“Mohammed Muzabe was plastering a wall on the roof of a house in Tarxien belonging to David Schembri, when he heard an argument taking place downstairs between Mr Schembri and Joseph Piscopo... Mr Schembri is alleged to have bitten off part of Mr Piscopo’s finger... Mr Piscopo’s lawyer said his client wanted to drop all charges against his neighbour because they both wanted to live peaceful lives.” (The Times, October 18).

Neighbours can threaten one’s control over one’s own domestic space- Mark Anthony Falzon

You couldn’t make it up. Entertainment value apart however, there are several ingredients in this story I find particularly wholesome. That’s because they sum up what having neighbours is all about.

The first is the tension, in this case pronounced enough to have left three men in court and one of them chewing on a bit of finger. In type if not in extent, it’s the kind of tension which underwrites a good many relations between neighbours.

On the one hand, they’re expected to be trusting and cooperative. But there’s also a sense in which too close is unwise. There are any number of proverbs which recommend keeping one’s distance. ‘Ġirien f’darek, ġurdien f’għamarek’ (‘neighbours in the house are a mouse in the cupboard’) is one such. It seems that too much familiarity is thought to be a threat to the integrity of the household and family.

Much of this popular wisdom goes back to a time when people lived by ideas of privacy we would find rather strange today. The harbour towns for example had very high population densities and this meant that people lived cheek by jowl. This left them united, but also vulnerable to intrusion.

Thing is, neighbours can threaten one’s control over one’s own domestic space. They can make it impossible fully to control the soundscape of one’s home, for example.

Feuds can stretch out over decades and involve acts of violence that range from cigarette ends hopping over the garden wall to pets with major tummy-aches. Or even to missing bits of finger.

One way of keeping things under control is by creating distance. This can be done by formalising relations – by insisting your neighbours use title and surname at all times, for example.

If you can avoid them entirely, do so. I read somewhere recently about how the super-rich have taken to buying up stacks of properties adjacent to their own. That’s not for want of more space but simply for the privilege of having no neighbours.

No surprise there. Most of us would be quite prepared to fork out our life savings for the pleasure of a detached home. Semi-detached is something of a half-baked social triumph. Terraced has a mind of its own. It may have no option but to rub shoulders, but it only does so through the aptly-called ‘dividing wall’. Terraced houses open up to the front and back, never to the sides.

At least in the case of Malta, rooftops have their own ‘fuq il-bejt’ lore. There’s probably no better way to get a feel of a neighbourhood than by hanging out ‘fuq il-bejt’.

It promises a type of visibility that is usually blocked at street level. Or, if you wish, it’s that part of the domestic space which doesn’t hide behind walls.

Certainly our culture privileges the visual. With neighbours, however, this doesn’t usually work. That’s because we tend to put in a lot of money and labour to control (read ‘block’) any sightlines there might be between their and our own domestic space.

Much of the time these measures are not entirely necessary. One can usually rely on conventions requiring the neighbours not to look, even if the sightlines are there. There is, in fact, something deeply unpleasant and voyeuristic about looking. The point is not just about not looking, it is also about not looking as a performance of good-neighbourliness.

One of the worst things one can say about a property is that it is ‘bin-nies ġo fik’ (‘too close to the neighbours for comfort’). Sightlines are controlled formally, through complicated and sometimes ancient planning legislation. Less formal measures may include creeper plants, flower pots, or an awning. We really don’t want people staring into our homes uninvited.

Given this visual guardedness, how then do we ‘get to know’ our neighbours? I quote from the Times Literary Supplement’s review of Emily Cockayne’s recent Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours: “You piece together the evidence like James Stewart in Rear Window... if you can’t hear them, you can smell their cooking, and curse their liking for liver and onions.”

There are two reasons why I like this quote. First, it accurately describes the learning process by which we get to know our neighbours. It is really a matter of piecing together, over time, bits and pieces that come one’s way. The knowledge that’s produced can be rich and nuanced and include things like daily routines.

The second reason is that the quote draws our attention to the non-visual cues of sound and smell. Like sightlines, the first is hemmed in by all sorts of rules, conventions, and etiquette. Every person who lives in a flat will have their own stories about the neighbours’ sonic idiosyncrasies and transgressions.

Smell is a curious one. I remember talking to a Hindu lady from Mumbai who lived in a Muslim neighbourhood in a northern suburb of that city. She told me she enjoyed excellent relations with her neighbours, but for one thing: The smell of roasting beef. They probably thought the same of her pork recipes.

Perhaps the biggest thing about neighbours is, they’re there to stay. Homes are all about permanence and immobility and the long term. I can see what our Schembri and Piscopo meant when they said they ‘wanted to live peaceful lives’.

mafalzon@hotmail.com