Malta observed: The unrelenting carving knife heat

Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is in his ancestral homeland of Malta and guest blogging on the Wired Malta blog this weekend and will be crossposting here on Spacing Toronto.

MALTA — Last night a hot wind started blowing in from the south and it hasn’t stopped. It’s coming from Libya or Tunisia, somewhere possibly hotter than here, and picking up dust and grit and covering everything with a fine film. Skin has a sheen of sweat on it at all times that the grit sticks, so you feel it all over. It’s hot and it’s unrelentingly hot, day and night. Today was 34 or maybe they said it feels like 39? I stopped checking and plug my ears when the radio tries to tell me. There is no relief except to get in the car and drive with the windows up and the air conditioning on full or find a café that has it on.

You can jump in the sea, but the sea temperature is about 27C so it feels like a bathtub (though a rather nice bathtub I won’t complain about that). And now the dusty humid superheated wind blows in from the south and I wonder how the Maltese do not kill each other, let alone think clearly. They’ve developed some kind of deep resistance — maybe it’s the afternoon siesta — and can deal with it but it reminds of the Raymond Chandler quote Joan Didion used when she wrote about the hot Santa Ana winds that blow down from the mountains for days and infiltrates Los Angeles with so much heat: “Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands necks.” I’m keeping away from the knives but if I didn’t have a flight back to Toronto on Wednesday I’m not sure I could handle a long future being covered in sweat just moments after drying off after a shower . It makes brains mush, and I forget everything important, except the heat, and dwell on the heat, and try and hide from it but it will not let up.