Imagine Belfast...

Belfast is a very peculiar city, for not saying bizarre. One I will never forget. Not because it is considered the Titanic's uterus, a ship which was born dead in a very premature way in the frozen waters of the Atlantic a century ago, as we all know. Not for its beutiful architecture, which is wasted in banks and minimarkets in a very European way. Not even for the good memories I may keep from an abandoned sofa in a parking lot, when the cold weather didn't matter. For all that I have pictures and I can close my eyes if I need to.

The reason which I think I will never forget Belfast is its atmosphere. One that doesn't seem to fit well to anyone and that makes the city practically dead with every sunset. A very heavy air, not friendly at all, and which makes me turn my head over my shoulder constantly when I walk down the street. A feeling that I keep crossing invisible lines between I can get stuck. A heavy, stressful air. A vibe hard to deal with, beyond its melancholic sunset rain. A gray and green-like-moss air, as I imagined previously (I don't know why, but I've always pictured Belfast in that abstract color sketch). Belfast is gray and green-like-moss. Moss. A moss that get stuck in your lungs. Maybe it is because of that, that Belfast doesn't breath well. And it's impossible that it does, when it has a wall in the middle.

Belfast Wall.

The wall (which I still don't get why I never heard about it before, until I cross paths with), has the cynical name of Peace Line. It divides the catholic or republican neighborhoods from the protestants or loyal to the crown ones (you can choose which one of those names you find politically correct; for me all of them are absurd). It has been there for years, along some intermittent kilometers, in a very concrete and tangible way, beyond the ideas, which are always so abstract. In case someone would like to fraternize it has some gates, sometimes watched by the police, which they close in a religious way at 5 p.m., in order to avoid catholics and protestants to go into a fist fight, for not so Vatican issues.

It is, practically, a Berlin wall, something that I used to think got lost already in the last century, with all the non sense which the XX century got high with. Its function is the same: a wall between streets with houses and people who look all the same to the naked eye, in order to make them different in the bad way. A wall painted with political murals: on the protestant side with British flags; on the catholic one with murals from the martyrs who died during hunger strikes for the independence of Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein heroes, and some solidarity murals with other countries which they consider to share a manifest and similar destiny, like Palestine, Cuba and I don't know who else. A group of bricks which doesn't seem to bother anyone, even when it is in the middle of the way.

British side.

Republican side.

By the little bit I knew about Northern Ireland, I had some idea that this place was not the one John Lennon imagined. The bombs placed by the IRA, the riots during 30 years known as The Troubles (such a creative name they chosed for a politic issue), some literature about the Sinn Fein and the movie In the name of the father, made me imagine Belfast as one of those chaotic and political problematic places which call my attention so much. Better reason then to go there.

For whoever may be reading this blog and doesn't have too much of an idea about the whole situation, the thing is very simple: Ireland got its independence in 1919, but Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. Some people find it really cool, others not that much. And ever since they hit each other in order to solve the problem, with some bombs every now and then when things get heavy. End of the history.

Or well, not such an end. Naively, I thought all of this was part of a very sad and famous past, already outdated, as the Berlin wall is outdated too and that makes impossible to think about a communist Germany, something so absurd as to imagine half Japan populated by black people. Therefore, I was expecting to find some leftovers of history to learn from. But no: what I found was a present that still exists. In Belfast there is a wall still and the strangest part is that no one seems to care about, as it had grown there in a natural way, as a tree, by spontaneous generation. Or at least that seems to me, since meanwhile I was there I didn't see anyone trying to bring it down with a hammer. But the wall goes beyond that. And that is what give me the feeling that I am walking between invisible lines that I am not sure if I should cross.

To start with, during the evening Belfast gave me the impression to be a ghost town. The Royal Avenue, a crowded street during day time (with a bunch of people who I can not distinguish if they are catholics or protestants), at 8 p.m. is dead. Meanwhile I wander around with him, who had such a pretty name, and the Uruguayan girl (characters that you may remember from the last chapter He, who had such a pretty name) I can not avoid the feeling that the zombie apocalypse already happened, and we are a group of three survivors, who in a moment will have to deal with Rick and his gang in an Irish version of The Walking Dead. Man, there is no one here. Absolutely no one. No noise, no music, no cars, not even an atheist and apolitical dog wandering around.

We need to walk more, a lot more to find an open bar this Monday night. A place which seems like a hotel's lobby, but where the beer tastes the same as anywhere else.

We sat down in the terrace to smoke and a few minutes later, a couple of Irish guys from a table near to ours began to talk to us. One of them speaks Spanish with an accent from Madrid, since he used to work in Spain, when this country was able to feed immigrants. It's a very peculiar situation, since I am in the middle of a Spanish speaker Irish and him, who had such a pretty name, who may be Slovakian, but speaks Spanish with all those c and z I don't even pronounce.

However, the situation is about to become even more peculiar, despite of the fact that they are talking about something as common as soccer, according to the canons which good part of the masculine population uses to socialize worldwide. I don't know when, since I don't have my catholic detector on, but the Irish who speaks Spanish cross himself. I don't know if he expects that one day the Atlético of Madrid wins and asks God's help for those tiny favors. I have always believed God must be a very busy guy and I don't want to bother him with those whims , but some people like to abuse of his omnipresence; that's a personal choice. In any case, I don't even notice it, since they are talking about a soccer ball and anyone who knows me is aware that I don't give a shit about it.

