Paul P. Borg
mother nature is a female
a beautiful female
too beautiful
not to be had
hard had
too desirable
not to be possessed
hard possessed
the educated savage must have her
he cries i love you i love you i love you
the powerful savage must mount her
he cries i love you i love you i love you
the rich savage must rape her rape her
he cries i love you i love you i love you
and then i'll kill you
and then i'll kill you
and then i'll kill you
It is early on a hazy morning in May. The little boy with curly black hair is idly running in the open garigue away from home in Mellieħa. He believes he is the absolute ruler of those sites, this is his kingdom, he is the king of creation; he frequently runs up the hill, far, far away, as far as il-Qammiegħ sometimes and then back all the way, up and down the hills, along the dangerous rocks to Il-Griebeġ beyond Mġiebaħ Bay. Sometimes, he swims all around St Paul's islets or all around the huge BP fuel ships berthed in St Paul's Bay, a fearless dare-devil he is. He is all alone, dangerously alone, but as usual he wants to savour the gripping solitude of freedom, feel the contrasting sensual textures of the playful cold waves cuddling the dazzling sand, or the curious busy bees on the fragrant flora, or the fresh breeze caressing the savage rocks.
The sun this morning is barely over the distant Qawra horizon. The little boy runs out of the house before his grandma misses him is already on his way to slide down the perilous clayey slopes at Għajn Ħadid. He treads lightly over the rocks at the edge of the cliffs. Suddenly, a gentle voice calls out to him in the shivering morning hues.
"Where are you going little one, mank sebaħ dulgħudu!"
The little boy is surprised and looks at Karmnu l-Ħixwi his old friend with gleaming green-brown eyes, and shrugs. Nowhere, the boy means to say, nowhere, just loving it.
"You love the garigue, don't you?" continues Karmnu with a smile on his kind face.
The little boy looks closely at the old man.
"Are you crying?" he asks him.
The old man chuckles and rests against a low rubble wall close by.
"No, I'm not," he says. "But this place makes me so happy... it has always brought tears to my eyes..."
The boy draws closer to the old man.
"The same thing used to happen to my mother," continues Karmnu. She used to tell me that I must remember these sights before they disappear... So I come here and just look at them."
The little boy does not understand and scratches his blue-black curls.
"Disappear?" he asks.
"Yes," says Karmnu. "They will disappear from your sight. You are too young to understand this little one, perhaps they will actually be there and it will be you who will not see them because it is you who will have changed, you will have stopped appreciating Creation. That is how they will disappear forever."
The boy looks bewildered. The sudden comprehension of these words instils fear in his heart.
"But then there is another way how these sites can vanish," continues il-Ħixwi. "It could be that something very, very, dreadful happens. You will not change and you will still love Mother Nature, but Mother Nature will have been killed. They will rape Mother Nature and you will not see her anymore. Do you know what rape is? Have you never seen our dog raping your grandpa's bitch? That's how they will do it, little one. You will see people raping Mother Nature and killing her before your eyes. The same way a brute mounts a gentle bitch. They will be raping their own mother. And there will be people who shout because they object, but the bad ones will be stronger, little one. They will be wielding a sharp knife inside the heart of your Mother Nature and they will be smiling and ecstatic as they rape her. They will enjoy rape. They will scream in euphoric orgasm, I love love you Mother Nature! I love you!"
The little boy sees Karmnu disturbed, turning emotional, angry, very angry.
"I do not understand you Karm," he says slowly.
"Do not worry, son," answers Karmnu after a while. "You will understand in time. Just keep enjoying nature while you can, make sure you do not hurt yourself. You are lucky because you can see the beauty of Mother Nature with your heart, but you are also very unlucky because you can also feel her beauty and you will suffer tremendously because of this... You are doomed to suffer so much when they start crushing the garigue to build factories they can build somewhere else. You will see your mother being raped when they burn carob trees even in schools and get away with it - even in schools! Even in schools! This is our Malta, my son! You will see how Mother Nature is raped when they build apartment flats in Wied id-Dis and Wied il-Għasel! Just in the very valley! They will even rape the best beaches, the best countryside views, they will rape even il-Bajja tal-Mellieħa, you just wait and see. And they keep raping and raping and there will be no-one to stop this rape because the entrepreneurs who should know better are powerful rapers themselves."
"I still do not follow, Karm..."
Karmnu does not remove the tears trickling copiously down his sun-weathered, unshaven cheeks.
"You will in time, little one," says Karmnu after composing himself. "You will. Mother Nature is too beautiful. Like a beautiful woman, she must be had, even forcibly, she must be raped. She must be relentlessly had. Do you understand? Look around you: these sights are too beautiful not to be raped!"
Still, the little boy does not understand. He is too young. Karmnu shakes his head, he lights the pipe, he spits on the dust next to his bare feet. A little puff of thick smoke goes around his head.
"As I said," he continues, "it is the savage dog that forces itself on the gentle bitch. Not only that, but he does not want her regeneration. So he mutilates her for ever... he makes sure he rapes her properly. He goes to university and to business schools to make sure he does his job well. And as he rapes her, he will be shouting ecstatically all along, I love you Nature!"
"Is rape painful?" asks the boy after some time of reflection and deep thought.
