic violence case, for within a year. They knew that this woman – Bernice Cassar – was at risk of being killed; and OK, we all know that 'there's a backlog of cases', and all that… but still. Bernice Cassar is now dead; and its down to the same incompetence of the authorities, that I was writing about 20 whole years ago. The same incompetence is still haunting us, today. And it's fatal. It led, among other things, to the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia: so much of which still re- mains uncovered … At the risk of a controversial question, however: what you're saying contradicts the wide- ly-accepted narrative surround- ing Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder. The judicial inquiry, or instance, concluded that the Labour government under Jo- seph Muscat was responsible for 'creating the circumstances that led to her murder'. What you're now telling me, however, is that those conditions actually existed long before Muscat even became Prime Minister. Is that how you see things, yourself? Well: that's an important ques- tion, actually. And I would say that: yes, I do agree with that conclusion. As I said earlier: the skeletons of the past, are still haunting us today. Nothing came out of nowhere… … which, if I'm not mistaken, is the entire significance of the title, 'Taht Il-Kappa Tax-Xemx'.. Yes, it's a quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes: one of the most interesting books of the Old Tes- tament – and certainly the most existential – that says, 'The sun rises; the sun sets; and nothing new happens under the sun'. But that, I think, is also the ex- istential question for any jour- nalist to ask. Because a journalist reports daily events – under the guise of 'news' – but we all know that the same things have been happening, over and over again, since time immemorial. At the same time, however: some things have changed, in the details, since 2002. Apart from the way that the media functions – and especially social media, which didn't even exist at the time – the one thing I think has changed the most, is the 'pre- tence of piety'. As you no doubt remember, my book came out at a time of ultra-conservatism in govern- ment. So there was also the need to keep up a certain appearance of 'devout Christianity'; a certain 'moral standard', that – howev- er hypocritical, in nature – had to be maintained, at least on the surface. In practice, this meant that… corruption was, up to a point, 'only allowed to go so far'. There was a feeling, in government, that: "We cannot allow ourselves to be 'overshadowed' by these in- fringements'. For instance, when you look back at how the Na- tionalist Party had disowned Jef- frey Pullicino Orlando [in 2008], because of… a nightclub, of all things! I mean, what the fuck was that all about, anyway? Why It was 20 years ago today (almost) that journalist/ author KARL SCHEMBRI launched his first collection of short stories, entitled 'Taht Il-Kappa Tax-Xemx' – now reprinted, along with the original Greta Borg Carbot illustrations, as a commemorative issue. But have things really remained as 'unchanged' as the title implies, since 2002? PHOTO: JRAY ATTARD / MALTATODAY