Michael Falzon | Sunday, 30 August 2009

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To be Maltese

On a holiday abroad that included a visit to some relations in Scotland, I spent the other weekend in Edinburgh at a time when the Arts Festival is the rage – together with Princes Street being dug up for the laying of new tramlines over forty years after the old tram system was discontinued and its lines obliterated from the face of the city. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
Going to see ‘Porn – the musical’, the only Maltese effort that one can find among the astonishingly large number of events – over 800 different shows in some 300 venues – in the Festival Fringe was, of course, ‘de rigueur’.
I had not seen the musical in Malta but I had been told it was good by Maltese standards. Having seen it in Edinburgh, I must say that it is good by any standards and, in fact, it has been rated as among the best four musicals in the Edinburgh fringe. The audience liked it – especially the abnormal percentage of Maltese among it. I could not help noticing that the script makes fun of us Maltese in a mature way: leg-pulling, if you like, but certainly not in a self-deprecating way. The song about everybody in Malta being related to each other and the innuendos about our sexual mores that are more honoured in the breach, much more than we actually admit, make fun of the Maltese character without demeaning Malta.
This is in contrast to the way many Maltese have a habit of speaking about their country of origin. My ‘Scottish’ relative – who is actually Maltese – commented on this, saying the show was a breath of fresh air when one compares it to the way the Maltese deprecate Malta – and its innate parochialism – when speaking with foreigners. To the extent that they actually belittle themselves, even if unconsciously, as they do not realise that deprecating the place where you come from is actually a very sad implicit admission of your own inferiority complex. Some Maltese who try to promote themselves by detaching themselves from their own community and criticising their country – implicitly claiming they are superior to their peers – in the end leave a bad impression about themselves. In other words Maltese persons passing remarks to foreigners like ‘You have no idea what Maltese people are like…’ or ‘Oh the Maltese are so terrible!’ are risking their lack of respect boomeranging and reflecting badly on them.
There is no doubt that Malta is a small densely populated community and this tends to exacerbate our parochialism, but this phenomenon is not just characteristic of Malta as many seem to think: it is to be found in any small community of human beings. In any small community one finds nosey parkers who want to know everything about their neighbours and local gossip is never-ending. Yet there are people who think that such situations only happen in Malta. They probably compare Maltese life with the anonymous way of life in big cities that they visit during their holidays. This is, of course, hardly comparing apples with apples!
Listening to radio phone-ins on BBC Radio-1 (Scotland) following the release of the Libyan allegedly responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy (I insist on using ‘allegedly’ in spite of his having been found guilty… but that is another story) I noticed that no one adopted a ‘this-is-Scotland-what-do-you-expect’ attitude; not even any of those Scots that openly and angrily disagreed with his release. I was, of course, hardly surprised when I heard one caller declare that the SNP had lost his vote as he considered the decision to be an awfully wrong one. Yet there was never the type of self-deprecating tone that ridicules one’s own country, as one comes across with in Malta in so many letters to the press and in comments in the local blogs.
Self-flagellation seems to be an appalling syndrome of the collective psyche of the Maltese nation. It was no surprise that on a ‘per capita’ basis, Malta is the country sending the greatest number of complaints that the EU Ombudsman receives from the citizens of all the 27 member states. We seem to be goaded by a perverse desire to see our country hurt: the idea that Valletta could (or should?) lose its World Heritage status, for example, obviously sprung from a Maltese source. Or take the clamour about the issue of bird shooting and trapping: how much of this was instigated by pressure from Maltese sources on the EU Environment Commission, rather than originating in Brussels?
Forty-five years after Malta achieved political independence, the Maltese people are still looking for ways to find their real selves. It is not that easy. Our size makes us a small community with all the disadvantages that this inevitably carries with it. The irony is that with an astute and clever approach – rather than with the grumbling mentality that is so common amongst us – we can turn our disadvantage into an advantage. We tend to see our parochial traits as national characteristics because the nation is actually a miniscule island state: in global proportions, it is a parish or a small province at best. This leads some to think that they can succeed in life via an ego trip that relies on deprecating what is Maltese and demeaning their own origin – the ‘I-am-better-than-the-rest’ syndrome, if you like.
Many Maltese who have gone abroad to seek different pastures have succeeded in life – with some doing exceedingly well – because of their individual capabilities. In so doing, they have managed to shake off the obsession that all Maltese are at a disadvantage because Malta is so small.
As the Maltese troupe told everybody who went to see their show in Edinburgh, Malta is an insignificantly small player on the world stage. It is perhaps not just a coincidence that in the Maltese musical the normally inconsequential ‘miscellaneous man’ role turns out to be different from the norm, with the insignificant man seeking to establish himself as an equal to the lead characters.
To be Maltese does entail this continuous struggle. If only we always pursue our efforts with dignity, avoiding practices that disgrace our own birthright and that – in the end – can only harm our individual selves as well.

micfal@maltanet.net

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