You can’t pick and choose your historical past...

There are certain issues that seem to keep sporadically resurfacing in the media from time to time: one good (if slightly dated) example being Malta’s eternal quest to one day ‘strike oil’… through joint exploration projects with (in years gone by) Italy, or via homespun oil-wells like ‘Il-Madonna Taz-Zejt’ in Gozo.  

Admittedly, it’s been a while since any government has tried to dangle this particular carrot in front of our noses, like they did so often in the old days. Perhaps the ‘oil strike’ narrative has lost a little of its former currency… now that we seem to have found other, less conventional ways of suddenly becoming filthy rich.

But there was a time – until around 10 years ago – when you could almost tell an election was in the offing, simply because government would wake up one morning and announce the possibility of an ‘imminent’ oil strike. Invariably, there would be a media hype lasting some two or three weeks – or as long as it took to realise that… um, sorry, folks, but it seems we’re not going to turn into ‘the new Saudi Arabia’ overnight after all. But hey, don’t lose hope! Be patient. Just wait another four years, and you can rest assured that the whole news cycle will simply reboot itself all over again….

You could add a whole bunch of other issues to the list: the bridge/tunnel to Gozo; proposals for golf courses here, there and everywhere; whether or not to remove the George Cross from our national flag … and very often, there is no rhyme or reason as to why they always seem to just pop up out of nowhere, unprompted, precisely when they do.

For example: why is ‘Halal meat’ such a big deal only now… when there have been active (and busy) halal butchers, restaurants and kebab shops operating in Malta for decades (note: one establishment, just down the road, sports a large sign saying: ‘Islamic Butcher: Halal Meat On Sale Here’. Funny how nobody ever noticed it before: considering that it’s right by a traffic light on a busy Gzira road, and has been there for at least 20 years… much longer, in fact, than the traffic light…)

OK, some of these issues might be seasonal in nature: like our annual panic about influenza, which (understandably enough) tends to happen around… um, right now. Conversely, no one ever spots ‘big fish’ prowling around popular seaside resorts in the dead of January. No, it’s only ever in June or July – i.e., ‘just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water’ – that the seas around Malta and Gozo suddenly become infested with giant, man-eating Great White Sharks. (Same goes for jellyfish, naturally… with the small difference that those bastards usually turn out to be real).

Other issues seem to eventually just die of their own accord. There hasn’t been a good old-fashioned ‘Satanizmu’ scare, for example, in quite a while now. Yet it feels like only yesterday when parents of schoolchildren were routinely warned about the ‘Satanic influence’ of anything from Heavy Metal, to Harry Potter, to Yoga, to Marvel Comics, to Barney the Purple Dinosaur… (but, curiously, never things like ‘corruption’, or ‘corporate greed’, or ‘warfare’, or ‘injustice’, or ‘tyranny’. Like God, Satan must clearly move in mysterious ways…)

But in any case: what all these recurring issues have in common is that they all conform to a certain historical narrative-pattern. The George Cross question, for instance, is all about whether we continue to accept the establishment narrative of a seamless transition between Colonial and Independent Malta… or whether you subscribe to the alternative (minority) narrative, which argues that Malta was granted only partial independence in 1964; and that the 1974 Republic did not go far enough in removing the full legacy of Colonialism.   (Huge generalisation, I know; but you try condensing 70+ years of heated national debate into one measly sentence…).

Nowhere is this pattern more visible than in one of the oldest and most persistent of our many periodic national obsessions: the issue about whether Malta really has been a consistently Catholic country since the First Century AD (not to say ‘since St Paul’s shipwreck’… as the historical truth or otherwise of that Biblical episode is precisely the bone of contention).

This one just never seems to go away at all. I may have mentioned this before, but I was present once at a lecture by the late Prof. Godfrey Wettinger, who argued (very approximately – this happened a long time ago) that: a) Malta was de-peopled and re-peopled several times over since 60AD, so it is not possible to draw a clear, linear descent all the way from Paleo-Christianity to today; and b), there is archaeological evidence to suggest that Malta was, in fact, predominantly Muslim for at least some time between (roughly) 800 to 1,400AD. At one point, a sizeable chunk of the students just stood up and walked out.

Now that I focus my memory slightly, what threw them over the edge was the professor’s claim that St Paul most probably never set foot on Malta at all.  

