‘From Marsaxlokk to Wied il-Ghajn…’ over, and over again…

For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by the lyrics of certain Maltese folk songs. Like ‘Lanca Gejja w Ohra Sejra’, for instance: which presumably describes the daily to-ing and fro-ing of vessels across Marsamxett harbour (when it used to be a much more common sight than it is today).

Or at least, that’s how I’ve always interpreted it myself... even if, quite frankly, the actual lyrics tell a somewhat different story. Remember? ‘Lanca Gejja w Ohra Sejra... Minn Tas-Sliema Ghal Marsamxett’…

Erm… not to be a pain, or anything, but: as someone who was born and raised in Sliema – and who can still, to this day, see a small corner of Marsamxett harbour from his bedroom window – I can personally confirm that ‘from Sliema to Marsamxett’ does not exactly amount to a very long distance to travel.

In fact, it is roughly the same distance as… um… ‘from Sliema to Sliema’. For last I looked (which was just this morning, as it happens), the entire eastern shoreline of Sliema is – and has always been - lapped by the waters of Marsamxett harbour on a daily basis.

So technically, a vessel that is moored at, say, the Sliema Ferries, would already be ‘in Marsamxett’ before even bothering to set sail at all....

Odd, isn’t it? Almost makes you wonder how the ‘kaptan’ even had time to smoke that ‘pipe’ of his… during a voyage that would have already been over, before it even began.

Indeed, I am beginning to question what the contents of that pipe might all along have been… seeing as how our intrepid ‘kaptan’ somehow managed to not only ‘steer’ (jiddirigi) his ‘bastiment’ (‘ship’… even if, just a couple of lines earlier, it was still a ‘lanca’) in what was effectively a non-existent direction…

… but, even more bizarrely: he also managed to get himself hopelessly lost, too. So much so, then by the time he eventually ‘felt unwell’ (Seriously, dude: what was in that pipe, anyway?) there was no one around to offer him assistance, other than…

…Ah, this is the tricky part. I suppose it depends on what version you know. The one I learnt at school – which is the same as the one recently popularized by folk-ensemble Etnika - maintains that it was ‘the sailors’ [‘il-bahrin’] who rallied around our ailing captain (‘daru mieghu’) at his moment of need.

Another version I’ve heard, however, substitutes ‘sailors’ for… ‘flies’ (dubbien): leading me to suspect that our intrepid ‘kaptan’ was actually DEAD – and quite possibly, already decomposing - by the end of the second stanza…

But no matter; living or dead, the captain still somehow managed to end up ‘in the middle of the sea’ - and please note, the lyrics really do specify the precise ‘middle of the sea’ (‘sewwa sew f’nofs tal-bahar’…) – even though…

… I mean, come on. That would be an unlikely feat, even if he was participating in the flipping Middle Sea Race… let alone (to stick to the traditional interpretation) just ‘sailing from one side of Marsamxett harbour to the other’…

Small wonder, I suppose, that the same song would end with such a rousing chorus, calling for the ‘kaptan’ to be unceremoniously committed to [the equivalent of] a lunatic asylum.

For let’s face it: there is an unmistakable note of sheer insanity that runs throughout that entire song… and I’m pleased to report that the aforementioned Etnika version – with its haunting, childlike, sing-song harmonies – somehow manages to capture it perfectly.

Ah, but… ‘Toninu Is-Sajjied’? That’s more like it! Now we’re talking! Finally, a Maltese folk song that doesn’t come across as being perfectly potty, from start to finish…

For even if Toninu’s maritime exploits might not earn him a chapter in the World History of Global Navigators – or even inspire Homer to write any epic poems, if it comes to it – but still: ‘From Marsaxlokk to Wied il-Ghajn’ is, at least, a real trajectory. It is a naval course that can actually be charted on a map. It has both a start, and a finish. And above all: it is eminently, and self-evidently… DOABLE.   

And guess what? ‘Toninu Is-Sajjied’ seems to have done it quite a lot, too. There is, in fact, nothing more to the lyrics of that song at all… other than a single line, informing us of the precise route of his daily fishing trip… repeated over, and over, and over again.

So even if the lyrics contain nothing that can immediately be described as ‘insane’… well, how can I put this? The song itself is still kind of ‘maddening’ to listen to, all the same.

