I steered our tiny Daihatsu rental, the toylike car we’d driven across Malta’s network of narrow, stony roads, into the dirt parking lot near
Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, megalithic temples set high above the Mediterranean.
I handed the parking fee to a man who looked like Popeye, his face grizzled by sun and sea spray, his teeth several short of a full set, and his sailor cap high and to one side, which called attention to his large walnut forehead.
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The author’s daughter, Dana, poses at Ggantija, Gozo’s “place of giants.” The two temples here were built between 3600 and 3000 B.C. |
He was delighted to see my kids, Adam and Dana, and he dug around in the pockets of his baggy green pants and produced two fistfuls of hard candy. Before we headed to the mystical structures, he promised to guard our car.
Then he pointed to the free toilets by the parking lot. “Don’t use the toilets in the Ħaġar Qim Restaurant! You have to pay 50 cents each,” he said, translating the Maltese lira usage fee into U.S. currency, which he thought we could better relate to.
After we saved a dollar and a half, we headed over a rise and were greeted by the magnificent sight of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra on a sweeping hillside above the sea. The kids took off down the path that led to the stone-age temple complex, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza.
Below the massive, 5,000-year-old limestone ruins, terraced vegetable plots ran to the cliff edge, and ship-shaped Filfla, Malta’s smallest island, floated in the near distance. Gargantuan ocher boulders, cut, curved and shaped into rooms, passageways and sacred spaces, glowed gold in the sun, connecting me and other visitors through millennia to the people who once worshiped here.
Sitting in the field between the silent temples and the sparkling sea, I felt the tranquil touch of timelessness.
Continued: The Fat Ladies of Malta: Temples and Goddesses
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