The other day I found myself having a conversation with someone whose career had taken her from country to country in a life of considerable luxury and privilege. As is often the case with globe-trotting elites, she had developed a bent to sum up people and places into bite-sized vignettes that perfectly complemented the rounds of wine and canapes that are such a ritual of the type.
Her reading of Malta was no exception. It was a place where everyone knew everyone else and where people usually turned out to be related anyway. There was no way one could say or do anything that didn’t quickly become public knowledge. Life in Malta was safe, cocooned, and relatively straightforward. Above all, the island was small. By which she meant that it was socially small-scale, apart from the geographically obvious.
All of which was eminently digestible, not least since it was a polished rendition of the sort of things we love to tell about ourselves, especially to foreigners. Given that in this case the ethnographic role had been reversed, my job was to nod and smile and produce anecdotes that showed how right she was. The lady had done her schoolwork well.
Except she hadn’t. Take the matter of size. To say that Malta is a small-island nation is to state the obvious and needn’t detain us. The leap from that to ‘small-scale’ is, however, both long and fraught with logical potholes. That’s because what matters to people is not the actual geometrical dimensions of their patch, but rather their experiences of it.
I really don’t see much evidence around me that would suggest that we experience our surroundings as small. We insist on our villeġjatura, for example, and believe that high-powered cars driven on six-lane roads are the only means to get there on time.
A poor start then. But how about the notion that everyone knows everyone else? Surely there must be some truth to that in a place where planes run the length of the whole country as they come in to land, and where family nicknames attach themselves to village neighbourhoods for generations? Well, yes and no.
It is certainly true that one will know pretty much everyone there is to know within one’s social circle. But that’s the mother of all truisms, and in any case is the same the world over. Mumbai has a population of over 15 million but people turn out to have a very good idea of who’s who in their walk of life.
Only step outside that circle and the detailed knowledge gives way to a vast cluelessness. A conversation at a party might go as follows (actual example). A: “Are you the son of Paul Pace the doctor?” B: “No.” A: “Ah, then you must be related to the Paces of the shoe shops. I know them well, the three brothers and I went to St Edward’s together.” B: “No, no relation. I went to a government school and I pay for my shoes.” A: “How do you do?”
Nor are we all related. Given the swathes of Borgs, Camilleris, and Vellas cooped up on 316km² of rock, it is easy to see why the formula might be tempting. It is also simplistic at best. On the one hand it is true that there is considerable inbreeding within social and class circles. But that also means that Borg and blood become estranged the minute one strays beyond one’s zone.
Only a couple of years ago the island looked all nice and cosy and barnacled against the rest of the world on marital stability
The next point is related. If social circles are what I suggest they are, it should follow that ‘public knowledge’ is too sweeping a term. It turns out it is. Round-the-clock gossip notwithstanding, it simply isn’t true that we know all there is to know about everyone else.
I learn some or other intrigue every day. A hint here, a wink there, an online detour, and I’m suitably impressed as to how little I know of the lives of others.
At which point things are not looking good for my cosmopolitan acquaintance. Her hopes hang on Malta being safe, cocooned, and relatively straightforward.
Where does one start? I wouldn’t say that our streets teem with footpads and gangsters, or that our front doors ought to be fitted with voice-recognition devices. Still, we do have our fair share of the rough stuff. I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to get into the habit of waving the finger at mad drivers, for example.
The cocoon is at best a semblance and one I dislike because it thrives on the myth of a conservative society. Only a couple of years ago the island looked all nice and cosy and barnacled against the rest of the world on marital stability, for example. It took a few months of billboards and backbench frolics to burst the bubble.
As for straightforward, I wouldn’t even go there. If we must, I’ll just say it took me two hours of screaming last Wednesday to suggest to a zealot that not all Maltese people thought that bird trapping, fireworks, and God were outdated abominations.
I have no major issue with spectators who miniaturise Malta and cut it down to unreal size. It can actually be fairly entertaining to play the game, especially if the wine and canapes are good. The problems set in when we peddle the caricature to ourselves, in which case it becomes a recipe for monolithic thinking of the worst possible kind.
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