Maybe it is just the 200-odd kilometres that separate us, maybe it’s because the stretch of sea that separates us is rather easily crossed in a matter of hours even by ramshackle boats overloaded with people, maybe it is because the frequent visits of people from Libya over the past years has been so pervasive, maybe also because we think we can understand something of what they’re saying – we all seem to think we can understand Libya.

Whereas the opposite is true. We have simply no idea what it means to live in Libya. And even more so today, we have no idea what it means to be Libyan.

There is next to nothing in our mental or collective experience of our comfortable, sheltered, environment that can relate to what living in Libya over the past 40 years has meant, and certainly nothing that can explain to us what it means to live in such a troubled country as it is now, both in its western part and in its eastern part as well. We simply have no idea what it means to live under the constant threat of sudden arrest, incarceration, torture and death. Nor what it means to live under daily bombardments by planes that often mistake their targets. Nor, on the other hand, what it means to drink of the heady brew that is liberation after 40 years.

Over the past weeks, I have heard people around me speaking about the country as if they have experienced it or as if they can understand the Libyan mentality, let alone the devious Gaddafi one. They are all ready to say we should do this, or that, or the other.

It all comes from that old chestnut that Malta’s role is to act as a bridge between the northern shores of the Mediterranean and the southern shores. There is nothing in our past history, nor in our cultural experience, nor in our cultural tradition, that in any way, brings us near to the Maghreb shores.

There is no comparison, either, with our understanding of the Sicilian mentality, even though most of us do not understand the cultural, sociological and political context of what is said most times (to be honest, we find it almost impossible to understand the Sicilian dialect, even though most Italian words have come to us as translated through this dialect). But at least, we understand Italian, even if most of us find it difficult to string a sentence or two in correct Italian. And we can read Italian, whereas we cannot read Arabic.

Our cultural experience over the past centuries has been defined by our Catholic faith, and that in its most intransigent Counter-Reformation mode, while the period we spent under the Knights meant we were the foremost bastion of Latin Christianity facing the Muslim south. The only common element between our two peoples was the basic koinè Arabic we spoke. Even so, there may be a greater similarity between basic Maltese (shorn of the Italian, etc superimpositions) and the Arabic of Lebanon and Syria than that of Libya.

When Malta became part of the British Empire, again, at no time was there any shared history with our south. But more than an issue about a claimed shared language, the British brought us, or rather reinforced us, in the rule of law as supreme in the country. The last time that was the case in Libya must have been, if it was at all, under old King Idris but I suspect it was a pretty ramshackle thing, given the past Italian Fascist colonisation period.

Later on, and not without British resistance, we also obtained for ourselves real democracy, with real, not fake, political parties, real elections, real reversals of fortune.

Through the enforcement of the rule of law and the practice of real democracy, a contract is a contract and is enforceable, and breaches thereof are punished, business deals are not subject to the whims of those in power nor does acquaintance with the people at the top convert to unfair advantages in the market.

OK, OK, I am exaggerating, there are still many defects in the way we live, in the way we do business, etc. But still, this is the West and Malta is definitely in the West. Our membership of the European Union has reinforced all this and made us even less subject to the whims of the politicians and the government of the time, from whichever party it is composed.

There is no way that the people of Libya, or of Tunisia or of Egypt can be that. At least, so far. The great Arab Spring 2011 is wonderful in the aspirations of its adherents mainly young adults, but we have no way of knowing how it will all pan out. Already, the outcome of Libya is highly uncertain while Friday’s events in Cairo show that the flowers of Tahrir Square are already fading.

That is why I say there is no way we can understand the inner soul of the Libyan people, for we have no comparable experience to relate to, nor do they have to relate to ours. Even in so-called liberated Benghazi, they are still fiddling around with the most elementary structures of civil society, let alone a fully-fledged democracy. Even given, as we all wish them, freedom and international cooperation, they will still need years to reach a basic understanding of the workings of democracy and the rule of law.

This is something else that has not been grasped by glib commentators. The Great Arab Spring of 2011 bears no resemblance to the post-Communist wave of Eastern Europe in 1989. Those countries were under Communism for up to 70 years, but the structures of civil society and the practice of private business had survived in a greatly reduced form, and the post-Communist years had a basic pattern they could return to once the Stasis of the Communist years were rolled away.

There’s more. We may be living in a post-Christian era (even so, remember that precisely 50 years ago today, the Church of Archbishop Michael Gonzi interdicted the top levels of the Labour Party) but our generic religious orientation is Christian or post-Christian. In this world-view, religion and politics are two separate levels of being (in our case, with some unhappy exceptions). Whereas the experience of Maghreb in general is that of a uniformly Muslim society, which, while not being in the integralist fundamentalist Sharia mode (at least, so far) as Iran and parts of Iraq, does not have the Ataturk secularist approach.

Rather, we can only speak of work in progress, the outcome of which is still highly uncertain and which can still go either way.

Having said all this, it is even more impossible for us to understand what the Libyan people are enduring these days, both in the western Gaddafi-held area, and in the supposedly-liberated East.

The latest news yesterday is once again of the rebels being out-smarted, out-gunned, out-manoeuvred by Gaddafi forces, allowed to think they have won Brega or Adjabiya and lured into a trap, time and again. After two months of bitter fighting, the battle frontline is still rather hazy but it is mainly around these two towns anyway. One feels that the Gaddafi forces can break through at any time they want and re-enter Benghazi.

The last time Malta experienced war was 70 years ago, so most Maltese have no direct experience of that. True, the continuous air raids caused thousands of deaths, but the resilient Maltese found a way of neutralizing most of the danger by digging shelters.

The Libyans do not seem to have done that, but then we Maltese did not have to fight off an invasion, or fighting at close quarters, or people coming in and carting off key members of a family.

We have no idea what it meant to be living in Zawiya after Gaddafi forces overran it on 10 March. We have no idea what it must be like to live in Misratah these days and be attacked by rocket fire at all hours from all points around the port. We have no idea what it means to be living in Tripoli today where even the twitch of an eyebrow can lead to swift arrest and maybe death.

Most of the comments one heard or read in the past days were comments made by people who simply have no idea what it means to be Libyan in April 2011. Most of the comments, since we, living in the West, have the freedom to make any irresponsible, selfish and jingoistic comment we like, show how blinkered, how limited our understanding can be.

And before we try and mediate between chalk and cheese, between dictator and dictated-to, before we assume superior airs of knowing it all and knowing the solution much more than the people on the ground, before even venturing into the dubious terrain of battle strategists (given the sheer fickleness of Nato and its track record of the past days) let us at least, at the very least, pause to empathise with what the ordinary Libyan citizens are going through and look like continuing to go through in the foreseeable future.

We have simply no idea what it means to be subject to the arbitrariness and the casualness of violence in our ordinary lives. We have simply no idea that we are indeed so fortunate. Let’s hope we do not realize how lucky we are until we actually lose it. Or do we think we have a God-given right to be the way we are and that somehow we will never, ever, succumb to something like that. The winds of war and violence can turn even more suddenly than the wind of spring.

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