Fifty years on

The other day I recorded an interview for TVM. The discussion was on statehood or nationhood: the two gentlemen, Charles Xuereb and Roderick Pace, shared much common ground. One comment from veteran broadcaster and Francophile Charles Xuereb struck me as unique. “Nationhood is about collective memory,” he said.

That comment immediately sparked off a thought in my head, it set me thinking and my mind floated away from the set and the programme.

“Could this be the case?” I wondered.

At one moment, all I could see were two individuals talking, 
their gesticulations, their facial expressions, but though I could see them, I could not hear them.

Flashbacks raced through my mind of moments I thought I
had forgotten or which were completely erased from my memory. Childhood, adolescence and growing up flew around in my vision like a scene from Poltergeist.

Momentarily I realised I needed to get back to the screen and as 
I re-awakened to face my guests, 
I started off by uttering the unthinkable, and starting my sentences with “Il-Madonna...” – I was completely unfocused, not there at all.

It was enough for the director to cut the recording short and
I had to re-do that part of the programme again, with the question from the very start.

The very idea that we are what we are because of our collective memory kick started a thinking process that made it all click.

I find it so much more pleasant to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about a topic of why I am Maltese and what makes me Maltese, rather than worrying about whether an article is libelous or not.

What follows is a superficial and not at all witty hit-list of that collective memory as I remember it in a short disjointed essay.

I guess it starts with dipping
my finger in the holy water basin. The straw seats of the creaky chairs at St Helen’s Basilica and the flea-bites which made me uncomfortable when I sat on them in my boy’s shorts. The fear of confession and what to confess at the age of nine. The rosary and Sunday evenings before being tucked in bed after watching some Italian sports on a black and white TV. The fragrance of incense in the church and the boredom of sitting for an hour at mass. The anger of learning about the history of the Church and the time when it persecuted socialists.

The odour of the kerosene burner in my grandmother’s kitchen and the slow cooking of the infinitely mouth-watering baked macaroni. The holy Good Fridays and the fasting until the filling fish dinner. The fact that bars and cinemas were closed and no consumption of meat was tolerated on that day. The expectations of the Christmas breakfast at the Phoenicia Hotel after the midnight mass. The cane at De La Salle College and the painful corporal punishment for talking in Maltese at a private school.

The country walks in the fields, which have disappeared from around Balzan, and the trapping of pitirrossi (robins) singing in the carob trees where today one finds the by-pass in Iklin.

The great expectations of the festive period and the calm and good feel and warmth of having loving parents and family.

The TV diatribes of fiery Prime Minister Dom Mintoff and
the mumblings of adults in the background.

The unbearable summer heat and the sunburns for forgetting to have Nivea cream applied – then thought to be an effective sunblock.

Helping with winemaking at my uncle’s and being warned not to inhale over the pressed fermenting grapes, so as not to fall in. Sipping my first wine and enjoying the adulterated drink of 7-Up and dry red wine.

The Sunday habit of collecting
the dish of roast potatoes and pork from the communal baker in Brared Street.

Wearing the first platform shoe and bermudas as a teenager and feeling so damn uncomfortable. Forgetting all about John Travolta and digging up ’sixties music to
be different and listening to Janis Joplin, Marianne Faithful and David Bowie and his ‘space oddity’.

My normality was shattered by the pupil worker scheme and the Mintoffian sermons on self- dependence and ‘nationalism’. I recall the first early nights in Valletta as a teenager and the frustration of finding nothing to do apart from seeing a film at the rat infested Coliseum.

The Tirrenia ferries to Sicily and the inter-rail ticket that took us away from Catania for a month and an open train ticket to some 26 European nations. The foreign currency restrictions and the underhand ways of buying foreign currency.

The political association game, and the labelling game and for being shunned or embraced because of perceived political allegiance and the sexual taboos we grew up with. The crazy class-difference between the English-speaking Maltese and the Maltese-Maltese and the great divide between the tal-pepe u l-hamalli.

The political violence, the corruption, the intolerance and the backwardness that dominated the seventies and eighties. The anger of seeing such a beautiful land being buried under cement and concrete, roads and cars. The supremacy
of the lobbies: the Church, the construction magnates, the hunters and the fireworks enthusiasts.

I remember a University without courses and not being able to conclude my tertiary education in a private school.

And voting for the first time in 1981, only to discover that the party I voted for had corrupted the system. And I discovered later in 1987 that politicians are replaced in office by other politicians who sooner or later turn out to be no different from their predecessors.

The dream we had as youngsters of leaving the Island for good, and my decision to return even though 
I had married a foreigner with the opportunity of a new life in Europe.

My confusion at realising that shafting the State was considered a noble act and that being upright was not a virtue or a value. The whole idea that we were still a colony not an independent State.

I return to Charles Xuereb’s description of a collective memory being the essence of what we are
as a nation. All I know is that our collective memory does not make us Maltese, it just makes us what we are as individuals. There is nothing unique about the last 50 years.

There was a lot of mediocrity and lost opportunity, destiny delayed but nothing that made me more Maltese than the Italian or Spanish.

I really have to say that celebrating 50 years of independence as a Nation/State simply makes me more confused.

More so now, when I know that I have spent all my youth and adult life fighting the root of being... the thing they call being Maltese.