The Names of a Place

• Published in: Queen's quarterly 2014-09, Vol.121 (3), p.452
• Main Author: Sukys, Julija
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children; Greek language; Humans and nature; Hungarian; Keresiouan languages; Local history; Parent and child; Parent-child relations; Provincial life; Short stories; Sukys, Julija
• ISSN: 0033-6041

Initially, the island's noises surprise me most. Gozo's cicadas are deafening. [Sean] tells me that in the ancient world cicadas were a symbol for music. He recounts to Sebastian a Greek myth about the insect's origins. Young girls, he says, loved to sing so much that they forgot to eat. They then turned into insects, and now sing eternally. But the cicadas' song is dissonant. Its harmonies, while not entirely unpleasant, are somehow not musical either. Bleating and barking intermingle with their drone. Roosters signal the end of the day and wake us every morning. One's crow sounds exactly like the cry of a young child, and for weeks Sean and I leap out of bed and run to Sebastian each day at dawn, only to find him sound asleep. We curse the bird. Gozitans not only name the winds; they name their houses. With very few exceptions, there are no house numbers on Gozo. To get a letter to us, for example, you need not use any numbers at all - our house name, "Ta' Tina," will suffice. Postal codes are strictly optional. And the names of many Gozitan houses record the paths of returning émigrés. Every day on the way to school, Sebastian and I pass a house called "Toronto Ontario." On my morning runs, I see one called "God Bless Detroit," and another named simply "Australia." On neighbouring streets you will find "O Canada," "Maple Leaf," "Native Canadian," and my favourite, "Skydome." These are families who have returned from exile. We made it, say the house names. Like Ulysses, who ultimately got off Ramla Beach and left Circe behind, the Gozitans living in houses named for faraway places have survived their long voyage home. "It'll never happen," says my friend Emese, as we watch a group of sexagenarians dance one night during Carnival. A Hungarian violinist, she emigrated here with her husband and children in search of a quiet life. "At least I hope it doesn't," she adds. "They say that twenty years ago Malta was like Gozo - innocent. Isolation and relative poverty have protected it, but that's changing. In another twenty years that innocence will disappear from here as well. With a bridge, it would happen even faster."