Northern Ireland: The Paradox of Life Between Worlds

I'm here. Belfast, Northern Ireland. Everything is novel, new and exciting, and I have leisurely been exploring the place which will be "home" for the next four months.

The main shopping districts of Belfast (such as Castle Arcade/Victoria Center) have a vibrancy that I was not expecting, bustling with shoppers and the expectancy of Christmas. Buskers are on each street corner to regale you with carols and folk tunes, and shopwindows are gaily trimmed. Here, I do not get a sense of the tension so readily exploited by the journal mags such as the telegraph or pervaded by Steven Nolan on Radio Ulster (Nolan by the way is known as a "shock jock" according to one local I was speaking with...though clearly the term is being used in an altogether much less intense way here than the Rush Limbaughs, Michael Savages and Howard Sterns that we would equate with the embodiment of such a term back home).

Infact, beyond the closed shops evident of a struggling economy, Belfast is a charming and quaint European metropolitan center. Online forums and European newspapers speak fondly of Belfast's newfound foodie and culture scenes. Investment and redevelopment have attracted overseas companies and tourism, victories which Stormont (the local devolved Northern Ireland assembly) and Westminster (the United Kingdom legislative assembly responsible for overall governance of the province) can rightfully be proud of. Partly because of the better economy (which is still lagging as the worst in the UK, but much better than once it was), the functioning local government, efforts to deinstitutionalize discrimination, broader educational opportunities, disbanding and demilitarization of many of the big paramilitary militias, and cross-community institutions, much of the violence with which the Northern Ireland of the 1970s, 1980s and somewhat in the 1990s came to be plagued by.

I have yet to venture beyond the main Business districts of the downtown sector, but that which I have seen has been of a place which is going about the business of living in the present. This afternoon I wandered through Victoria Square, City Hall, Queens University, the Botanical Gardens, and then returned via a leisurely stroll along the Lagan back up to City center. It could have been anywhere: the Hatch Shell on the Charles in Boston, Crossing the Willamette over the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, or strolling the docks in downtown Olympia; but no, despite the reeds rustling and the gulls screeing, there were the massive sentinals of "Samson" and "Goliath" (the giant cranes at Hawland & Wolff that dominate the Belfast skyline) assuring me that this was indeed Belfast, Northern Ireland's "first city."

However, one needs only to wander off of the main streets by mere blocks to get a sense of the haunting empty feeling that impressed upon me when I first visited back in 2002. Rows of tenements with their tell-tale chimneys lining the narrow neighborhoods...these neighborhoods are where one can feel it the most. Sentinals, hiding their residents behind blonds and sashes, streets where life is masqueraded by loneliness, as mournful as a single tenor voice singing "My Lagan Love."

This paradox of an ordinary city juxtaposed with the feeling that things are NOT as they seem shows that this place is as complex as she is elusive. Today while walking I encountered my first indication of the still enduring troubles. On Damascus street in the Ormeau (near Queens University), a phalanx of four Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) landrovers and security personnel standing guard outside a house with semi-automatic rifles carefully watching me go by.

There is a Janus like quality that intrigues me, captivating me further into the paradox that is Northern Ireland. I fear that four months will not be nearly enough time to unravel her secrets and discover why this small country and her people have maintained an almost twenty-five year captivation on my mind.