Until that point, most of the offended students were merely growling and huffing under their breaths; afterwards, it was more like a wild buffalo stampede for the exit.

If I choose to relive that moment in detail, it is because I think it points precisely towards the crux of this entire matter. It illustrates one of several other possible perspectives, from which the same issue might appear very different indeed.

Viewed from the mindset that would prompt a student walkout – not to mention reams upon reams of (now forgotten) heated newspaper debate – the fundamental question might not be: how much of this or that version of history is actually correct? It might become: how much of everything that has been built on the foundations of that assumption, would simply collapse if it were ever seriously challenged?

Now: I might not be a ‘historian’, just like I am (very self-evidently) not a Michelin Star Chef. But being inept in the kitchen doesn’t mean you can’t instantly tell if an ingredient happens to be off, just by tasting – sometimes just by smelling – the prepared dish. So, no matter how much academic jargon is piled onto this issue, I can still instantly tell which one of those two perspectives would be the most useful when it comes to establishing what actually happened in our collective, national past.

It is very obviously the approach that would submit all our past assumptions to the most rigorous academic/scientific scrutiny possible; and not the one that doggedly resists any attempt to even think about questioning the accepted, established historical narrative.

With all this in mind, I find it almost disturbing that a historian like Mark Camilleri would end up having to go to court, just to be able to examine certain archaeological evidence that has already been examined by other academics before him. Even before turning to his main argument in court – i.e., that the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage is actively trying to censor alternative historical narratives, to uphold “a historical narrative, which in [Camilleri’s] considered opinion is a scientific and historical falsity, to be promoted for politico-religious reasons” – the denial in itself flies directly in the face of accepted scientific method.

To quote that hackneyed ‘Gondor’ meme… ‘One does not simply pick and choose a historical narrative of one’s liking, and then place it beyond all future discussion’. If we are to be serious about such matters, any view at all – establishment or otherwise – must surely be exposed to peer re-evaluation before it can be ‘accepted’.

And while I can fully understand reservations about placing priceless archaeological heritage in the hands of some random nitwit or other… the person who’s asking for access, in this case, is a lecturer at the University of Malta’s history department… the author of several published books and papers on the subject of Maltese history… and the chairman of the National Book Council to boot. (Admittedly, that last credential is kind of irrelevant, when you think about it; but clearly, we are not talking about some ignoramus who can’t be trusted to handle an amphora without smashing it to atoms).

Once again, I find it astounding that not even such an eminently qualified candidate can so much as even look at evidence of Malta’s history, for fear that he might upset some long-outdated applecart or other. And that’s before turning to the Superintendence’s stated reasons for denying access: i.e., “the information was exempt from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, because it was ‘related to scientific and/or academic research and/or would entail the revealing of information before the research is concluded, which would probably place the agency at an unreasonable disadvantage’.”.

Leaving aside that it quite simply doesn’t apply, verbatim, to the case at hand… the studies in question having long been concluded… I was under this vague impression that ‘Scientific Principle’ (and archaeology is a science, at the end of the day) is more concerned with establishing the truth, than with protecting the academic rights and privileges of hand-picked researchers.  

Stripped to its bare essentials, what that actually says is: ‘You can’t study this particular item, because other people are already studying it, and you might upset them by coming up with a better, more scientifically accurate interpretation than theirs. And as we happen to much prefer their interpretation to anything you might come up with… sorry, but the answer is no.”

Really? That’s the reason why a qualified historian and lecturer, specialised in Maltese history, is not being allowed to do what is, after all, his job… and actually study Maltese history?

Good thing you said so, because I was beginning to think that Mark Camilleri might be onto something big. So big, that the establishment has been trying to hide it for centuries.

Like La Vallette was gay, for instance (let’s face it: ‘Parisot’ is not exactly a very ‘manly’ middle-name)… or the Turks actually won the Great Siege of 1565, but decided to give Malta back after a couple of years… or that traditional Maltese ‘stuffat tal-fenek’ was once made using the cruel ‘halal’ method… (as opposed to our own, entirely humane traditional method of killing a rabbit: which – as I assume you all know – is to either split its skull neatly into two equal halves, with a single well-aimed hammer-blow between the eyes; or to rapidly twist its head 360 degrees, until its neck snaps.)

You know, something that might precipitate a profound, radical, cultural rethink of ourselves, and change our way of life forever…