Belfast, Ireland: A Terrible Beauty (cont.)

Shortly later, a skinny, young man who had never shaved a whisker from his face came in and asked for a Boddingtons. He looked fifteen and the man with the camera launched a full-out assault on his manliness. After three sips baby face left his beer at the bar and exited. The man with the camera then turned to me.

“What are you looking at? You’re not from around here are you?”

“No, but I heard about your wit and charm. Your sweetness is world famous, and I wanted to see it for myself.”

Chagrinned, he apologized and turned back to his beer. He swallowed the rest of his pint, stood up and looked to the barmaid. I could tell that the barmaid was waiting for him to say something to her, or she wanted to say something to him but didn’t want me to hear. I got up and pretended I had to use the bathroom.

When I returned, the seat next to mine was empty. The barmaid spoke as she poured me another pint.

“The March is tomorrow, isn’t it?”

I nodded, as if I understood.

Maybe that was the tension I felt. I was told that it was safe to visit the Falls/Shankill area in a guided tour bus or taxi during the day, except during the week of July 12th, which is the day of the Orangemen March. I vaguely knew that the March celebrated the military victory, hundreds of years ago, of the Protestant King William of Orange over the Catholic Monarch James II. I also knew that in 1998 the Good Friday Agreement had been signed. This gave the Irish more say in Northern Ireland’s politics in exchange the Irish relinquished their desire to unite all of Ireland. Things hadn’t gone as smoothly as anticipated: the IRA hadn’t disarmed quickly or completely enough and Home Rule was again threatened. Though violence hadn’t broken out, like a California forest at the end of a long dry summer, all that was needed to create a major conflagration was an errant spark. It seemed, at least from my viewpoint, there were lighters and matches in all the pockets of the people I passed.

She proceeded to tell me his story. I could tell there was real love, however dysfunctional, between them. Though an award winning photographer for a Belfast paper, he was as well known for his prodigious drinking as his nasty and bitter tongue. This time of year he was at his worst. She was actually happy I stood up to him, as too few did, and as far as the young man was concerned, she said he was only trying to keep him from going down the same road that forced him into her bar every afternoon for his pint and shot.

I remembered an image. On the right side a group of teenagers stood with rocks in their hands in front of a flame-engulfed abandon building, on the left were tanks and soldiers in riot gear. The photo was snapped a split second after one of the youths pitched a rock at the soldiers, just at the moment a bullet tore through his chest. I doubted that he had taken that particular photograph, but someone had. I didn’t even remember if it was from Shankill or Falls Road, it could have been taken in Israel or Iraq or Bosnia or Chechnya or a hundred other places where similar scenarios have been played out.

I pulled out my British pounds to pay.

“That okay, dear, he took care of you.”

I left the bills anyway. I already had my ticket back and I would have to convert them back into Euros and eventually into dollars.

It was an old story perhaps; the brash drunk hiding a sensitive and caring heart, but it was one I was happy to stumble upon after seeing countless worn faces etched with defeated and discarded dreams. On the train back to Dublin, Yeats haunting words, from Easter 1916, came back to me: “a terrible beauty is born.” Yes, a terrible beauty is born: it is living and breathing and walking amongst us, masked with arrogance and scented with booze.

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