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One of the cherished figures in my childhood was Salvu, a farmer who would end our visit to his farm with a private, illegal fireworks display. As evening brought our visit to an end, he would go to the end of a field where he had prepared his surprise, light the fuse and enjoy the look on our faces while his concoction hissed and flared. It was a special Maltese treat spiced with the traditional illegality. It was all innocent fun.
Some years ago I befriended a dustman. In my role as Local Councillor I developed a relationship in which he was sure I would do my utmost to increase the earnings of his men and I was certain that he would do his utmost to ensure that the Council got its money’s worth. It created a human bond that went beyond a mere working relationship. There was trust, mutual respect and even affection.
Then his 14 year-old boy blew his hand to bits. The youngster had been playing in a field littered with festa bang leftovers. It was no longer a news item to be fatalistically shrugged off. I did my utmost to help by making contact with a visiting hand surgeon who restored some use to the mutilated hand. It kept me in touch with the case long after it had receded from public view. I learnt of the psychological trauma afflicting the young man who felt constrained to hide the ‘monstrosity’ from sight. It was a series of operations that achieved the maximum possible but in slow stages. Surgical success meant that he could hold things in his hand. It still looked like an alien paw.
Twelve months later it was not over yet when another news item reported a repeat. Some other boy had lost the use of his hands. I was livid. I was glad that I would not learn the details. Three years afterwards the first case ran into the ground in court. The father gave up on the proceedings for damages because he had been on the forensic merry-go-round for too long. Everybody had somehow got off the hook, the insurance required to cover the fireworks display was not worth the paper it was written on. The authorities were absolved by having carried out their duties and not a jot more. Costs and fees had spiraled far beyond the capabilities of a dustman. He must have been just another casualty in a long series.
It has ruined the fun of fireworks for good. The daylight bangs were never any fun except for the maniacs who let them off. I could never understand what they were for. In China they are said to scare off devils. Here we know that they scare the living daylights out of children and animals, but the devils still hang around.
I am delighted to be able to say that I have never contributed a cent towards any festa fireworks expenses. It eases my guilt whenever I happen to be among the spectators. Whenever it happens that I can be included in the anonymous crowd for whom the risks are taken, I like to think that it is always an accident of life in Malta and nothing which I have actively brought about. It has become a matter of principle.
Fortunately for me I have not been brought up in the social tangle surrounding fireworks manufacture. Other males are roped in when very young first to cut cardboard roundels at the band club, later to run errands for the experts and finally to produce and fire off their own creations. Some addicts are know to fly in from work abroad, spend three days in pyrotechnic conclave and fly away again without a nod to their families. It is not hard to understand how it works.
It takes years of slow indoctrination. Children listen to the accounts of their elders imbibing the mystique, the glory of life on the edge, the determination of men who were brutally mutilated but return to the fireworks factory to repeat the miracle of their very own pyrotechnic specialty even if they have to hold the monsters with the stumps left to them when the worst last happened. It is the art of playing with fire.
The adolescent male’s latent deathwish draws him to danger like a moth to the flame. Every generation of Maltese boys has had gangs who scramble out of bed at dawn after festa night to glean the fields of unexploded pyrotechnics. It is the only way they can get their hands on death-in-a-flash.
My friend’s son had spent the morning playing catch with his friends tossing the innocent looking brown paper parcels to one another. When the first thrill had waned through misplaced familiarity with mortal danger, they upped the stakes. Somebody had a cigarette lighter. He told his father: “I saw my hand like a skeleton.” Most of the flesh had been blasted off the bones. I consoled the man saying that the boy was lucky to be alive and still able to see. Of course he would have been luckier if he had not been brought up to court disaster in this way. His planned career in computer science faded from view and now he works back-of-house in a catering establishment.
I hope the people who made and fired the fireworks had lots of fun that night. I dearly hope that the crowd enjoyed it too. I very much doubt whether they were so ecstatic that it justified the loss of a young boy’s hand and the wrecking of his chances.
These days I receive irate letters from people driven mad by the insane pre-festa bombardments. One writer told me that he loses it when the things shake his household after he has put his children to sleep. He believes that his chickens lay strange eggs at festa time because of the explosions. He wonders how the old and the sick cope with the ordeal.
With the congregation of festi in the summer season to benefit from the tourist trade some residents complain that it is no longer possible to avoid the onslaught by leaving their homes for a few days at festa time. The neighbouring villages are en fête all summer long. In Gozo the hospital is surrounded. I suppose the relief of recovery makes them forget the unnecessary discomfort.
Besides, who of us feels capable of confronting this situation on his own? With the real or perceived political clout distilled into the heart of the fireworks culture neither of the other political parties dares to sneeze at the offenders. Our localized politics leads politicians to bend over backwards to accommodate them. None of them feel that they can afford to give offence to the network of mutual support that infiltrates every alley of every town and village.
God forbid that some such club decides to build a fireworks factory near your home. That is when you find out exactly how weak you really are. Your votes count for nothing against the mass of votes vaguely represented by the will of the builders. The police and the planners go through the motions on your complaints, but it is a foregone conclusion against you when the local representatives of both traditional parties are falling over themselves to appear to have done their best to serve your antagonists: power lines and a water supply appear at illegal factories and roads that never smelt asphalt are miraculously done up in full livery, no permits requested. In one spectacular case a concrete road was laid over the neighbour’s property without his permission and much less an expropriation order.
My guess is that this is another hunting issue: the vast majority is against, the vast majority loses because the politicians scare one another to death by seducing the minority. If we were to have a poll on who wants to suffer daylight festa bangs they could be outlawed in a flash. None of the other parties dares make the first move. The constant human sacrifice paid in the Bacchanalian side of our Christian festivities is consistently ignored. For political reasons: one can hardly expect to hold the strategic canvassing position of band club president and put a spanner in the works for the fireworks crew.
What is the use of rules and regulations if they are regularly flouted? One complainant was told that if his complaint of infringement were countenanced it would not be possible to let off fireworks anywhere in Malta and Gozo because there always is a road within regulation 200 meters. The police told him so.
This is the only country in the world where the only airport can be closed to traffic because fireworks are to be let off. It is a measure of the distortion of our democracy, the perversion of our priorities. Only a complete overhaul of our electoral system will free politicians from their parochial constraints. Whether it happens or not I am for making the pips squeak in the fireworks culture. Those who stick to the rules will not complain. If the Greens get there regardless of the hurdles, things will change. One small boy’s hand was enough for me.
Dr. Vassallo is Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
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