I knew I shouldn’t have come. The moment I’d left my car and walked the footpath, I realised my mistake. At the first glimpse of the rotting house, the depilated, abandoned state of the surroundings, my heart cringed, made me shy away. After such a long time, so many years, so many happenings, I should never have consented to...

But, this was, still is my past! I was born here. I grew up here. Played in these fields, this valley. Ran over green grass, bare rock, over stone, rubble walls. I knew every passageway, every carob tree, every field, every rock face. Further down was Ganni’s farm, our neighbour. Our only neighbour.

* * *

“Get ready for mass you two,” mum was shouting from downstairs, “and don’t forget to pick up your lunches from the table. I’m just shutting off the hen’s paddock. Hurry up.”

This was our daily routine. Every morning, every schoolday, that is, was the same. Up at quarter to seven sharp, breakfast of hobz biz-zejt, a soft boiled egg and a mug of hot, scalding milk. Then off with mum to Mass and straight after, to school, right there, up the hill in the village square.

Our house, a primitive, five-room abode, was cut off from the main clump of houses, gathered around the main church, like a hen with her chickens. Here was all we had. Our world. John, a year older and I, shared with our mum the small farm. We helped feed the chickens, watered and sowed the garden path where we grew a supply of basic, meagre needs: carrots, potatoes, parsley and onions. A few hens supplied the meat and the eggs. A single goat, the milk. There was barely enough food. There was none to spare, nothing to waste. Sweets or chocolate were a rarity. Our clothes were threaded, and patched up, time and time again. But always clean.

There, in that small church, my brother and I had been baptised, received our First Communion, and the Holy Confirmation. We were altar-boys for some years, helping at morning Mass, all evenings for the Rosary and Benediction. At the village festa, with finely brushed, well-oiled hair, we proudly took part in the procession, rounding the decorated, main streets of the minute village.

My oldest, clear, recollection of those primary years goes back to when Nannu Karm passed away in his 90s. We had the vjatku then and altar-boys like me ran to assist whenever we heard the bell’s lamentation from the belfry. I can still see him now, lying stiff in bed, dressed up in his best black suit, his head bound up in a tight bandage. Above his four-poster, brass bed, were two oval sepia, faded photographs. One was of himself sporting his proud, handlebar moustache. The other showed Nanna Karmena, whom I fail to remember. The two were pictured in their 20s, serious, and pompously posing for the camera.

I remember all through our upbringing, mum was hard up, striving to make ends meet. That was a primal, rural existence a few years after the war. Dad had died early when we were young; too naïve to understand what was truly happening, what it really meant to have to grow up without a father; the constant, full, tragic implications, of such an event. But mum tried hard – and succeeded.

True, we never had the luxuries other well-off children had. No fancy clothes. No fancy foods. No costly toys. We had to make do. A piece of wood, a length of string, an empty carton; these were our toys. With these and hundreds of laying-about, useless materials, we invented and constructed our playthings. What we lacked in finances was replaced with a fertile imagination.

We both did well at school, found decent jobs. And when grown up, like our parents, we eventually found spouses, married, and left home. But our aspirations turned different, and we both headed off elsewhere. John was very well settled in England and I had migrated to Australia. On opposite, remote sides of the world, my brother and I had built our own families, our new homes. For the first years, contact between us two and our links with Mum were constant, fervent and regular. But, as year after year passed, the love bonds, that primitive upbringing, that longing that brought us together, lost its intensity.

“Are you coming home for Christmas?” mum was saying over the lines, thousands of miles away. “Oh, I know it’s no use asking you over,” she continued, knowingly. “You keep saying ‘next year I’ll come’, but somehow you’ll never make it’.” For many years I would call her from my home, some weeks before Christmas to give her the greetings, mine and my family’s. And every year, as she knew I would, I’d keep postponing it till the next.

Finally, doubtingly, this Christmas I had come – my first and only visit. I came back to have a look at my roots. The place of my origin. The spot where I was born, lived through infancy, childhood – my youth. I have seen the school, and the parish church. The streets, old and new, of my once small village, now bursting at its seams with new houses, latest villas, a hideous housing estate.

But mum will never know I came. She passed away three years ago. And I did not dare come, not even then. It was not a matter of not having the time, not affording the money. It was something else. When I left some 40 years ago I vowed to myself that once settled in my new home, in a foreign continent many miles away, I was severing my roots forever. Coming back to this island would be too painful, too much of a challenge, too big an enticement to remain. Now it does not matter anymore. There’s no one here. Nothing left, drawing me to remain.

Now it’s different.