The government has just launched a public consultation document for a new strategy on Gozo. A lot of it is about how to tap into EU money to fund ‘projects’ and ‘development’. This is typical of a vaguely modernist obsession with progress and projects, as opposed to preserving what is already there. It’s also nauseating but never mind.
I’m interested in the language of the document and what it tells us about islands, geography and culture. Take the well-trodden term ‘double insularity’. It is usually summoned to make arguments for improved access. Even as the machines are busy extracting core samples for the geological side of the tunnel feasibility study, there is talk of a fourth ferry and even air links to destinations other than Malta.
There is nothing particularly mad about the last. Lampedusa is less than a third the size of Gozo and it has an airport which connects it to a number of places in Italy. Some of them are as far distant from that island as Malta is from Athens or Algiers.
Technically, Gozo could be said to have a triple insularity. It is, after all, an island off an island (Malta) off an island (Sicily) off a mainland. That equation involves three islands and three prepositions (‘off’), all three of which describe a geographical relation between a larger and a smaller place.
Why, then, do we say that Gozo is doubly insular? Presumably because it is insular relative to Malta, which is itself insular. Thing is, we don’t normally consider Malta to be off anywhere.
There are some exceptions. I once spent several months in the US, where Malta was as hazily known to people generally as Zanzibar is to me. Tired of explaining, I eventually settled on a “60 miles off Sicily” formula. That located my home within easy range of a place people had some idea of.
Besides, since Sicily was unimpeachably European, my formula conveniently masked the 200-mile hop between Malta and Libya. I did occasionally have to put up with jokes about a horse’s head in my bed (the legacy of The Godfather). Still, anything was better than being a vassal of Gaddafi. So, 60 miles off Sicily it was.
Driving on the coast road last Thursday, I had the extinct volcano of Magħtab to my right and a very active one to my left
The second exception that comes to mind’s eye was present on most days last week. Provided one strains hard enough, the southern coast of Sicily and Etna in the background are not infrequently visible from places like Rabat or Żebbug in Gozo. Occasionally, however, the sea and air conditions conspire to render the mirage flesh. Driving on the coast road last Thursday, I had the extinct volcano of Magħtab to my right and a very active one to my left. On days like these, Malta becomes off somewhere.
Only partially so, one might say, because it is not just distance and physical geography that matter. One of the reasons why Malta is not normally thought of as being off anywhere is that it happens to be a nation State. Among the many bizarre beliefs of nationalism, that of completeness ranks very highly indeed. No matter how small it might be, a nation must be complete. It cannot be an appendage of another. So maybe Gozo is only once insular after all.
Another term used in the consultation document that I rather fancy is ‘distinct offering’. Gozo, the story runs, offers a culture that is different to that of Malta – Malta the island, this time, not the nation.
It’s fair to assume that geography has something to do with it. Then again, the relation between cultural distinctiveness and geography is a fuzzy one at the best of times.
Take language. There is evidence to suggest that language difference and geographical distance are directly related. Romansh, for example, is a language that survives mainly in a couple of fairly isolated valleys in the Swiss Graubünden. Some people of Għarb, arguably the remotest part of Gozo, pronounce the Arabic ghayn. And so on.
Except there is also much evidence to the contrary. The towns of Cottonera have never by any stretch of the imagination been isolated. On the contrary, they were hotspots of mobility and intense interaction in the busiest corner of Malta. And yet, the people of Cottonera have a very particular way of speaking. When I moved to Cospicua, it took me a while to figure out that kagħka was something you ate.
There is cultural stuff that’s found in Gozo but not in Malta, and vice versa. Still, there is also plenty of cultural stuff that’s found in parts of Malta but not in others (kagħak and so on). And, in Gozo itself, not everyone pronounces the ghayn. Why, then, is it feasible – if at all – to say that Gozo has a distinct offering?
The answer to that must be geography. In the case of Gozo, cultural distinctiveness is imagined as – read ‘thought to be’ – the result of isolation. A useful result, too, because it can be packaged and sold to outsiders as something worth travelling for. Thus the ‘most rewarding extra mile’ of the roadside publicity.
Would an airport or a tunnel change any of that? Not necessarily. The trick is probably for Gozo to retain its insularity even as it ditches its double insularity. Thankfully, days when the visibility is exceptionally good are the exception.
mafalzon@hotmail.com