In the falcon's shadow

Catherine Watson, senior editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and lecturer at the University of Minnesota, wrote this article (not freely available online) after visiting Malta in 2ooo. She describes Malta's 6,000 years of offbeat history packed between its cliffs and beaches including the story of a bird that may be "more famous than the American eagle":

From my hotel-room window in Valletta, the sweeping view over Grand Harbour - one of the finest harbors in Europe - made me feel as if I were flying. It also made me marvel. Daybreak, high noon, sunset, moonlight: At any time of day, in any light, it was beautiful - an immense living mural of deep-blue water and cream-colored stone. If I'd seen nothing else on this tiny Mediterranean island, Grand Harbour alone would have been worth the trip. A couple of mornings, awake before dawn, I gazed at the panorama of stout stone buildings across the water for nearly an hour, watching the light and shadows playing over it. The view was so compelling that it was hard to pull away, even to get dressed.

One morning I stepped out of the shower, and a giant, out-of-scale white cruise ship was moving by, dwarfing even the tall, fortified cliffs that form the harbor walls. I reached for my camera while I was still dripping wet. Another day, the ship moving past was a red-hulled freighter, coming home. The name on its bow read "Maltese Falcon." That was the first such falcon I'd encountered in several days on Malta, and I was beginning to think it was as close as I'd get to the icon made famous in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart movie of that name. A black Maltese falcon statuette would be a natural souvenir for Malta, I thought, but apparently the Maltese didn't agree. I hadn't seen any in Valletta's shop windows, or for that matter, in any town.

Malta's national saga spans 6,000 years - from Neolithic temples through World War II bastions and on up to the high-rise Hilton that overlooks the plush tourist neighborhoods north of Valletta. But no matter where you start, talk inevitably comes around to Malta's greatest shaping force: the religious order known as the Knights of Malta. Their history sounds like fiction - too over-the-top even for Hollywood. And that's before you get to the falcon. Malta won't make sense without it. The order was founded about 900 years ago, during the Crusades, as the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, where it was headquartered. Its members were European noblemen who pledged to take care of Christians on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. But the region was in Muslim hands, held by Arabs and later Turks.

The order soon militarized, becoming warriors for Christ as well as nurses to the needy. Over time, the order grew wealthy and powerful, but Islam prevailed. The knights were forced out of one headquarters after another: out of Jerusalem in 1187, out of the Holy Land in 1291; out of Cyprus in 1310; out of Rhodes in 1522. Finally, in 1530, the king of Spain gave them Malta. The rent, it is said, was low and legendary: Every year, the knights would send the king a living falcon, to be used for hunting. Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett twisted the legend for "The Maltese Falcon." The rent became a golden statuette disguised by a coat of black paint, not a living bird.

During my stay, I hired a taxi and traveled in loops around the main island - from the southern cliffs that look toward Africa, to the north coast, where St. Paul was shipwrecked in 60 A.D. I saw a lot, but I never saw a Maltese falcon, whether statuette or living bird. At dusk on my last day on Malta, when it was dark enough to drive with headlights on but still light enough to see the church domes against the sky, I was riding back to Valletta, lamenting this. Then I noticed a small ad among many around the edge of my map. It was for a store called "The Maltese Falcon" in Mdina, one of Malta's most picturesque places.

An exquisitely preserved city inside a star-shaped, knight-built fortress, Mdina (pronounced Em-dina) is so small that it could snuggle inside Southdale, stone battlements included. I'd already been there, and I hadn't noticed this store. But some of the streets had been closed off while a film crew shot scenes for "The Count of Monte Cristo." Maybe it was on one of those streets ... "How far are we from Mdina?" I asked the taxi driver. "About three miles. It's there," he said, pointing to church domes off to the right. I doubted we had time to get there before the stores closed, but I had to try. "Let's go," I said, and we left the traffic converging on Valletta and raced south across the island. Cars can't drive into Mdina, so I dashed across the bridge over its moat on foot, through the magnificently carved main gate, past the baroque cathedral and up long, narrow Villegaignon Street.

Shops were closed or closing, but ahead was a solitary lighted doorway - and it was the right one. Inside, a whole shelf of black, brooding, hook-beaked ceramic statuettes glared down at me. They looked just like the one in the movie. "These are the only Maltese falcons I've seen on the whole island," I told the young proprietor, as I set a big one and two small ones (Maltese sparrows?) on the counter. That's because his family's store has a lock on the name, said Paul Degiorgio. For a long time, he explained, the government would not allow any business to use the words "The Maltese" in its title. But his father had lived for a while in Canada and knew that the falcon was "very famous with the Americans, because of the movie."

The father pushed the issue when he moved back to Malta, and when the Maltese government finally eased its objections about 15 years ago, "he got it first," the son said. The figurine is modeled after the movie's, made in a Maltese crafts workshop nearby and sold nowhere else in the country. "The Maltese falcon is very important," Degiorgio said. "We study it in school." The movie? I was incredulous. No, he said patiently, the real Maltese falcon: "It's part of our history." Unfortunately, there aren't any living ones left on Malta, he said. "It used to be a perfect place - one of the best places for falcons in Europe. That's why there was the request from the king of Spain. The peregrine falcon is the best hunting bird, even nowadays." But after World War II, "after the destruction here, they disappeared," he said, and now the island has been so heavily built up that "there is no place for them." As I started to leave, he offered me a sheet of information about the real falcon. It included something I hadn't known, and it gave me a shiver of serendipity: The falcon was to be paid every year on Nov. 1. "That's today!" I said. Degiorgio just smiled and I stepped out into Mdina's darkened streets, my long-sought falcons firmly in hand.

The Maltese Falcon - the Humphrey Bogart film

A new remake of The Maltese Falcon with an all-black cast?