The author recounts his visit to Malta in April 1990 – his first trip to the West following the fall of communism – as part of the ‘Voices from the East’ seminar organised by AZAD. He describes the sites associated with the shipwreck of the Apostle Paul, the island of Gozo, the port of Marsaxlokk and Caravaggio’s painting The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in the Cathedral of the Order of Saint John.