To describe it as some kind of Hobson’s choice would be rather naïve. The immigration crisis that is occurring in the very middle of the Mediterranean is like a stellar black hole, a big star that has collapsed upon itself, colliding with another black hole – the COVID-19 virus – ravaging the whole world.

For the Maltese, Italian, Spanish and Greek governments, at the very edge of Europe’s southern borders, it means having to cope with the resultant massive explosion that we are sadly witnessing. While black holes cannot be seen with the naked eye, not even using space telescopes, the EU cannot be that blind in this metaphorical situation. It has shown itself helpless and hapless as many of its member states have long chosen to steer clear away from the haunting problem of immigration and are even more adamant today while the Coronavirus rages on.

Fully concentrated on saving Maltese lives in this horrific pandemic and strongly committing all its human and material resources, Malta has had no alternative to closing its ports to NGO vessels and their crafty captains, after having earlier closed all air and sea traffic. With the Coronavirus claiming lives and horribly disrupting the economy because of an imposed partial lockdown, there really has been only one option: saving Maltese lives first and foremost. When one makes such a weighty declaration, it does not in any way mean that other lives don’t matter. In times of war, such as this one, against an invisible enemy, there are priorities to be made. We are a small island-state with no proper navy and with proportionately limited human resources in the fields of medical care, civil protection and search and rescue.

The few malcontents among us who seem to think otherwise have now come out insisting they are willing to host the immigrants inside their own homes. Such benevolence must be commended, but how many immigrants per home would that mean? There are thousands queuing up on Libyan shores. And would they have them quarantined? Every other incoming passenger has to. And if they are confirmed positive to the virus on arrival, as has happened in Lampedusa when a dinghy managed to sail in undetected, would they still be breakfasting with them?

With even our overworked, overwhelmed nurses and doctors getting infected and having to receive treatment themselves, who is to go out to meet the immigrants and have them tested? The same questions prevail in answer to the blurted suggestion that the immigrants should be housed inside the currently empty holiday apartments and hotels, but with one added query – what would one do with the thousands of tourism and hospitality workers currently out of their jobs when the country hopefully settles back into normality?

In this whole miserable scenario, there is not a single person who has not noticed the EU silence over Malta’s recent plea for an urgent £100 million aid package to Libya to help stem the situation there. Is it a snub? Is it a we-couldn’t careless affront?

 

Saħħa!

Never has this Maltese form of salutation been more appropriate than at this moment in time when the world, and Malta with it, continue to face the almost-surreal, apocalyptic threat from COVID-19. It is such a pity so many of us have lost it in witless preference for ciao and bye which really have lost any significance they once may have had.

Saħħa (your health) is the best thing one could wish to a loved one, a relative, a friend, even a complete unknown, particularly as we all try to stay connected via mobile and landline phone, Skype, FaceTime and so on. There was a time when saħħa was so much in use that even the thousands of British sailors and soldiers we used to have among us in colonial times got hooked to it and exchanged it freely among themselves and with Maltese service-providers such as dgħajsamen (a naval concoction of the time), cabbies, taxi drivers, grocers and barmaids.

The word had taken so many roots in the everyday language of innumerable British servicemen, particularly those going back to their home ports in southern England, that it was even listed in the Oxford Dictionary. I treasure a copy of the 1934 edition of the Oxford Dictionary given to me by a long-lost relative and which described the word saħħa (written as saha, as per the English modulation of the Maltese goodbye) as int. for international and nav. for naval. Today’s Google goes further than that, however. It describes it as a “Maltese interjection”, correctly interpreting it as meaning “cheers”, “bye” and “health”.

Incidentally, there was only one other Maltese word featured in the Oxford Dictionary – dgħajsa (presented as daisa), again in connection with imperial times in Malta.

Time has, alas, more or less killed saħħa even among us. We would do well to resurrect its popularity, at least while the COVID-19 virus rages on. Stay safe is fine. Saħħa is even better.

 

Victor Aquilina at 90

A Maltese broadcasting icon, Victor Aquilina, happily turned 90 last week. He has been living in Australia for many years, but I’m sure most people from my generation willingly join me in paying tribute to his indelible contribution to Maltese broadcasting, radio in particular, at a time when we were children and curious teenagers hungry to experience life with that sense of creativity those times demanded.

I first got to know Victor when he offered me a series of literary programmes on radio, having had earlier crossed paths with him only when I took part in what are historic recordings of the “Beat and Literature” programmes produced by the then still fledgling Movement for the Promotion of Literature in the mid-60s. Never in my wildest imagination would I have seen myself becoming a public broadcasting colleague more than a decade later, at the very end of the 70s, when I moved from print journalism to national broadcasting via a two-year stint in a somewhat opaque DOI newsroom.

My first day inside the newsroom at TV House actually started with an internal call from Victor. He invited me to his office in the company’s other building further up Guardamangia road – what was still popularly known as Rediffusion House despite nationalisation having already been happily achieved five years earlier – for a welcome drink.

Gestures like that, giving someone new an immediate sense of belonging, are never forgotten, just as much as many of my age have not forgotten those annual Yuletide music stories Victor used to produce based on lyrics from different songs. One just stayed glued to that old wooden box with its throbbing heart for a loudspeaker.

Victor left for Australia only one or two years later for reasons never publicly explained, but his legacy persists. He was Malta’s first DJ, a radioman through and through but who not only did not flinch from the challenge of the powerful new medium of television, but was able to settle comfortably into its bosom, something not many of his contemporaries did as easily.