Here are some bare details of the author’s life. 1935: born in Algiers. 1962: along with thousands of panic-stricken Europeans, fled Algiers to seek refuge in Marseilles. Lives today in southern France. 2011: obtained Maltese citizenship.
Meekly enough Dimech says that his is not really an autobiography. He only wants to bear witness to important socio-political events he lived through and relate changes he underwent that helped sustain him morally. Anyway we are in the sphere of autobiography. Dimech spent his childhood and youth in the Rovigo neighbourhood of Algiers. Family links with relatives in Malta dwindled little by little. The French navy used Malta as a base in World War I and uncle Georges, who was a sailor in the French navy, availed himself of the opportunity then to visit relatives in Floriana. Dimech remembers with nostalgia the small family flat in the Rovigo neighbourhood which however enjoyed wonderful views of Algiers harbour. Dimech comments that for him being Maltese means roaming on the seashore and gazing at ships in harbours.
In other words, befriending Corto Maltese.
It is well known that in the late 1950s, Algerian fighters of the FLN started a terror campaign in the hinterland and in the cities. The individual is oftentimes a spectator in events that concern whole populations and sweep across the land. At this time, Dimech seemed to be still struggling to wiggle out of his adolescence. Mother had forbidden him to continue courting his fiancée. Father decided to send his dejected son to Paris to resume his studies there. On 24 January 1960, the headlines of Paris newspapers announced that Algiers was in revolt, barricades had gone up in several thoroughfares of the city. Finally Dimech wakes up from his slumber, books a seat on the last flight to Algiers. Waiting at Invalides for the coach to the airport late that evening, he discusses with a mate the worsening of the crisis. A stranger, who had been overhearing the conversation, suddenly buts in. “We are both fighting for the same cause, he tells him. Kindly take this parcel and deliver it to the editor of the newspaper L’Echod’Alger. It’s urgent.” For the first time, Dimech realizes that he can do something useful to save Algériefrançaise.
After Algerian independence, Dimech settled in mainland France. He recovered somewhat from his mourning by discovering little by little his Maltese roots. In the spring of 1968, Chevalier Vincent Galea, who was born of Maltese stock in Tunis, had a brainwave: the setting up, in the French capital, of an Association France-Malte. The Prince de Polignac accepted to preside this association, Galea proclaimed himself vice-president and he appointed Dimech secretary.
Galea also had acumen for public relations so much so that he managed to get himself appointed consul for Malta in Paris. As an aside, I must say that I recommend Dimech’s book also to students in International Relations. Sometime then, having to go abroad, Galea appointed there and then Dimech as vice-consul for Malta! This appointment obviously had no legal basis. These new responsibilities that Dimech had to shoulder account for a hilarious episode. Malta had then set up diplomatic relations with communist China. It so happened that a delegation of Chinese officials all wearing Maoist uniforms landed in Paris intending to obtain a visa for Malta. Since Galea was away, his private secretary referred them to Dimech, who worked as legal consultant for a bank on the boulevard Haussmann. These sons of the “Cultural Revolution” trooped inside the bank and, to the surprise of the managers, clamoured to meet the vice-consul for Malta!
In those days, a Maltese chargé d’affaires in Brussels was responsible for contacts with the Benelux countries as well as with France. Dimech managed to defuse a tense situation by getting Brussels on the phone.
Dimech harks back to the Algiers of a bygone era. Up to 1960, a million Europeans inhabited Algeria, a good number of whom were descendants of Maltese. Will their memory disappear forever?