At home in a hallway

We couldn't do without hallways. All houses will have a space just inside the front entrance which is marked as 'special'. In Malta the paragon is probably the barrel-vaulted idiom, that can be as pretentious as it is aesthetically pleasing. Failing the arches, even the smallest and most functional of flats will contain alternatives - a pair of vases set up to form an invisible line, say, or even just a square metre of carpet.

Hallways work in many ways. First, they are transitory. Unlike inner rooms, they are spaces designed for people to cross, rather than hang out in. Hall chairs are usually uncomfortable, and intentionally so.

Second, in crossing them we are transformed, physically as well as symbolically. Physically, a hallway is usually contrived so as to purify. Transients are expected to wipe their feet or, as is customary in some countries, take off their shoes. Symbolically, they 'set the tone' by means of religious images (the ubiquitous 'God bless our home' stickers, for example) and furnishings that represent the standing and aspirations of the household.

Third, the hallway is the venue for the rituals - which range from taking people's coats to more elaborate stuff - of arrival and departure of guests. People, that is, who are welcome to stay for a limited time, and who will usually be told to 'feel at home' (implying they are in someone else's).

On Wednesday, The Times carried a piece about the resettlement of 93 refugees from Malta to France. It was called 'Charter flight to a new life' and was typical of its type, in the sense that we get such news in pretty much standard format in the local papers. It could have been scripted to a fixed template which I would suggest is worth taking apart.

The story started with a flashback to the image of migrants crossing deserts on foot and lost at sea in 'small rickety boats'. This is the first clue to the meaning of the tale.

It is relevant that migrants arrive by boat and depart by chartered flight. The two forms of transport to represent the dichotomies between primitive and civilised, poverty and well-being, south and north.

There are other hints at this imagined transition. The resettled migrants wore 'suits and fedora hats' and carried travel documents. All very much in contrast with their circumstances on arrival in Malta, we are invited to think.

But not so fast. The transformation, we learn, was incomplete. Travel documents were not held, but "clutched nervously". The passengers "gazed in wonder" out of the windows. And when the plane finally touched down in Paris, they "immediately leapt to their feet and tried to retrieve their carry-on bags, much to the chagrin of the French cabin crew".

Let's leave aside the infantilisation. (I've never been on a flight when people didn't look out of windows or court the chagrin of cabin crew.) What's interesting is the image of people in transition.

Which is where Malta, and hallways, come in. Fact is that what we're looking at is very much a spectacle of departure. (This column has in the past discussed that of arrival.) For migrants it seems, Malta is and must remain a space they move through, rather than settle in.

Mohammed Adan Abdi Salan, for example, arrived in Malta in 2004. He understood Malta's problem ("the island is too small") and thought the Maltese were "very friendly and helpful towards refugees". Yet on Tuesday, he was given an emotional wave-off on the tarmac at Luqa.

In other words, he was told to 'feel at home' - and leave the minute his hosts looked at their watches.

Like all hallways worth their vases, Malta apparently also transforms. Physically, migrants are purified here. When they arrive they are greeted by personnel wearing latex gloves. When they leave, they are embraced and kissed goodbye.

Symbolically, Malta gives them the chance to learn a global language (English) and get a foothold on the ladder of northern consumer society that will sell them much more than suits and fedora hats.

But we cannot afford to portray that transformation as complete. It only becomes so once they reach the point of final destination, in this case France. There, they will learn there is nothing wonderful about the view from 35,000ft, and they will also learn to wait until the seatbelt lights are out. It's in France that a 'new life' beckons, not Malta.

There are profound implications to this kind of media spectacle. The image of the hallway, so transformative and yet so temporary, happens to dovetail with the popular understanding of Malta's place in the whole process of sub-Saharan migration to Europe. Our location, just inside the front entrance as it were, helps no end.

In these past few years we've sort of learned to live with migrants. Few would argue that they should be 'stopped at 14 miles' as prescribed in The Book that Changed the World. At the same time, we seem to need our bedtime stories, the big one being that migrants never intended to stay in the first place.

It's a tale that's told by NGOs understandably eager to ease the situation. It's told by the state and recounted in people's everyday conversations. It's also quite happily bought by migrants themselves, as if they have a choice.

In sum, the image of the hallway is a compromise that would make an Englishman turn green and slit his eyes. We sort of welcome migrants. We ask them to wipe their feet, come in, and feel at home. They can sit on our hall chairs and may even be invited in for a drink or two. As good hosts we also transform them (but not quite). Then, when the time comes, we bid farewell.

In spectacular style, as befits such a beautiful moment.

mafalzon@hotmail.com