'Pawlu li naf jien'
Editor: Sergio Grech
Publisher: Klabb Kotba Maltin / 2024
Pages: 161
Every year, as the San Gorg festa in Rabat, Gozo draws to a close, the procession flows into the church square.
Then the statue is turned around as if it's retreating to the church, periodically raised as high as the arms of those carrying it can reach and the whole square sings the most popular hymn in honour of the saint.
A crowd of festa enthusiasts gather singing in an even louder voice than the rest of the square.
There, in the midst of this crowd I saw my friend Pawlu Mizzi, his face sweaty, his palju keeping time with the music, thoroughly enjoying himself.
This must have been around 1989. Pawlu had already left Gozo and might have been about to relocate to Mdina with his friend and fellow Giorgjan Archbishop Mercieca as his neighbour. Yet he never missed the July festa, his root.
My mother's family, also Giorgjani, had similar roots.
For a long time Pawlu used to tell me he had a "Miss Azzopardi" (my mother's maiden surname) as his teacher when he was a small boy at the Rabat Primary School but I could never find out who this "Miss Azzopardi" was because there were more than one teacher among the sisters.
This entertaining book has a number of short articles mostly by writers whose books had been published by Pawlu, as it is only fair - Dijonisju Agius, Francesco Pio and Joseph M. Attard, Martin Bugelli, Mario Buhagiar, Charles Casha, Charles Eynaud, Mgr Joseph Farrugia, Mario Felice, Victor Fenech, Joe and Oliver Friggieri, Gorg Mallia, Victor Mallia Milanes, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Austin Sammut, Louis J. Scerri, Anton and Mario Tabone, Paul Xuereb and Trevor Zahra. And people from his immediate family.
And that is how people know him, as the one who came up with the Klabb Kotba Maltin innovation which gave such a huge impetus to books published in Malta. But at heart, he always remained a Giorgjan.
It was on this level that I related to him through the years.
Then of course I joined Il-Hajja and soon found myself involved not just in newspaper publishing but also in printing and production. This was precisely the area Pawlu was interested in.
Most probably through the good offices of Archbishop Mercieca, Pawlu was attracted to join in the management, at that time run by that character Dun Saverin Bianco.
The alliance did not work and could never work. Years later I was invited to Milan and CISF by Dun Charles Vella who invited me to meet the Paolini fathers who produced the Famiglia Cristiana. As soon as Fr Charles introduced me as coming from Il-Hajja Press, they all started laughing.
Later one of them explained to me: they had been offered to manage the loss-making press. They sent someone over and found the enterprise had a very big head but no body at all. In other words, it had many people with high-sounding titles but then nearly no workers and the few that there were undertrained.
The enterprise was a joke. I do not know if Alfred Sant, who too was offered to write a report on it, reached the same conclusion. The fact is that both the Paolini and Pawlu Mizzi pulled out and the enterprise glided down to a halt, costing the Church huge losses.
Pawlu then gathered his family around him and built the KKM around them.
He tried to interest me in his next venture, the Heritage series, but this did not work, either. I blame my inexperience for this. Luckily for him, he moved on.
He didn't follow my wrong turning of focusing on the printing press (especially since this was lumbered with two loss-makers, the daily paper and the Lehen is-Sewwa weekly, which should have been closed down together with Il-Haddiem to publish just one paper, Il-Hajja but then decided to stay alive because they had once donated a small printing machine and expected a rebate each week.
And so Il-Hajja remained, the only hot lead printing press (plus perhaps The Bulletin) in Malta when all the rest were changing to offset.
Pawlu chose the alternative route and focused on the core business - the publishing of books, in Maltese at first, and also, in English (Midsea Publications) later.
I think I met him for the last time at the Auberge de Provence for his 80th birthday.
I was not aware that he had to be admitted to St Vincent de Paul, where he later passed away, but in my present state find myself relating more and more to him.
And come the third Sunday of July we all go back to our roots.