The Malta Independent on Sunday
A Libyan exile in Siena
The leader of the Russian Opposition has enough sympathy and support to compete for the Russian presidency. Will Malta feel any change if he could take this post in the future?
Author: Hisham Matar Publisher: Penguin Viking Year: 2019 Pages: 118
The author was born in New York City to Libyan parents and spent his childhood first in Tripoli and then Cairo. His father, Jaballa, was a vocal critic of Muammar Gaddafi and he was working in the Libyan delegation to the United Nations when his son Hisham was born.
In 1993, the family moved back to Tripoli but had to flee in 1979 due to harassment and threats by the Gaddafi regime. They went to Cairo where the father became even more vocal in his opposition to the regime.
Hisham was about to follow his elder brother to a school in Switzerland but more threats led the family to send him under an assumed name to a school in England.
In1990, when Hisham was still studying in Britain, his father was abducted in Cairo. In a letter he managed to send to his family in 1996, Jaballa said he had been abducted by the Egyptian secret service and handed over to the Libyans who imprisoned him in the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. That was the last the family heard from him, despite some reports he had been seen elsewhere.
Hisham is the author of two novels, In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance, and a work of non-fiction,
The Return.
In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the National Critics Book Circle Award in the US and won six international literary awards.
The book follows the plight of Suleiman, a nine-year-old boy living in Tripoli with a father a vocal critic of the Gaddafi regime, harassed by the secret service, and a mother who turns to drink because of the tension and the threats.
Matar’s second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, tells the story of a boy, Nuri, whose father is abducted by the secret service of his country while he was living in Switzerland.
Hisham has warned readers against reading the story as a thinly disguised autobiography, despite the many similarities.
The Return won a Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Folio Prize and was shortlisted for many other awards including the Baillie Gifford Prize.
The memoire, published in 2016, is Hisham’s account of how he returned to Libya after the revolution that removed Gaddafi from power and his fruitless search for his father.
In this most recent book, the author cuts off all connections with his mother country and goes for some weeks to the city which has always been his dream – Siena.
He wanders around its crooked streets, spends many hours inside its art museums, meets people from all over the place, both Italian and foreign, and reflects on all that he has experienced. His wife, Diana, accompanied him on his arrival but then had to return to their house in London.
Left on his own, the author reflects on selected works of art that he comes across. He is struck by meanings hidden in the masterpieces he studies. Rather than a brisk walk around a museum, this meander gets him to notice correlations and significances not otherwise discernible. Among the artists whose select works he studies he includes Duccio di Buoninsegna, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
His days in Siena are not just an art tour. He also meets people, most of them previously unknown, such as a fellow Arab from Jordan and his already integrated children, his teacher of Italian who, being from Calabria, is more near to him than to other Italians around them, and most of all an old friend, living out in the country, with two bathtubs in one room, for her and for her (dead) husband.
One may wonder at the juxtapositioning of people from such different cultures, though this is relatively muted because his Libyan Islamic background is tempered by his years in a Catholic college in Britain which left a deeper impact on him.
The stay in Siena over, he, and hopefully the reader, are left with a far better appreciation of life and art. No clashes of civilizations here. The son of the Gaddafi critic, who disappeared, probably killed, turns a new leaf. He becomes a new European, not a religious fundamentalist, but a cultured, serene man at peace with himself and the world around him.
If there is any political life in Russia today, its driver is Alexei Navalny. Hundreds of thousands of people, putting themselves at risk of being beaten by police officers or at the very least losing their jobs, go to the icy streets to support his manifestations. "I am not afraid and you should not be afraid." By the way, desperate courage is generally the highlight of the politician's programme; which confuses even his loyal followers, as there is not much explicit sense in such heroism, as they say.
But even from prison, he has written a post, which inspired the band Elysium to write a song which goes with these words:
Hello, this is Navalny speaking There is no other life I am seeking.
Another group of citizens expresses their sympathy in other ways since Russia has been actively developing institutions of civil mutual aid in recent years. People are learning to take care of themselves: collectively, they gather parcels to be sent to special detention centres, transport
political prisoners back home with their personal vehicles and send donations en masse. There are those who just silently observe. Some don't understand and condemn. But almost all are unanimous in the opinion that there should be many figures like Navalny in politics, and that the authorities must fight Alexei by legitimate means – during elections.
However, the Kremlin administration already had that experience and viewed it as a mistake that should not be repeated. In the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, even according to official data, almost a third of Moscow residents voted for Navalny (with a turnout of 32%). In the city of millions, the politician became the second most popular mayor, after (still serving), Sobyanin. Over the past eight years, his popularity has grown, because Navalny's headquarters operate all over the country. After the recent poisoning of a prominent public figure, followed by his imprisonment, Navalny has become the official global newsmaker. Recently, heads of state have not only been following his story but, like Angela Merkel, have been in personal contact with the Opposition leader. EU leaders openly call for Navalny's release.
It is possible that with such external and internal support, the politician has every chance of becoming president of Russia. What could this mean for Malta? Navalny has not yet had the chance to speak directly on the relations between the two countries, but we can conclude from his statements and agenda that three main points of intersection emerge: the citizenship investment programme, tourism and international interests.
Passports-wise, the Maltese should expect an incredible increase in demand. Those law enforcers, officials, representatives of the judicial system, even journalists-propagandists who, in the opinion of the oppositionist, have abused their power should be subjected to lustration. Presumably, some officials who have money but unable to buy foreign citizenship today (due to the fear of public condemnation) will be glad to become free. Others will apply to avoid conviction or criminal prosecution. In any case, the demand would be incredibly high at first, but over the years, we would expect a big drop in interest and a change in the contingent. Most likely, people who really want to live in Europe or who want to travel without visas would start to be interested in EU passports. Although, it is quite possible that by then the visa regime would have been greatly eased.
The profile of people entering Malta as tourists could also change significantly. And the flow would increase noticeably (for better or worse). The fact is that many Russians cannot afford a vacation in Malta now because it is too expensive for them. Assuming that social inequality will be leveled, as the politician promises, then Malta will receive a great share of middle-class tourists, including pensioners and students. Real middle-class people are not numerous in today's Russia. As for youths, young people would be more willing to spend the whole year learning and practising English. After all, young Russians say that investing in a language will bring benefits at work. In this regard, a lot depends on politics as well, because the current trend is to learn Chinese.
And finally, relations at international level. If Navalny will be in charge of making decisions, Russia will focus on its economy and moderate its foreign policy ambitions, as he has often claimed. As for the global forecast of rapprochement between Malta and Russia, it would not be risky to assume that relations between the two countries will be friendly.
Despite Alexei Navalny is called an ex-nationalist, he makes no secret of the fact that his policy will be aimed at establishing partner relations with the EU. Which his opponents take advantage of, appealing to a population with a Soviet mentality: if he does not oppose us to Europe and the United States, then he is not a patriot, and probably is a spy. In spite of the country's history, turning this kind of rhetoric into a national idea or political programme is challenging today. Even those Russians, en masse, who do not yet have the opportunity to experience the Mediterranean Sea and walk the streets of Valletta, are looking for friends, not enemies.
In any case, if you open the Russian Wikipedia on the page "Russian-Maltese relations", the most recent addition is this: "relations between the two countries are tending to become worse, following Malta's refusal to grant permission for two Russian planes (carrying cargo and passengers to Venezuela) to overflight the country in April 2019". That is, there is certainly much room for improvement.