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Every Man is an Island
A travel feature about conflict in a tiny island...
In the cabin of the boat to Comino the crew were discussing the latest news - a political transfer had ended the 4 police officers' haven in Comino. It seemed quite a chunk of news to digest, considering that the usual discourse hovers around the latest fish catches or the weather.
We were ploughing across the Gozo channel, the boat rolling in the waves. The air tasted of sea-spray and to our west the sun hung above the horizon, throwing a band of silvery light glinting on the sea. We were now crossing this corridor of sunshine, in a dazzling world of light and openness.
The Comino boat is the local hangout where news is spread, analysed and taken in. This latest news involved a positive-discrimination transfer: the serving police officers were plucked to make way for 4 new faces. Because in Comino a damning transfer means you're transferred away, rather than to, Comino. "The new officers asked for the favour to be brought here right after the election," one of the boatman revealed. Two of the serving officers had been in Comino for 18 years, another 8 years, while the fourth 3 years. "One of them, Joe," said the other boatman, "took the transfer badly. He was a loner who talked little, and liked to be left alone."
Like everyone who visits Comino, the officers had fallen in love with this island 2km long by 1.7km across. Now abandoned to the wind and rabbits, Comino's 2000 years of history are marked by the Roller Coaster emotions of those who lived or worked here. Robert and Stanley Farrugia Randon wrote, in their 1995 booklet, about Comino's enchanting qualities. Novelists and poets describe it as overrun by pirates, operating from an underground cave that opens on the water on the island's east coast, the Cave Of Pirates. After my first visit I felt about it as The Lost Island that I had rediscovered and it was mine.
A self-appointed prophet and Messiah, in 1285 Abram Ben Samuel Abulafia angered first Sicilians then Maltese with his preaching. He escaped to Comino where he wrote a book about his crusades, including merging Palestine into a larger Jewish state. Along the ages many others found refuge in Comino: hermits, religious fanatics, pirates, fugitives, plague-ridden patients, and people who leased Comino from the authorities to build their empires. Today 4 people live on Comino, now waging a war to carve their own empire.
Accompanied by 2 women friends, from the boat's jetty we headed east to Santa Maria Bay where we would spend the weekend. Around the corner we approached the police station perched on the water's edge, built as a watch-post in 1743. Beyond it and the tamarisk trees huddled on the sandy beach, a white-washed chapel nestles among cypresses and palms. Originally built before the 13th Century, a priest still opens the chapel for service on weekends.
Ahead of me, as my friends neared the police station, a 30-something police officer leaned on the parapet of his new-found haven, away from the humdrum of police work in Gozo. Spotting the 2 women a grin flashed into his dark and chubby face. "Hello.Camping?.Nice?" His voice trilled with excited anticipation. Then, when I stepped into view his smile faded.
"What are the times of the church service?" I asked him with a Gozitan accent.
His chin turned down. "I don't know. I mean, I asked the Father for a time-table and he hasn't given us one yet."
Timetable? There are two services a week, on Saturdays' and Sundays', and the chapel is 20 metres away - yet this officer needs a timetable?
Up the valley from Santa Maria Bay, a struggle over Comino's most fertile valley, Wied L-Ahmar, is hurtling to a showdown. The valley is studded with trees - carobs, bay, pines, olives, acacia and almonds - and throughout winter yellow carpets of flowering cape sorrels cover the abandoned fields.
The wrestle - environmentalists vs. the locals - started in 1991 when Birdlife Malta launched a study into bird migration. Collaborating with the Italian Institute for Wild Fauna and another 14 islands dotting the Mediterranean, the study involves trapping and ringing birds for a month every spring. Birdlife first put up the nets at Wied L-Ahmar in 1991 and, predictably, fell in love with the abandoned valley. They asked the government for the valley to plant more trees and make it a Bird Observatory.
Hearing about Birdlife's plans, 45-year-old Salvu Vella, a local, contacted the government requesting the valley for agriculture. No one could understand why Vella wanted the valley. It had lay derelict for decades, and the fields in the part of the valley that Birdlife wanted are made of a 2-feet sheet of soil full of stones and dry as a loaf of 4-day-old bread. Still, the government gave a portion of land to each: in 1994 Birdlife got 3.5 hectares, and Vella a string of fields. (These fields added to the fields he works in the lower part of the valley are more than double what Birdlife got).
