The immigrants are rioting. The Maltese comment boards are rife with spiteful messages of the “send them back home” kind. Forget blaming the police or the government. It’s the whole damn country that’s in a mess at the worst possible time. I’m not speaking of hysterical bloggers switching attention from the real issues to a slide show of cheap voyeurism. I am speaking of the mentality that is evident on every bus, in every queue, in every department or shop. It’s how people yell at each other. How they judge and sell relative opinions. How the primadonnas of this world panic at every moment that they seem to lose what they perceive to be control of their twisted corner of whatever market they seem to occur and how the masses enjoy their role as supporters in a dog-eat-dog world without realising that the dogs are biting at their hearts.
My errands on this holiday have taken me to the Emigrants Commission and to the Public Registry. I’ve used public transport, I’ve driven and on breaks I’ve had a chance to see the mass at work – through the multiplicity of individuals who squat on this tiny rock. We’ve lost something along the way these past few years. It’s a mixture of values, attitude and outlook to life. We’re on the defensive while thinking in cliches. We’re rashly judgemental and highly egoistic. We’re an ugly mixture of materialistic hedonism and false moralism. We’re oblivious to the world across the sea while we continue to peddle the fable of a whole universe on one small island that could live without anyone and that does not need anyone. And when the world passes to our shores we panic and yell. We shout “Move Up”, “What do you want?” “Stand Back” “Go Home” “Five euros and twenty cents” “Tini dak” “Qabzitli” “That’s mine” “X’buzz mann” in unison and speak in a tongue of anger an remote-controlled frustration without any reference point.
The immigrants may be rioting in Safi. There may be policemen injured doing their job. The rioters might be yelling “Freedom, Freedom”. But in the end you cannot help but wonder whether their riot is misguided. You cannot help but wonder whether they are safer in the confines of their detention. You cannot help but wonder that with the experiences and stories that life has harshly and unfairly thrown at them, it’s the walls of their detention centre in Safi that are keeping them away from the mass of prisoners on an island inhabited by false moralists and hypocrites.
The Safi inmates yelling for Freedom might still be in time to realise that the real prison lies beyond the confines of the Safi Centre.
What detention centre? In an island of hypocrites and false moralists we are all prisoners. This is no paradise to be banished from.
COMMENT IS FREE. STILL. THINK BEFORE YOU TYPE.
‘We are all just prisoners here, of our own device’
