Ġemma Said

Richard A. Matrenza writes:

Close to 40 years ago my family and I came to know Ġemma. She and her sister Esther had shown great imagination and entrepreneurial spirit. Together they had opened a very modest small eating place in the heart of their native village of Xagħra in the lateral shadow of the parish church, wherein they served delicious traditional Gozitan/Maltese recipes. These they had learned from their wise mother – an alert septuagenarian when I came to know her – who had acquired the secrets of these wholesome meals from her elderly aunt when she was only a very young but alert teenager.

They did not serve chips at all.

Gemma did the marketing on the spot in her inimitable natural way. She was a full woman who tempted you with what Esther had prepared in the kitchen at the back in full view of the customers. While waiting to be served she would offer you – gratuitously – fresh goat’s cheeselets and crunchy, very tasty semolina dry biscuits locally baked.

Her natural charm and de­meanour were a veritable advert of herself, having enjoyed the appe­tising meals. This automatically turned you on to look forward to your chosen item.

Locals, visitors from Malta and overseas, never went away dissatisfied. I can vouch for this. So can the various foreigners from all walks of life I have introduced over the years to Gesther – the acronym they had used to name their “restaurant”. And all those who have discovered it on their own or by sheer word of mouth, over the years.

Gemma was born in the mid-1940s. During World War II. She was a younger child among many siblings in the traditional large family of the time – more so in Gozo than in Malta. The family was poor. They may have had a few scraps of arable land from which to eke a personal living but not commercially viable.

Ġemma had natural intelligence. Notwithstanding, in her early teens she found herself crossing over to Malta to sell cheeselets and maybe eggs to help contribute to the family income. She may have lost on a formal education but became streetwise.

As I have known her over the years I always admired her love of reading. At work she not only spoke relatively good conversational English but also a smattering of German and some Italian.

Her human relations and proper promotional tactics sprang from within as did her charm with clients. With Gemma there was no need to attend management courses. Although she would have excelled if dire family circumstances had not precluded this.

This daughter of Rose Said could very easily have fitted in the English poet’s description when some two centuries ago he wrote: “Fully many a rose is born to blush; unseen and waste its sweetness; on the desert air.”

All those, locals and foreigners, who have come in contact with Ġemma over the years must surely remember her for the good woman she was.

She passed away serenely last Monday at the Gozo General Hospital after a short illness.

She was 67 years old.