All Vella harvests from these upper-valley fields is hard work, hardly any produce. He plants only one crop annually which, in the words of one police officer, "the rabbits feast on and strip to the ground."
But Vella is a hunter and he wanted the land to keep Birdlife out. As hunting is banned on Comino, with Birdlife on his doorstep he sniffed trouble. He argued: "First they curbed hunting, now they've taken the land - I am the one who live in Comino and need the land. I love the environment, but I'm a hunter and fisherman - the only two things why I still live in Comino. If Birdlife let me hunt and have the land back for agriculture, I would not object to their bird-ringing. Our mistake was that we let them come here in the first place. I should have chucked them out from the beginning."
With small, dark eyes that dart about watching every move, and sporting a baseball cap, Vella looks like the cowboy on the frontier. Although illegal, he hunts openly - birds and rabbits. Six shotguns and a cabinet of stuffed birds symbolise his passion. From time to time, Birdlife activists, campers and the ex-hotel manager have reported him hunting. Somehow, he always got away with it, except once.
For 5 years Birdlife activists and Vella have nursed a cold stand-off as they glower into each other's land. Last autumn Birdlife renovated a roofless room on their leased land; to store their paraphernalia and live in while they ring birds. This angered Vella. He broke the padlock and installed his padlock, claiming ownership of the room. And at the path branching into the valley he erected a `Private Property' sign.
"In 1927 my father built the room, dug a well and installed a water pump," Vella said. "I have the papers to show that the water pump is ours', and since it follows that my father built the room to install the water pump, the room is ours' too. My brother used to work the land Birdlife are occupying, now he wants it back. We won't let them trample us any longer, we will fight for our rights."
Vella recently wrote to the Lands Department asking for the land back. But in 1975 the government took over Comino and all its structures. Before 1975 Comino was first leased to Arthur Zammit Cutajar (who probably bought the water pump, Vella's father was employed with him), then to the Hotel Comino owners. Vella never owned any land in Comino; rather, he and his relatives are squatting on government property.
Vella and his 3 relatives - brother Angelo, Aunt Maria Said, and cousin Evangelista - are the inhabitants left from a community who lived here. Maria Said's and Vella's parents originally moved to Comino to work for Captain Arthur Zammit Cutajar, who leased Comino from the government in 1926. He grew and exported cumin, honey, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and cauliflower, supporting a community of 65 employees. Three-fifths of the profits went to the `Master', the farmers shared the rest. They also had free access to crops for their consumption, and every Christmas Zammit Cutajar bought them a present and a dress each.
In 1960 the government ended Zammit Cutajar's lease, and handed Comino to the Comino Development Co. Ltd to develop it for tourism. They built the Comino Hotel. Meanwhile, the inhabitants started leaving; by the early 1970's almost all had left. Then in 1975 Dom Mintoff snatched 90% of Comino back into government ownership.
To see the former community's haunts, one afternoon we walked to the cemetery squatting at the crest of a hump in Comino's centre. Outside its walled fort we looked at Comino's rocky and rolling profile, the garigue peppered with low bushes. The scent of thyme and fennel whiffed through the air, and at our feet shoots of seaside squill emerged from the pockets of brown soil. Inside the cemetery we paced around stunted cypress trees, broken slabs on the graves and a rotting wooden cross.
We trekked west over the garigue. Yellow flowers blossomed from the bushes, and among them flowering french daffodils fluttered their sweet scent into the breeze. We flushed brown rabbits that leapt over the bushes like exploding fire-crackers, song thrushes that pipped in alarm, and meadow pipits that twit-twitted as they rose then dropped back in the grass. Skirting the Blue Lagoon we passed Salvu and Angelo Vella's house. They have worked with the Water Services Corporation for the past 4 years; looking after and repairing the water mains, reservoir, bore-holes, and water pipeline between Malta and Gozo. Judging from their Range Rover, all-terrain vehicle, speedboat and ceramic-floored house, they are doing well. A cacophony of warbling birds drifted from an aviary at the back of their house.