"Rape is always very ugly because it makes both body and soul suffer."
The little boy felt like crying now. Karmnu stood up all of a sudden.
"Come, little one," he says. "Let me show you something before it vanishes even faster. We'll tell nanna on the way that you're with me..."
Soon old Karmnu l-Ħixwi and the little boy are in Karmnu's old Land Rover. He drives to a spot overlooking Mellieħa Bay.
"The more natural the environment is," starts Karmnu, "the more intelligent are the savage ideas to destroy the natural environment or the cultural heritage. Fort Campbell has been vandalised... now listen, we call vandalism the destruction of a building made by man, Selmun Palace was vandalised by savage brutes many years ago, and soon it is going to suffer even more. They will build all around it, as they did to hide the beautiful De Redin Tower in St Julian's by wrapping a hotel around it. Soon they will continue the job of destroying the commanding majesty of Selmun Palace... and the building of a hotel on the beach at Mellieħa Bay is progress... they call it progress..."
The little boy cannot understand and he looks more puzzled than ever.
"Listen carefully," explains Karmnu l-Ħixwi patiently as he draws on his pipe in the driver's seat. "When they destroy something beautiful made by man, they call it vandalism; but when they destroy something beautiful made by nature, they call it progress! Instead of rape they prefer the word progress. Do you understand?"
The boy's jaw dropped, astonished by this explanation. The two of them sit in silence watching the beach below, listening to the distant shouts. Karmnu's eyes gleam, his lips want to say some words but no sound comes out. The boy is suddenly afraid. He is speechless. He cannot understand Karmnu's looks but senses that frightful things are going to happen to his kingdom.
"Do you see the cars and the grey road?" asks the old man all of a sudden. "Do you see the umbrellas and the rocks and the gabbani?"
Then he stops.
"Do you notice that there is still some sand left?" he asks. "When I was a little boy your age, I had to go to Marfa on foot to work in the fields. The sea was not visible because there were sand dunes as high as five, six feet, even more, a lot more, hundreds of them! Long wide stretches on a very, very wide beach as far as the għadira! The bay was far wider, far and far wider..."
"Then where is the sand?" asks the little boy.
"The British started using it to manufacture concrete," explains Karmnu l-Ħixwi. "That is progress. And when they stopped, we Maltese continued doing the same thing, we put umbrellas, we put gabbani, that is progress! Piecemeal progress... now the hotel on the beach!"
The little boy kept looking at il-Ħixwi.
"Taking the sand was not enough. They will be building a new hotel in the bay..."
"On the sand?
"Hopefully not!" says Karmnu. "But the beauty will be gone forever; nature will not be appreciated any longer, permanently damaged. Creation is to beautiful not to be raped. They must get her. To make tourist and entrepreneur happy, we rape ourselves."
The boy looks with surprise at the picturesque view of the sandy beach.
"Look properly and do not forget!" says Karmnu. "Keep looking, make an indelible picture of it little one, and keep looking. The view will be destroyed. Gone. They will sign papers as usual to destroy the view completely, educated people, rich people... You can do nothing about it; no-one can do anything at all because the people who should be on the side of Mother Nature will be the people who are against Mother Nature."
"But don't they feel sorry if they destroy the bay's view?"
"The people who propose these rapes have different personalities," answers Karmnu after some time. He shakes his head. "They are tough people, son. They are ruthless people. To be a businessman you have to be strong, and to be strong means to be devoid of any regrets. No regrets in the heart - you destroy, you make money, you turn soil into money, you turn the beach into money, and you will not be sorry at all. That is their nature! They are insensitive to the agony of Mother Nature. A man who is wolf to man is never sorry, because that is the way he is. You cannot blame a savage wolf for being a savage wolf, can you? "
"But someone will defend the environment..." The boy is filled with anger and has a sudden urge to take up his sword and fight.
"The defenders of nature do not exist anymore," says Karmnu suddenly, hanging his head. "Those that should will be on the developers' side,
"But that's a bad thing to say Karmnu!" protests the boy with a raised voice. "Can't we do something about it before they kill the beach? Someone has to do something!"
"When you grow up," says the old man calmly, head hanging down, "you will read the story of an old crazy knight who thought he could tackle the rich entrepreneur, and fought formidable battles against the insensitive, strong, impassive, savage, mysterious, bullying windmills. Of course, he never won! His battles were all futile. They have always been futile, and they will always be futile. Indeed, only crazy people believe they can win against money. These crazy people are truly brave because they speak up and they keep at it, even though they are not strong enough to change things. They are like brave dogs that bark but they can do nothing else! They are just crazy knights!"
"So what will happen now?" asks the little boy his eyes fixed on Karmnu.
Karmnu l-Ħixwi draws a deep sigh. His eyes are moist again. His lips tremble.
"Soon they will build a five-star hotel in the middle of Mellieħa Bay," he says after some time looking away from the boy. "It will be Mother Nature being gang-raped in public."
Then he pauses.
"You will see trucks and cranes and bulldozers, real hyenas tearing at the flesh of the carcass of poor Mother Nature, ripping her bowels out happily and greedily..."
He draws another sigh of relief. He smiles the smile of pathos.
"I hope to be dead by then," he says. "I pray God kills me before the first bulldozer arrives on the sand..."