I Could Leave You, Say Goodbye

I took a walk, I try to every night.

The loneliness of being an ex-pat in a foreign country is a killer; biting and snapping at you like Vadim doll from the sidewalk as you pray for an English (or Italian voice). Fortunately for me I stopped at the Italian joint I'd frequented twice in a week. The first time was when Italia were smashed 4-0 and we endured the pain of the Spanish littering the street appearing from nowhere like cockroaches in the end of days.

A deeper understanding of what I've taken on board dawns on me with every gulp of Tavola Bianca. The lights of Malta flicker like Ethernet connections drawing me ever closer into the suffocation of tourism but from my bench at Belvedere I can transcend the madness and withdraw into being less of a turist and more of a resident. I dream of driving a tank through Valetta, but I turn to my computer like a tank and plough through the mish-mash of language and architecture; all barking for supremacy, all pleasing with the rest of the world invitingly to take note, to learn.

The harbours lights blink on the water leaving tears from electronic eyes. I cry with them. I yearned for what I craved in Cambridge, I tried to satisfy what I craved. It did not deliver. I stare at those eyes: the eyes that disappear by day and take my regrets and fears with them so I let them burn first into the dusk and then into the rising morning that starts with Gzira and ends in Msida,

A marching band just played down my street at ten o'clock at night. And like Martin the Vampire I lapped up every ounce of normality for Malta. Must try to fit in but not too hard. The beat that I metered with my feet forced the nightflyers from their slumber below and into the air, swooping then landing on my bitter kin to try and feed before retreating with a beat and a breeze.

This place is home save for the odd tattoo enthusiast who knows I am too less of a Christian to wear sleeves or a Pashmina. They tell me that ladies do not ink and that tattoos are the reserve of men. I promise them with a hard sincerity that I will remove them with immediacy, The men smile, the women look away. The women, only they know that the untruths of my words penetrate their sensibilities.

I smoke Vogues. The Gauloises of the 'tens. And I sit on the bench at belvedere with a million films running through my head until the celluloid runs down my cheeks. When the last film plays I'm gone.