This Land is My Land

Back in 1977, Dom Mintoff was the Prime Minister of Malta. He was a man with multiple chips on his shoulder, and one was that he disliked and mistrusted professionals. As a consequence of that, he came after the medical profession. As it happened, I was a third year medical student at the time, and my father was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that, to our horror, some seventy medical students found ourselves displaced, unable to complete our course in Malta and thrown upon the mercy of the BMA and the medical schools in Britain. Meanwhile the consultants, including my father, were thrown out of work.

I will tell the tale of that displacement another time. Today, I just want to record that, having arrived in England and found a place at University College Hospital, London, I made a decision that I was going to integrate. I was not going to be one of those people constantly harking back to Malta, to what I had lost. I was going to be British! I eschewed Maltese events, perfected my English accent, ensured that I could hold my own in any British company. I was totally integrated. For seventeen years I did not set foot on the island from which I had sprung.

When I came back, it was for one day only, on a cruise ship. I was with my parents. My father was ill – dying – and had asked me to go along. I had been generous and allowed him to pay for my trip with them.  I still cringe when I remember. We were due to sail into Malta at 5.30 a.m. I found I could not resist it. Swathed in a bathrobe, I was on deck at 4 a.m., watching for a first sight of the island. My mother was not far behind me. Only Dad took his time, appearing at about 7 a.m., when we were about to dock.

Mum and I had made arrangements. She was being met by her favourite nephew and taken to meet friends and family. I stepped off the ship to be met by an old school friend, who took me to a series of social events. Only Dad had said that he would play it by ear. I remember looking back and seeing him on deck, waving us off. I still get a pang. How could I have been so unfeeling, so insensitive?

When I got back to the ship, late in the afternoon, I went to find him. ‘What did you do?’ I asked. There was a long pause before he said ‘I stayed here’. I was appalled. Had he not disembarked at all, I enquired? It transpired that he had. When it was quiet, when nobody was looking, he had disembarked for half an hour and walked up and down the quay. Then he had remounted the gangway, knowing he would never touch his homeland again.

I could not touch his pain; could not truly understand the sense of betrayal that so engulfed him. There was nothing to say. But later that evening, as we sailed out of Grand Harbour, my mother and I stood on deck watching Malta disappear, but Dad went below to their cabin and would not watch, or talk about it.

For a long time after that I did not come back. Dad died. Eventually Mum returned to Malta, so I started coming to visit. I enjoyed it, but was resistant to its charms. Gradually, however, I realised what it meant to me. Every time things went really wrong, when life was unbearable, I found myself returning to the land of may fathers.

This week, for the first time, I am here with somebody whom I consider a very special friend yet who has never been before. And I find I am so proud of it, so wanting him to like it, so wanting him to be impressed. And I can no longer pretend. The reality is: This Land is My Land – I belong to it and it belongs to me. We are intertwined and inseparable. I can stray, but it will always call me back. Perhaps, ultimately, that is what home means. It is the place where you can be yourself, whatever happens. It is the place to which, ultimately, you will return. After years away, and many travels, both my parents are buried here. I suspect I may be too.