I happened to park the other day behind a tiny lilac car. Among many other decorations, the owner had plastered a number of names on the rear window: Pausini, Zero, Baglioni, Bocelli. Happy chance I thought, given the Italian in my passenger seat.

Or maybe not. In fact she dismissed it as a list of second-rate 'commercials', fit only for export (from Italy that is). (She had on another occasion said the same of Italian salumi in foreign supermarkets.)

Two things. First, my companion's demanding tastes; I quite like Baglioni, and will tolerate Renato Zero on a placid afternoon. Second, and hopefully less trivially, the contrast with our own ways of thinking, which rather favours 'export quality' as opposed to 'for local consumption'.

I have to generalise here, but it seems to me that quality in Malta is measured in terms of how well homegrown sells abroad. There were no questions asked when Kevin Borg conquered the teeny-boppers' powwow in distant Sweden. Irrespective of his musical talents, he was suddenly crowned an 'ambassador' and secured a televised summit with His Excellency no less.

This odd disposition is displayed on at least four counts. First, products. This includes both human-type such as Borg, Tony Drago and Joseph Calleja, and things like vegetables. I have a vague recollection of a Minister of Agriculture lugging around the first sack of Maltese potatoes sold in Holland. The news did the rounds and our potatoes have never tasted quite the same again. Surely if they're good enough to sell to the Dutch, they must be rather special?

Second, our country's natural history. Endemics - species that are found nowhere else in the world - are particularly attractive in this sense, as is the fact that Malta is said by some to lie on a major migratory route for birds. Again this makes us rather important, since it promotes us to caretaker of the world's biodiversity.

Third, history of the man-made sort. I find it interesting that the moments we recognise as the high points of our history all have to do with our relevance to the planet.

In 1565 we saved Christendom for everyone to enjoy ever after, and in World War Two we were the 'linchpin of the hinge' as someone put it, the door in this case being the one connecting Nazism to the world. Likewise, the shipwreck of St Paul might be interpreted as the raising of a Christian bastion, a last-stand cavalier that will endure as everyone else loses their values. From time to time we also come across newspaper features about the sailor of Maltese origin on Columbus's ship, or the merchant with a Maltese great-grandmother who introduced chocolate to the Indians.

Finally, when all else fails, we like to think of ourselves as a 'bridge' connecting Europe to the Arabs. If the clash of civilisations theory is anything to go by, such bridges will become ever more indispensable.

I spent some happy weeks in Lampedusa last year, and was struck by just how similar the islanders' self-image is to ours. Chat up a Lampedusan and they will mention three, sometimes four, things. The turtles, an endangered lot that lays its eggs on their beaches; the missile a pre-rehab Gaddafi allegedly fired at them in the 1980s and which shot the island to fame; the location of the place as the front door to Europe for immigrants; and, sometimes, the Gattopardo, a masterpiece of world (note emphasis) literature written by the Prince of Lampedusa.

Which makes Lampedusa a useful clue. I think the first reason we are always looking for things, people, and events which connect us, is our island-ness. Cities, Fernand Braudel once wrote, are recognised by the roads leading to and from them. Islands, perhaps, are recognised by just how much they value the roads leading to and from them.

It is not that we have ever been isolated - our surnames, our cuisine, our fauna and flora, all bear witness to the contrary. Rather, it is the sense of isolation that matters, a sense which hits you when you see an empty horizon all around. Islands, especially those that aspire to be 'complete' (as in nation-states), suffer from isolation anxiety, and will think anything for a measure of self-comfort.

The second reason we so value the things that connect us, is probably our colonial legacy. The obsession with export and relevance abroad is alive and well in India, for example, which is hardly a small island. Colonialism sought to convince the natives that they were important only in as much as they fitted into the grander picture. Thus the 'arani ma' ('mummy, look at me') syndrome. It is not really an 'inferiority complex', but something much more interesting and complicated.

These days, when I see 'export quality' written on a beer can, I am hardly offended.

mafalzon@hotmail.com