And I can’t help but note that the source of all this apparent insanity seems to be identical, in both cases.  Both ‘Lanca Gejja’ and ‘Toninu Is-Sajjied’ were clearly conceived around the central image of a pointless, endlessly-repeated loop: a purely cyclical pattern, which creates the illusion of a ‘journey’, yes… or even ‘progress’, if you prefer…

…but it is a journey that keeps taking us back to precisely to where we all were before. It is ‘progress’, of a kind that doesn’t actually bring about any real change whatsoever.

And if that’s starting to sound vaguely familiar… well, who knows? It might be the reason why both those (let’s face it: kind of silly) ditties even became such classic Maltese folk-songs to begin with. They describe a phenomenon that is both real, and – from a cultural perspective - deeply, deeply significant. As such, they can only us something truly meaningful about ourselves.

In Toninu’s case, however… you could almost take that refrain quite literally, you know. ‘From Marsaxlokk to Wied il-Ghajn’… now where, oh where, have I heard that before?

Oh yes: believe it or not, it was more or less in those exact words that Environment Minister Aaron Farrugia tried to justify a proposed yacht marina in Marsaskala, this very week.

I kid you not. Complaining about the usual ‘Not-In-My-Backyard’ syndrome, Farrugia took the opportunity to remind us of a number of unpopular projects – also highly controversial, in their day – undertaken by past Nationalist governments, up to… oh, 30 years ago or more.

“I can point to the Malta freeport or the airport. Nobody in Gudja wants the airport there,” he said. And… um… sorry, but what is that, if not an identical repetition of the same leitmotif from ‘Toninu Is-Sajjied’?

Once again, we are invited on a journey that takes us ‘from Marsaxlokk’ – which (viewed as a harbour, rather than just the town of that name) has been the site of the Malta Freeport since the early 1990s – all the way to ‘to Wied il-Ghajn’: which is the topographical name for the valley that culminates in Marsakala.

And… well, who would have ever guessed? Just like Toninu’s daily fishing trips, this journey also takes us right back to where we have always been. Because Alex Farrugia does have a small point, at the end of the day. The residents of both Birzebbugia/Marsaxlokk, and Gudja, did indeed object to those Freeport/Airport projects of yesteryear… and their objections were, quite frankly, trampled underfoot by the ‘government of the day’.

But as I recall – and oddly enough, my memory does actually stretch back to the early 1990s; and even a little further… – the ‘government of the day’ was a Nationalist administration led by Eddie Fenech Adami.

The Opposition, on the other hand, consisted of the Labour Party under Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici; and it had waged tireless (and unsuccessful) campaigns against both those projects, at the time.

Yet fast-forward 30 years… and not only is it suddenly a Labour government that is now trampling over public resistance to the latest unpopular project – in this case, a private yacht marina that will take up every square inch of the entire Marsaskala coastline, to the detriment of local residents -  but it is even resorting to exactly the same excuses used by Eddie Fenech Adami all those years ago.

“A government needs to decide at the end of the day. There is an element of ‘not in my backyard’ too.” Those are actually Aaron Farrugia’s words, spoken this week. But they just as easily have been Eddie Fenech Adami’s response to criticism of both the Freeport, and the Gudja terminal, way back in the early 1990s.

With, I suppose, one small difference. Those two projects – controversial though they undeniably were, in their day – were both nonetheless highly necessary (vital, even) infrastructural undertakings that simply had to happen, one way or another.

For while a country can always get by without an additional yacht marina, or two… it cannot possibly hope to even survive, without an airport that can actually handle mass-tourism; or a port that can unload large quantities of freight cargo.

So to even suggest that a private yacht marina – of all unearthly things – can be placed on the same level as two such eminently important, indispensable infrastructural projects… oh, I don’t know. It seems to echo the same hint of pointless surrealism that permeates both ‘Toninu’, and ‘Lanca Gejja W Ohra Sejra’.

Either way, however, Farrugia’s entire argument – i.e., that it’s Ok for a Labour government to ride roughshod over Marsaskala residents today, because… um… that’s what the Nationalists did 30 years ago, or more…

Well, it only points in one direction, really. It forces us to confront the fact that – while administrations of government may indeed ‘change’, from time to time - the impact of their decisions on us common mortals out here (whether we live in Birzebbugia, Marsaskala, Gudja, or anywhere else) always remains exactly the same.

It’s ‘from Marsaxlokk, to Wied Il-Ghajn’… over, and over again…