A teenager recently asked me a very pertinent question, a question that I remember asking myself so many times when my own youth was swiftly turning into adulthood, and again and again as my adulthood mature seamlessly into senior citizenship.
"What makes me Maltese?"
What forms the Maltese Nation?
What keeps this sense of belonging to an entity strong enough to fill me with an intense sense of identity, while embracing and celebrating diversity and multicultularism?
Was it the genes, imbued with memory, perhaps?
Could it be because we share an immense and endless genepool with so many countries across the sea and beyond, thanks to pirates, visitors and traders of all kinds from the four corners of the world?
Was it then perhaps the language? This ancient Semitic spiced up with words and phrases that have imbued it with unmatched internationality?
It could be, but my English speaking compatriots from some parts of the country do not seem to feel less Maltese than me, whose English first language has always been their mother tongue.
Then if it is not the genes, or even the language, is it the way my country looks, with its combination of fertile terraced fields, at times barren countryside and the hotchpotch of buildings and architectural styles, spanning a thousand years, and in some cases much more?
Could it be the unique skyline that still cuts the horizon in a very familiar manner? Is that uniquely Maltese? But how is that so different from many baroque Sicilian villages that pepper our nearby big sister island in neighbouring Ragusa? Why don't the Ragusani feel Maltese if we share so much historical, architectural and culinary similarities?
Having reflected on the potential answers to these and many questions and others besides, a clear answer to the teenager’s curiosity starts to take shape in my mind, while simultaneously attempting to grapple with the challenge of trying to communicate that answer.
So I suggested to the teenager to imagine a large orchard in big garden with no boundary walls. An orchard exposed to the most brutal, ever assaulting elements.
On the outside, each tree whether an olive, a carob, or a lemon looks exactly like an olive tree in Samos, an orange tree in Siracusa or a carob in Pedalino.
But if one could see deep down, into the subterranean soil that has served as life giving substrate to these different trees bearing completely different fruit, one would see a bizarre and very complicated entanglement of roots and threads of extraordinary shapes and sizes and different ages. One would see roots hopelessly matted together, competing and vying for nutrients to no small degree, yet by their collective presence, by their collective contribution, by the delicate balance they have created, they ensure common survival from the most vicious elemental catastrophes. All this they manage to do by holding the soil that feeds them, that has fed them for centuries, together.
A people’s collective memory, our roots, that thickly matted tangle of experience, history, literature, traditions, legends, and stories which have rocked cradles and country, are the equivalent of that infinite subterranean pool of life, invisible , visible, abstract and tangible, that hold our Maltese and Gozitan Patrimony and Matriarchal heritage together.
What we are currently experiencing in Malta 2019 is a real threat to that which holds us together as a Maltese nation. As the delicate Maltese mileu dissolves and degenerates into an unidentifiable mass under the weight of a runaway money churning, soul suffocating economy, more and more Maltese are feeling homesick at home.
While the local population bursts in international numbers, more and more Maltese are opting for smaller families, no families at all, or they seek a home away from home as they become increasingly rootless and insecure.
Today we are on our way to inaugurating yet another Presidency.
Unless we want to allow ourselves to degenerate into having to ask the question of who we are to Presidency of Nothing in five years time, I feel that the new President needs to find his voice. He needs to take up the issue of the rampage against Malta and our Malteseness seriously.
Never has the need for a President of Hope been felt so acutely, and the people need to make a stans under the term of this President. This Presidency needs and can be instrumental in making our beautiful country, our Malta, feel like home once again.
Godfrey Farrugia
Leader of Partit Demokratiku