Tales from the Land of Serenity Part 10

‘Tales from the Land of Serenity’ came into being shortly after the horrific assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta on 16th October 2017. A well-known investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia was blown up by a car bomb, minutes away from her home in Bidnija. The title of these stories derives from words spoken by the Maltese Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, a few days after her murder: ‘When the MEPs visit Malta, they will do so with a sense of serenity…’

In the azure blue sky thinking of the land of serenity where fenek was pulled from the hats of magicians with looking-glass eyes, the roulette wheel of fate and fortune was spinning with the soothing hum that emanates from a Hotpoint automatic squeezing dirt from its mud-stained clothes. In the land of infinite possibility, all traces of impossible misbehaviour were quickly bleached and ironed out.

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Good humour and joviality were in abundant supply, oft cited as national characteristics of the citizens of this land. A reference to ‘whores’ by a man who once fervently protected the rights of workers of both sexes was understood for what it was – a trivial joke shared between friends who knew, in their hearts, that their virgin wives were pure.

Playful banter was part and parcel of maintaining their serenity, and a taxi driver was merely having a little laugh when he suggested he use his legally licensed vehicle to plough into the inhuman crowd of dissidents who were still displaying disobedience in the face of the tightly constructed rule of law. He was wiping away the tears of laughter as he fantasised about mowing his fellow citizens down and the police, busy as always with their ever so urgent business in a land where, it has to be remembered, a journalist was blown to pieces by a car bomb in broad daylight not so very long ago, yes, the police acted as they knew they must and in the line of duty. Being sacked – not something with which the police were familiar – was punishment enough for this poor man and to investigate him further would only cause unnecessary distress AND to his innocent family who were already suffering under the strain.

Compassion is the watchword for the boys in blue, a word that cannot be overstated in this clean and pleasant land. Compassion was key. Compassion is everything. And another family were reminded of this as they sat in the lawcourts of justice within hours of witnessing the horrific murder of their mother and a wife. They sat patiently in a waiting room within hours of the assassination of the journalist who’d probed into the workings of the system of justice and found a gross imbalance in its scales.

Waiting – without time to even begin to absorb the horror of what had just happened, as if such an atrocity could ever be absorbed – the family sat and sat and waited with no leniency being shown to file a court application insisting that a magistrate who’d been implicated in allegations of corruption by the journalist who’d been assassinated on the self-same day should not be placed in charge of this particular murder inquiry.
The compassion shown was almost overwhelming as one would expect when the milk of human kindness is the nectar of serenity.

A similar olive branch of Immediate forgiveness was extended to the Minister of Justice when, his burden of work having an audible impact on his ability to position his words in the right order, he insisted – and very clearly given his befuddled state of mind – that the journalist whose shocking assassination was – or was it ‘was’ or ‘is’? – for now the Minister of Justice began struggling with his tenses – but the minister of Justice for the Land of Serenity quite clearly and categorically stated in a way that quite clearly illustrated his confusion that the journalist ‘was killed by politicians!’
…
Gasp, shock, sigh as he excused himself politely and replaced the original word (a mere slip of the tongue that any one of us could quite easily make and be forgiven for making) with the word he originally meant to use of course. ‘By criminals!’ he bellowed, and serenity was restored.

Just like jokes, a silly little mix-up in one’s choice of nouns which has hilarious implications if you take it seriously, is no more than a minor aside in this land of serenity where everything – even the brutal assassination of a journalist in broad daylight – can eventually, and in the sheltered haven of this watertight rule of law, be put to rights to ensure that order is restored.