Enrique in Malta

Leni and I flew to Malta on a whim—we had one free night and Isle of MTV was happening in Floriana, and that seemed like enough reason. The lineup was standard festival stuff: Hardwell, Kiesza, Dizzee Rascal, Nicole Scherzinger. Then, late in the night, with the church behind the stage lit up white and the crowd at maximum density, Enrique Iglesias walked out. Just appeared, like he’d been backstage the whole time, waiting for the exact moment when everyone had sweated enough.

It worked. The crowd went off instantly—kids at the front, guys who clearly lived in gyms, women in their forties who’d driven in for the night. All of us suddenly pressed together in thirty-degree heat, moving as one thing. Viviana and Lilly, two English beauty bloggers I’d somehow ended up standing next to, were dancing in that uncertain way you do at festivals, not quite sure if you’re having fun or just surviving. There were these two guys next to us who danced like every beat mattered, making grand gestures at nothing, but that’s always how it is. You go to enough of these and the types stop bothering you.

Malta itself is small—a compressed island in the Mediterranean we’d somehow missed in all our traveling. We didn’t have time to hunt for the hidden beaches or the narrow streets that are probably wonderful. But what we saw was exactly right: blue water, white stone, that specific smell of salt and old streets. The kind of place that doesn’t change, which starts to feel like the point of being somewhere so old.

Whether we’ll go back is another question. Enrique Iglesias probably won’t still be touring. But Malta will be there, indifferent, exactly the same.