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The honeyed mélange of Malta
‘We are incredibly varied in spite of our size,” our taxi driver boasted during our 45-minute drive from Malta’s international airport to Cirkewwa on the northern coast. My husband and I had just arrived on the main island (also called Malta) and were trying to reconcile his words with what we knew about the place and what we were seeing outside our car window.
What we knew was very little, like the country itself. Malta lies about 60 miles south of Sicily and consists of two main islands, the eponymous one where we had landed (about 95 square miles in size) and the adjacent island of Gozo (roughly 26 square miles). Tiny Comino (1.1 square miles) lies between them. There are also two uninhabited islets, Cominotto and Filfla.
Malta is not the smallest country in Europe but it is the most densely populated — 3,000 inhabitants per square mile compared to 85 per square mile in the United States. Total population is around 420,000 and all but 30,000 of them live on the main island. This density was evident as we drove north. Towns and villages follow one upon another in a profusion of low-slung sand-colored limestone structures that look more like Arab villages than English colonies. The names too are Arabic — Haz-Zebbug, Ta’ Qali, Naxxar, Burmarrad, Bigibba.
And the road signs! “Are these written in Maltese?,” we asked our driver.
