Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/408403
14 Who's afraid of a pair of jeans? With Halloween weekend drawing to a close, TEODOR RELJIC asked a number of personalities to recall their childhood fears… and how they defeated them Trevor Zahra Author "The statue of Christ carrying the cross, that formed part of the Good Friday set of vari, was my childhood nightmare. His penetrating gaze and his posture used to bring shiver into my spine. It is the only statue that's crawling on the ground, like a tiger making ready to pounce on its prey. "All through Lent, I dreaded our vis- its to church… and given that during the 50s, we lived in a religion-oriented community, these visits were the order of the day. I used to have night- mares where I found myself trapped in an empty church, during the night, and this par- ticular statue came to life and Christ came running after me, attacking me with the cross and his bleeding body. "When childhood turned to adolescence, I had to hide these fears, because they could bring mockery, ridicule and scorn. So shame was added to fear. "Adulthood dissolved away all these fears. But nightmares remained and became regular nocturnal visitors. I was mid- dle aged and still had these dramatic nightmares which, through the years, extended and concocted their horrifying variants. "How I got over it for good was very strange: I compiled every- thing and molded this experi- ence into a short story, entitled 'Vari' which can be found in my book Lubien. Since the publica- tion of this short story all my nightmares vanished into thin air… and the statue carried my cross away into oblivion." maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2014 Halloween