Like Bees to Honey. Caroline Smailes

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СКАЧАТЬ of sorts. It is said that if you have been stripped to nothing, when you mend you alter, your aura changes, your purpose becomes clear.

      

      My mother once told me, ‘In-nies ji

u Malta biex ifiequ.’

      ~people come to Malta to heal.

      I left. I do not know what that means.

      In Malta, my people speak the language Malti.

      

      ~Maltese.

      

      We have a Semitic tongue that developed from the language spoken during Arabic invasion and occupation. Later came French-speaking Normans, the Knights of St John with their Italian and Latin, then British occupation. And so Malti became a combination of all the languages that drove through the island, of all those who came and left. It was born a rich, a breathing tongue, one that voiced our history, our invasions, our identity. When Malta later gained independence, both English and Maltese tongues were offered official status and Malti became the national language of my island, of Malta. It is known that my people can speak with one tongue, with two tongues, some speak with three or even four.

      I was born into the home that was shared by my parents, by my grandparents, by my sisters and by my oldest aunt. It was the way, then. Our family was sealed, a unit that leaked noise, anger, laughter, excitement, wild gesturing with arms and hands.

      

      There were no quiet moments. We liked it that way.

      

      I was the third, the youngest daughter to be honoured upon Joseph and Melita. I was the favoured daughter of Melita. She called me qalbi.

      

      ~my heart.

      

      My mother used to tell all that I was a kind, a loving, a quick-witted child. She would describe how my eyes carried a mischievous sparkle that warmed her. When I was a child, I could do no wrong.

      But from an early age my feet would shuffle. I wanted to know more.

      

      My mother would tell me that from the moment I could I would toddle out of the front door and down the steep slope that led to the harbour. My mother would tell me about frantic searches and screaming relatives dashing around the city. My mother would say that soon they learned to run to the harbour, that I would always be found standing on the same bench, waving at the boats.

      And as I grew, my fascination with the atlas, the globe, the sphere, with the wide spaces and exotic names, grew too. No one could tell me of life off the island, no one had ever travelled to the distant, the bizarre-sounding shores.

      

      I was restless to roam.

      

      I longed for further than my island could give.

      

      And so, as soon as an opportunity arose, I asked.

      I asked my father if I could be educated away from the island, in England. Eventually, because I drilled and drained, my father agreed that I would travel, that I would be educated in the UK, but then I would return and marry a Maltese boy. I promised my father and then my mother that I would return. I promised them that they could choose my partner, I would agree to anything, to everything.

      

      I promised.

      

      My mother wept for twenty-eight nights.

      

      One month before my nineteenth birthday, I flew to Manchester airport, and then climbed into a taxi to Liverpool University.

      

      Four days later, I had found Matt.

      I can, without any hesitation, avow that within four days on English soil I had met the man whom I was convinced I would spend the rest of my life in love with. Within four days, I knew that I would not keep my pact with my father, with my mother and that in doing so, I would break my mother’s heart.

      As I was falling into Matt, my mother wrote to me. She said that when I left the island that ‘naqta’ qalbi’.

      

      ~I cut my heart, I lost hope.

      

      She knew.

      

      It was as if she could always see into my spirit and then into my mind. My mother gave up hope because she knew, just knew, that when I fell it would be totally, all or nothing. And so when I left Malta, my mother lost hope and now I realise that without hope, there is nothing.

      I lost my virginity to Matt. I lost my family too.

      I remember.

      

      ‘You make me lovesick,’ Matt said; he turned his naked back, away.

      

      ‘Is that bad?’ My fingers brushed his shoulder.

      

      ‘My heart is sick,’ he spoke and his shoulders began to quiver.

      

      ‘I don’t understand. What have I done?’ I feared the end of us. I remember that Matt turned to face me. We were squashed into a single bed, his student room, naked skin on skin.

      

      I had known him for five days.

      

      His fingers, his face, were covered in my scent.

      

      I remember.

      

      Matt stared into my eyes.

      

      I remember the intensity, the strength, the drowning.

      

      ‘I have fallen for you. I feel lovesick.’

      

      ‘You mean you feel love?’ I questioned.

      

      ‘More than that.’

      

      ‘Lovesick?’

      

      ‘Lovesick,’ Matt smiled.

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