Richard Spiteri

 

Pierre Dimech has reached a venerable age. He is the best reporter on behalf of the Maltese community of Algiers of yore. He lived through 1962 and remembers well the ire with which Marseilles mayor Gaston Defferre welcomed the European refugees, expecting them to return to rebel-held Algeria and sit tight there. Dimech later studied law in Paris and became a bank lawyer. He was secretary for the Association France-Malte which was very active from the late 1960's to the 1980's.

When publishers Atelier Fol'Fer asked Dimech to write for them a travel guide to the Maltese Islands, they knew they couldn't find a better candidate for, as the author says in the opening pages, since 1966 he visited our islands some 23 times. The Europeans who in 1962 left panic-stricken from Algeria have oftentimes remained in touch by setting up social clubs especially in southern France. This travel guide to what the author calls a "Homeric archipelago" is especially addressed to them. In other words it is personal and at times it seems as if Dimech lifts whole passages from his diary.

 The first trip to Malta, the one in the summer of 1966, is the most important of all so much so that the author calls it his second baptism. It has to be borne in mind that the Maltese who during the nineteenth century emigrated in droves to French North Africa, little by little lost contact with their country of origin. The young Dimech who lands at Customs House, Grand Harbour, in 1966, seems to be living in amnesia. In Algeria he had lost everything and in Malta he wins all. The Maltese surnames on the signs of Valletta shops, the young men in white short-sleeved shirts and black trousers walking up and down High Street, Hamrun, to coax young ladies in giving them the eye : all this conjures up familiar scenes in the Algiers prior to 1962 and which is no more. Malta reconciles Dimech with the city where he was born and from which he was definitely expelled.

As Laurent Ropa gives an account of how the first Maltese settled in Algeria, so Dimech relates their sudden departure and their bid for survival. To continue this parallelism with Ropa, I must add that some ancestors of Dimech came from Gozo, from Nadur to be exact. Due to the homonym, Bal(l)ades maltaises can be translated as "A Walkabout in Malta" or as "Maltese Ballads".

This book shows the linguistic diversity of the Maltese. One can safely say that there is a Maltese literature written in the French language.

 

 

Pierre Dimech, Bal(l)ades maltaises : guide sentimental dans un archipel homérique,

                             Publishers Atelier Fol'Fer, series Étoile du berger, France, 2016, ill.,

                              ISBN 9782357910911       €20