The Street Hawkers
When I was a child, our streets were buzzing with activity rather than with the traffic we see nowadays. One could see people chatting at their doorsteps, hear the shouting of children as they played, and witness a good number of hawkers who would come round the streets, each with his distinctive cry, which was their best form of publicity.
Every Monday and Thursday, the paraffin seller [tal-pitrolju] would come. He had a cry that even the deaf could hear. He would stop at three different points in our street and, each time, he would raise [cup] his hand to his mouth and yell with all his might:
“Trolyuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”
[intended to mimic the sound of his product's name: pee-trol-yoo]
He would drag that last vowel till he ran out of breath.
Then people would gather round him, each with a tin can or two. In those days paraffin was very widely used, especially for cooking, which was mostly done on spirit-ignited stoves [spiritieri]. He had a knack for pouring paraffin without spilling a drop on the floor.
in later years, horse-and-cart were replaced by the bowser-truck
Practically every day, except for Sundays, we had Bertu, the ice seller [tas-silġ].
Most people, at that time, did not own a refrigerator and those who did, like Rozi the shopkeeper, for instance, had one that ran on paraffin. Some kept their ice in a large tub and placed bottles of lemonade or water beneath the ice. Others had what we called the ice box [il-kaxxa tas-silġ]. This was made of wood and was lined with zinc on the inside. The ice itself would be placed in a separate box, beneath which food and drinks, or whatever was needed to be kept fresh, could be stored. This box had a hole at its base so that water from the melted ice could flow down to a zinc tray at the bottom.
Each time, Bertu seemed to attract a hoard of children around him; all of us begging for a piece of ice which we sucked on! It used to be salty, but fresh! Once, a boy put in his hand to grab a piece of ice just as Bertu was about to smash a block of ice with his iron bar. As the ice-seller brought down the tool with all his might, the boy gave out a horrific scream and jumped up and down in agonizing pain. His finger became purple and swelled as much as a blood-sausage. You can just imagine how much his mother screamed and how worried Bertu became. The boy was taken to the pharmacy where is-Sur Manwel, as the owner was known, bandaged his finger and instructed his mother on what to do next. That evening, she took her son to Doctor Borg.
Another street hawker was the one who sold mulberries. I still recollect his call, “żabbarija t-tut” [pron. “zabbar-ee-yah ’t toot”] though I never really understood what that meant exactly! He would come mostly in the afternoon, carrying two wicker baskets; one on each arm. His fingertips were stained black from the berries. People would come out with their bowls to buy from him.
Every Wednesday and Friday, we used to get the women from Marsaxlokk with the [latest] catch. They carried the fish in trays over their heads! Most of them would come at the same time, probably owing to the fact that they used the same bus, and they all cried “Ħajjin!” [pron. “hai-yeen”, meaning ‘Alive’, referring to the fish], when in fact what they carried was dead. During the lampuki [dolphin fish] season they sometimes even came in the evenings. They would weigh the fish in small weighing scales and then they would wrap them in yellowish paper, which we referred to as ‘sugar-wrapping’.
A short distance from where I used to live there was a tiny room in which a man known as Ċikku l-Iswed [a nickname denoting the man’s dark skin colour] used to cook bigilla [a bean dip] in winter and make ice cream in summer. He was not big on cleanliness and my father, who was in the services and was used to good hygiene, would never let us buy from him.
“That man doesn’t have the faintest idea about cleanliness in food!” he would tell us. And he was right. One time Ċikku landed a lot of people in hospital when he sold contaminated ice cream. In a way I felt sorry for him when the Health Department closed him down for a while. Poor chap, he wasn’t a bad person. But people’s health must come first!
I mustn’t forget Gringu, who used to sell prickly pears. His cry, which went “Tax-xitel il-bajtar” [pron. “tush she-tell ill buy-tar” implying that the pears were fresh from the plant], could not be missed. And if this man was blessed with everything, he certainly wasn’t blessed with good manners. He had a knack for peeling the prickly pear with his big knife. One time a woman came up to him and asked him to weigh and peel a 'rotolo' [roughly equiv. to 1½ lbs, or 800g] of the fruit for her. After weighing, he got hold of a prickly pear, slashed it a couple of times with his knife and separated its skin so that the woman could take the peeled fruit. She was taken aback.
“What happened to you?” Gringu said in his loud voice.
“I am afraid!” she replied.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked in his friendly and gentle manner.
“From the thorns” she responded.
“There is nothing to be afraid of! Look here!” And as he said these words, he took a prickly pear from his basket, one he hadn’t yet soaked [to soften the thorns], he popped it in his mouth and ate it!
That woman almost fainted.
In summer, there also came the man who sold sea urchins [tar-rizzi], carrying a large basket over his back. When he stopped, people came out to buy. He would split the urchin over a block of cork tied to his basket and the part of it that was not sold would fall inside a smaller basket tied to the bigger one. We, the children, would swarm around him in the hope of being given these remnants so we could pick some meat that might have remained there. At times we would ask him for a whole one and enjoy seeing it move when placed in direct sunlight.
Oh, how we used to enjoy ourselves with so little!
Charles Casha © 2001
Minn Fuq l-Għatba
[From the Doorstep]
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