Later, we sauntered into the corridors of the building called The Palace, erected by Grand Master Wignacourt. It is a monastery-like building with stone arches overlooking a courtyard. In 1912 it served as an "isolation hospital" for plague and cholera-stricken patients. Today, apart from a wing where Maria Said and Evangelista live, both pensioners, the building is abandoned. The walls are eroding by sea-spray and in the courtyard a canon is propped on a heap of stones. Above one door hangs a rusting sign: Comino Store.
Perched atop sea-cliffs 150 metres high on the west coast, Santa Maria Tower is Comino's landmark, as large as a church. Grand Master Wignacourt built it in 1618 to protect the Gozo Channel from pirates who ambushed boats plying between Malta and Gozo. To keep the Ottomans at bay, in 1645 the military armed the tower with 16 canons and 30 troops. Then, throughout the 17th Century the tower served as an Alcatraz-style prison. A bunch of criminals, prisoners of war, and 53 Maltese suspected of spying for the French were all locked.
Salvu Vella and his relatives are sometimes tempted to leave Comino. He said: "There are times in Winter when I visit Malta for 2 days and think, `Look at my relatives here, storms do not give them a headache and they can do and go wherever they like.' But then in spring I would not change Comino for elsewhere." Vella shuttles to Gozo and Malta with his speedboat.
Their contact person on the mainland is Rev. Carmel Xerri, who lives in Qala, Gozo. "I am like a social worker to them," he said. "I buy them food twice a week and send it over with the Comino Boat. Last time they needed a doctor it was one stormy night last March. The doctor charged them Lm27 for the visit."
Rev. Xerri first travelled to Comino in 1963, to run the church services and mentor the 20 students at the local school. Five years later the school shut down, and since then he's celebrated mass in Comino at every weekend and public holiday. "I like Comino for its peace of mind. At night the moon is beautiful and the solitude amazing."
Now Rev. Xerri is doing his former school students, the Vella's, one last favour: back their request for a concession to hunt. They have written to various ministries arguing that it's their human right to hunt where they live. "Without hunting, life here is like being in prison," Vella said.
The Environment Department, however, insists that Comino should stay a Nature Reserve. The island has the largest patch of garigue in the islands, a healthy ecosystem that makes Comino's honey the best in the islands. It is also home to a handful of endemic species of snail, beetles and ants. In the book Localities With Conservation Value Profs. Patrick Schembri recommends Comino's protection.
A few years ago a developer wanted to turn Comino into a golf course; the Environment Department turned him down. Now the Comino Hotel have applied for an extension, an application the Planning Authority is processing. To attract agro-tourism the Agricultural Ministry want to build an organic farm. "We oppose an organic farm in Comino," said John Grech, Birdlife president. "They'll let sheep roam all over the island, wreaking havoc on the garigue."
For those who visit Comino, the island is to Malta what the Highlands are to the UK, the North West to America - the last near-wild pocket of land. Over the past 4 years campers have invaded the island, their numbers swelling from year to year. Last Easter, for example, about 15 tents were pitched in Santa Maria Bay. Sina Bugeja, a frequent camper and health promotion officer, said: "We like camping in Comino because it's as natural as Malta gets, there is no hunting, and it's got historical value."
Another frequent visitor is Pippa Zammit Cutajar, granddaughter of Francis Zammit Cutajar. She stays in her grandfather's house at The Palace. "We walk a lot in Comino. I love the tranquillity and unspoilt environment, though I prefer it in winter when it's not packed with people," Zammit Cutajar said. "There is no pollution at all; if you walk around bare-footed your feet get dusty but not black with pollution."
As we talked Zammit Cutajar's voice came edged with anxiousness. I asked her what's wrong. This article, she answered, worried her because it may encourage people to build houses in Comino. "That would destroy it completely," she said. All the people I spoke to orchestrated the same comment.
"If I were retired I would live there," Zammit Cutajar said. "There is a special feeling in Comino that is hard to describe." I know that spell: you feel you have rediscovered The Lost Island and it is yours'. As the Gaelic proverb says, an island, like a woman, will always turn a man's head.
© Victor Paul Borg
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