putting pieces together

Reflecting on visiting Malta 7 times over the last 8 years, I feel as if I am just now being able to put some of the pieces of the history of this complex country together.  Malta is a cross roads and even as I have parroted those words to students when describing our project, this year more then before I feel I am able to see some of the history of the intersections crossing East and West over this strategically located island with deep large harbors.

When we first started coming to Malta, I will admit to being mostly drawn to trying to understand their role in WW2, as trying to understand this global conflict always resonated with my desire to try to understand current world oscillations.  And Malta's role was so key and dynamic that this recent history always loomed large in my mind when thinking of Malta and its history.  This year, I feel like I have been able to see further back.  In part due to some of the great lectures organized by our local contact, Dr. Timmy Gambin and in part due to the inclusion of the brilliant Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, whose academic focus on the Mediterranean in the 1600s yet articulate vision of the present has helped some of the further past come more clearly into view as relevant and worth understanding.

In terms of lectures, for example, the excellent and entertaining presentation about Maltese Corsairs by Liam Gauci brought to life the legal pirating conducted in the 1600s by Maltese against the Ottoman Turks.  The tit for tat robbery and slave taking between the Maltese and Ottoman Turk corsairs all legal and often in the name of religion was somehow shocking to my modern sense of fairness.  And then last night, we heard another great lecture from Dr. Mark Aloisio, Senior Lecturer at the University of Malta, about the Mediterranean and the Crusades. This talk further echoed the long history of complex conflict and resource back and forth between the west and eastern sections of the Mediterranean.  Coupled with a personal visit to Malta National War Museum, I felt like I could finally put some pieces into place in terms of the history of Malta and its central position as a cultural crossroads.

It is thinking about this history that I read the news about the US supreme court's decision to uphold the travel ban/restrictions to the US of immigrants from 7 mostly Muslim countries.  Without being too political on a trip focused on computer engineering, one of our missions in ICEX is to increase global citizenship, thus it is difficult to not hear this news as a tragic continuation of the East/West historical tensions.  Learning about Maltese history has helped me see the blame on both sides of history.  I cannot help but hope that like the Maltese language itself and the beautiful bougainvilea flowers against Maltese stone walls, that more fruitful outcomes can rise in the intersections between east and west then the recent US supreme court ruling.