Walking the toe

‘The South Country: Journeys in Calabria’ Author: Edward Mallia Publishers: Gruppo Albatros, Rome

Year: 2021

Pages: 569

Over 40 years ago, Edward Mallia started a love affair that has lasted a lifetime. It all started when he carried out voluntary work in gypsy camps in Calabria, the region with dramatic coastal and mountain scenery and a rich historical past that covers Italy’s toe. When he returned to Malta in 1983 after a long stint of research and work abroad, he found it easier to make frequent short trips to explore the country: on foot along rough tracks in the sparsely inhabited mountain areas and by train or bus in the more accessible ones. As far as encounters with Calabresi were concerned, there was what he calls “the occasional malice of unfriendly adults” disturbed by the presence of what to them was a barbone or, possibly even worse, a tedesco. But this was simply swamped by the general friendliness: from that of children crying “É arrivato Babbo Natale” to adults extending selfless hospitality to a complete stranger.

Mallia is best known for his long-term commitment as an environment warrior, one of the few sane voices in this flurry of greed and madness we have been cheated into calling progress. This dedication to extreme hiking is perhaps an aspect of Edward not known at all but to his close friends. The resulting very long travelogue of 560 closely printed pages and scores of photographs taken by himself is a charming and most readable work. Very well written with regular dollops of wit and humour, it is replete with sound historical and geographical information. It is also an eyeopener into a culture that has for centuries been misrepresented. The banditi of Aspromonte may be old romantic history although the ubiquitous tentacles of the ’ndrangheta that have replaced them are unfortunately part of the modern reality. Today it is the strongest and most feared of Italy’s four major mafias. Still the region’s sheer savage beauty and its rich millennial history makes it one of the generally less appreciated jewels in the tiara that is Italy.

It is a region not only rich in dramatic scenery but also in history, not less in its Byzantine traditions that survive mostly in cut-off areas where even a particular form of language survives.

Originally published locally, the book has now been published in a very attractive edition by the Italian publishers Albatros of Rome and will hopefully and deservedly reach beyond our shores.

Personally my own fascination with the region began too many years ago after reading E. V. Morton’s A Traveller in Southern Italy and was realized with a couple of touristic visits (alas too few). Personally I have only scratched the region, Mallia has delved far and deep.

On his very first solo trek Mallia was accompanied by “a decrepit unshod donkey” hired from a gypsy at too high a cost, owing to his lack of bargaining skills. Together they faced perilous terrain, natural and man-made, meeting on the way not a few raised eyebrows but also genuine help and frequent invitations to share food and drink.

Mallia’s hikes are not for the faint-hearted or the weak-kneed. It needs a particular kind of courage (which some might term foolhardiness) to approach such demanding expeditions, especially in the heat of summer or during terrifying mountain storms, often turning up in minute hamlets to the great surprise of the inhabitants who claim that not even Italians manage to make it there. One bonus was the occasional lifts kindly offered and gladly accepted, often in vehicles which had seen better times and squeezed with various fellow “passengers”, sometimes not of the human kind.

Never one to go for easy options, Mallia even crossed Aspromonte in winter, this time accompanied by his young son. They had to face a snowstorm and some incredulous looks by the natives when they learned of their intentions. On a different occasion he had a close encounter with a couple of carabinieri who found it hard to accept somebody would actually be crazy enough to walk all by himself in bandit country.

The natural beauty of Calabria is, however, not limited to its dramatic mountainous scenery, ravines and interminable dark forests. Bathed by two historic seas, the Tyrrhenian to the west, the Ionian to the east, it has a coast with charming seaside towns like Tropea (so famous for its red onions), Amantea and Scilla. And small and large beaches, many of which not yet subject to barbaric modernisation.

And then there are the countless big and small churches where the centennial Byzantine heritage is very much alive in the architecture, the paintings, the statues, and the rites, which never fail to attract Mallia’s attention and on whose history and claims to fame he authoritatively expounds. Not a few hold great artistic treasures like, for example, Rossano cathedral and its Codex Purpureus, a sixth-century illuminated manuscript of rare beauty. But to mention just one does the whole a great injustice.

Calabria has at least two close connections with Malta. Le Castella was the birthplace of Giovan Dionigi Galeni who abjured his faith, turned Muslim and earned notoriety as the corsair Occhiali. A terror of the seas, he was in Malta during the siege of 1565 and, had he not been asked to bring his vessels uselessly to the Grand Harbour as the Ottomans were retreating, he could very probably have trounced the Grande Soccorso before it landed at Cirkewwa.

The other connection is more positive. Mattia Preti was born in the mountain village of Taverna, where he is feted as its most famous son. Preti was to spend his last 40 years of his life in Malta changing the whole artistic heritage of the island in the process.

In these days when wanderlust has been severely curtailed and we can only satisfy our desire to visit foreign lands on the gogglebox, Mallia’s massive account of his treks around magical Calabria offers itself as an excellent substitute chockfull of historical and geographical details and personal experiences. It fills us with the desire to explore it personally yet again, once this damned virus eats the dust.