Refugee reverie

Last Friday the Jesuit Faith and Justice Centre launched a book called Opening Up a Path beyond Fear. It includes a significant contribution by President Emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami on the Detention Centre substituting the Customs House as the image of the Frontier dividing "us" from "them". What were the thoughts stimulated in you?

There was one tantalising number that stuck in my memory, although it came midstream in a torrent of warnings that the topic concerned flesh-and-blood human beings, and not statistics. In Malta today, the immigrants are very assorted, and certainly not just in pigment of skin. They come, I learnt, at present from no less than a wondrous 126 different countries.

Maybe, the fault lies with my classical education, but with that number there swam into my memory the splendid image of the stark naked Neptune in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace in Valletta. (The statue was possibly a portrait of the Genoese Admiral Doria, a dear friend of De Valette and compatriot of Renzo Piano, as was once suggested by European Court of Human Rights Judge Giovanni Bonello, tipped as Curator of the Palace when it is turned into a repository of our heritage treasures once Parliament moves to the Renzo Piano building).

The Roman Empire's god of the sea reincarnated Homer's Poseidon, evil agent of Ulysses on Gozo, deemed by Church Fathers, such as Tertullian of north Africa, an embodiment of Satan. In my reverie at the book launch at Tal-Qroqq I suspected him also being responsible for the continued shipwrecking on our shores of uninvited guests.

At the same time, another image flashed into my mind. It was that of Mario de Marco. He is living, convincing proof that 'lateral thinking' was not born in Malta by sheer co-incidence. On his capacious plate, fake silver but still avidly coveted by a squad of wannabe colleagues, our Most Eminent Prince, Lawrence Gonzi, has placed alongside the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, a hotter potato than was ever cooked by Mistra's slow-food champion chef Claude Camilleri, a lot of not quite fresh but still raw meat. The second wedding of culture with tourism is potentially very fertile.

Surely, that 126 figure provides the Prime Minister's Parliamentary Secretary with a chance to turn the tables on the pagan Neptune, if he uses it in the renewed branding of Malta abroad. This sea-locked Switzerland rejoices in a Gaddafi-financed mosque, complete with a minaret that cuts an almost dainty figure against our Mediterranean blue sky. (In another meeting that I attended last Friday morning organised by the Anna Lindh Foundation at Dar l-Ewropa, Adrian Grima denounced such phrases, together with Kinnie, as neo-colonial stereo-type impositions, symptoms of a 'Mediterraneanism' similar in nature to the 'Orientalism' denounced by my late dear friend, Edward Said. But that is another matter). Malta equally rejoices in Fenech Adami attending the Jewish seder.

So, our island can be projected not only as a paragon of cultural hybridity, but also as host country for outcasts, like Ulysses and St Paul, from over 126 countries cast upon our more rocky than sandy shores. A transcript of the contribution at the book launch by a Nigerian who said that he did not even know about Malta when he escaped from poverty and war in his still beloved native land but found on our island where he mysteriously and providentially landed the longed-for haven of peace would be ideal for this purpose.

Does the 'Path Beyond Fear' outlined in the book involve the integration of such immigrants into Maltese culture?

A friend of mine was very sceptical about this project. She told me that she did not believe that our guest-workers were all that badly off. She had seen a number of them moving from bicycles to motorcycles and, realising that these means of mobility did not in fact give them the required freedom in terms of the jobs they had found, they now had cars. Moreover, they were always boisterously laughing.

Since I am convinced that personal encounters are the best way to overcome prejudice, I got the lady to put the question to a group of immigrants gathered around a leading joker. "I have a lot of time on my hands and a captive audience". The answer raised a gale of laughter from his companions, but my lady friend remained poker faced. So I asked the wit to tell the lady a funny story.

"We were three brothers. The eldest went to England many years ago, with nothing but his tattered garments. He was adopted by a Catholic aristocratic family and we knew from what he sent us that he was doing extremely well. So, after some 10 years the middle brother went to join him. He met him at a West End club, he was wearing a bespoke tailored suit, spoke with an Oxford accent tinkled the ice cubes in his glass of whisky... but when he glanced at the newspaper, he shed a tear. His newly arrived brother asked him what made him sad. He replied: "The Empire is totally lost". There was another gale of laughter. But the lady still remained poker faced.

What is the point of your telling me this story?

Of course, if the same kind of joke was enjoyed, then true cultural integration would already have occurred. The lady had not understood that an attempt had been made to explain to her that, although our interlocutor had already got a good smattering of Maltese, cultural integration did not mean it becoming impossible to differentiate him from native Maltese. For the integration to be mutually enriching, he still had to remain different and bring yet another element to the eclectic texture that constitutes our Maltese cultural identity, into which another strand was being introduced.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was speaking to Miriam Vincenti.