I've seen photos of it. Photos so vivid I can almost taste the salt of the ocean, feel the terracotta colored earth beneath my feet. I've wondered about it. About its fascinating history and the mystery in the abandoned skeletons of towns long forgotten. And of course, I have heard stories about it. I would be sitting up in bed, eyes wide with expectancy and arms clutching some form of stuffed animal, listening to my Dad and his telling us tales of heroism, passion, love and war. There would be stories about the history, stories about the heritage, and needless to say, stories of the music. I have never touched Maltese soil, but I have always felt a strange familiarity with the place. My father is Maltese born and bred. He came to Australia when he was a teenager, and I came along around twenty years later. My father has always been an active member of the Maltese community. Ever since I can remember, there was always a song to record, a play to create, and someone's story to write. I grew up loving and learning about Malta.

My father's sister came to Australia with their family from their home in Malta. It was an exciting time for me because they were family that I had never known before and family is close knit in the Casha clan. After many blissful months of shared dinners, home visits and our house full to the seams of family during the Christmas season, they announced that they were going back to Malta. Several weeks later they were only a memory and my sister and I were devastated in their absence. Again, I wondered about this place, why people would leave their own family to live there. It made me angry, and I started to resent it because soon my father was also making occasional trips over there, and I wondered why it kept stealing my family away? When would I ever see this place?

Soon we were writing letters, making brief phone calls and missing them terribly, but this land of Malta was in my blood and now this interest was fast becoming a fascination. One way to quell this preoccupation of mine was to accompany my Dad to his rehearsals of certain productions and plays which he liked to write for the Maltese theatre company Harmonic 65. I was enthralled in the language as well as the music.

From these happy days, I learnt a lot about Malta, because almost every person I had met, had either been there, was born there or was planning a trip there, but one lesson that was self taught however, is the beauty of Malta doesn't simply lie in its utopian shores and on it's desolate cliff-faces. But in the spirit of the people. I have been around people of the Maltese persuasion all my life, but I never had the opportunity to know them so well as I did being involved in two of my Dad's productions. I found them to be genuine, festive people who accept everyone whole-heartedly. I remember feeling right at home with these people. They made me feel like family and that is one feeling that one can never grow tired of. I still wanted to go to Malta, to see it all for myself. I wanted to find my home, and my family that I missed so much, but this would have to do for now.

The first production, Kadanza, was one I enjoyed, helping backstage and getting to know the people who were also involved. I was given the title of artistic director, which I felt a bit much, but I also enjoyed the power and authority that I believed I acquired through this. The rehearsals were long and grueling and Dad and I had to drive sometimes for over an hour to attend them, but we did it without complaint. I was happy to discover that the time spent in the car to drive to and from these rehearsals were filled by conversations where my father and I began to understand each other a little better. I learned there was more to my Dad than embarrassing me in front of my friends and telling me to wash the dishes. I saw it as not only a drive to rehearsals, this was another way of spending some quality time getting in touch with my roots.
So all that time I spend wondering about Malta, and blaming it for taking my family away, was now bringing us closer together through the community that the Maltese have painstakingly constructed over the few decades they have lived in Australia.

Malet was the next play my father and I collaborated on and again, this was a memorable experience for me and I got to know the cast members more as equals because I was a little bit older. Everyone was in excellent spirits because we all knew that the music, the lyrics, the script, the director, were all second to none. This production was going to be huge, and everyone felt it, so we all put in every ounce of energy. It was tiring and frustrating at times but on the night the Maltese spirit made itself glaringly evident as I watched everyone put their heart and soul into their performance, especially the final song of Malet.

As the lights went up for that final scene, I have never felt so involved and so proud of anything in my entire life, everyone back stage sang just as loud as the people on the stage, and the people in the audience soon sang along to the chorus. All of us were choking back tears, and as I looked around in the final strains of 'Malta' and saw all the happy tears, all of the pats on the back and all of the proud smiles. Suddenly, I realized that it didn't matter that I haven't yet visited these shores, because these people brought Malta with them and it was all around us. Perhaps I will go there someday, perhaps I will feel the soil beneath my feet, taste the salt of the ocean, but for right now, this is what Malta means to me. This is what it represents, this is what is running through my veins.
This is my Malta.

January 2002