But there is a guy near us who really cares: a big, tall, bold guy, someone like the prototype of the bad boy from a fifth class action movie. He noticed, indeed, that the Irish guy who speaks Spanish had crossed himself. And man, he really doesn't like it. In fact, he starts to argue with us and say that he is a fucking catholic who likes to talk to bloody foreigners. Later that night, I will find out that this bar was one of protestants, who don't seem to like foreigners too much, so it was not the best idea to go there and have a beer, even when beer is a drink which brings nations together.

A little bit scared, the two Irish, the Uruguayan, the handsome Slovakian who had such a pretty name and me decided to go inside to drink our beer in peace, away from this bold guy, who seems so friendly and tolerant. Then, my legendary curiosity takes control of the situation and I began to ask. It wasn't supposed to be all this problem between catholics and protestants an issue from the last century? Didn't they find a way to understand each other in a more diplomatic way? It wasn't all this problem already on a negotiation table, not over, but at least without blood that spoils the surface where they were drinking a cup of tea?

“Sure, in front of the cameras”, says the Irish who speaks Spanish.“But here everything is the same. We are still fighting”.

And to prove it, the other Irish, the one who doesn't speak Spanish, began to show us some scars from the 27 times he got stabbed so far. Some of them are from fights against protestants, others because he devoted himself to steal cars for a while (yes, the people with I sit down for a beer, on a Monday night in a city that I don't know...). I guess none of these guys go to church very often. In fact, the one who speaks Spanish declares himself as an atheist. But in front of the protestant's eyes, he is in a category close to a cardinal.

The bold guy now is just at the table across ours and keeps going with his bullshit. In the few days I have spent in Ireland I realized that I am having a hard time understanding their Irish-pirate-like accent so I don't get a lot of what he is saying, but after a while the Irish who doesn't speak Spanish stands up and began to play along. I see a fight coming just in front of me.

“Don't worry”, says the Irish who speaks Spanish. “He won't hit you. You are a girl. Besides, we are three guys”. He assumes that he will count with the help of the cute Slovakian, but he just shrugs and says to me not so loud: “You know, I don't feel like running today...”.

The Uruguayan girl finally does something useful besides being in the middle of the Slovakian and me and calls a waitress in order to kick the bold guy out of the bar. A blond skinny girl won't help that much if the blood ruins the carpet already, but since we are in an early verbal stage of the fight at least she manages to put everybody back to their own places.

I got paralyzed, but at the same time insanely fascinated: that this kind of things are still going on in such an intense way until the day I am writing this seems shocking to me.

British side.

Republican side.

The next day I decided to walk around in a protestant neighborhood, in a catholic one and cross a Peace Line, to see by myself if, indeed, there are such big differences. The Irish guys offer us a personal tour, but after saying a very enthusiastic yes, I think it twice and I decide to go alone. I don't trust a guy who got stabbed 27 times that much. Besides, I am a girl anyway. I feel safer if I am by my own at this point.

Tourist guides don't recommend walking around this area after 7 p.m. and a guy from the hostel tells me that it is not a good idea to walk around Shankill, one of the most British neighborhoods, since I am a foreigner. But come on: even when I share the political view that you should behave like the others do when you are abroad, no one is going to tell me where I can walk around or not. It's a sunny morning and it's not like I am going to argue about Margaret Tatcher with anyone I might cross paths with.

As I suspected, nothing happens. Shankill (the protestant one) and Falls Road (the catholic one) are normal neighborhoods, with brick houses, gardens and regular people wandering around. The only difference is all this political paraphernalia that decorates them: some light poles have British flags, some Irish flags. Some graffitis are about British pride, others about Irish pride. The catholic neighborhood seems the most compromised with the matter, maybe because they are less, and has more murals and a small remembrance garden, to honor those who lost their lives trying to erase an invisible line.

When I cross the Peace Line through one of the gates I am all by myself. There is just me and a huge mural on the peace wall, which settles the brief neutral territory, as short as the time it takes to cross a gate. Imagine, says ironically, written with big letters that don't seem to motivate anyone to read them.

Peace Line.

I sit down in front of the mural and I can not stop thinking about how contradictory people can be. If I have to make my choice between all those absurd labels for two neighborhoods that look exactly the same, I stick with republican and loyal. Religion is out of question here, Jesus, who is so poorly marketed, has nothing to do with all this issue. It reminds me The Gospel according to Jesus Christ by Saramago, one of my favorites books. In one of the most brilliants chapters in Literature's history, the devil tries to make Jesus fall in temptation, as they are in the mount of olives. Even when nobody knows about what they talked meanwhile they were drinking tea during those lovely hours, rumor has that everything was around Maria Magdalena and sex. A very cliche theory, that tries to seem avant-garde . But in The Gospel according Jesus Christ they talk about a temptation that seems more appealing to me: the devil tells Jesus about how all his friends will die as so many other people, just in his name, and he asks him if that really worth it. If all this blood in his name is something even moral. I wonder if Jesus would agree if he comes here to see the wall.

But even if we leave religion aside and we focus on politics, this is no sense. The Irish flag, the one that proudly waves in the republican neighborhoods, is one that I really like, but its meaning is lost too: the green represents the catholics, the orange the protestants and the white the peace that should bring them together in the middle. But no one seems to care. And then people ask me why I insist in not having a flag.

I write this chapter in Berlin, meanwhile I wait for a visa to India in one of these games of invisible lines that people like so much to play. Another city that used to have a wall too. Walls, visas, borders... These are difficult times for travelers. And even more difficult for those who just want to imagine a world without so much shit in the middle, despite of what John Lennon said once: Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do...

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