Belfast: A Long Way From Glendale

I admit that I don't know about all the intricacies of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, but I saw enough to know that there is a long way to go before there is any sort of lasting peace in the city. There are segregated cities, but then there is Belfast. There is literally a wall that divides the Catholic Nationalist and Protestant Loyalist neighborhoods in two, known ironically as the Peace Line. At night and on weekends, gates along the wall are closed to help keep the peace. Some of us took an open-top bus tour of the city, and this tour included going through these neighborhoods. It was before the shops were open on Sunday, so the streets were mostly deserted and the shops were barred shut. Graffiti and broken-in windows were more common than not on the buildings and houses. Each side has intricate, and quite artistic, murals on the sides and fronts of buildings that depict their various ideologies. The Loyalists, on Shankill Road, have murals that depict the throne, flags, and perhaps most ominously, weaponry and the refusal to surrender. The Nationalists' murals on Falls Road, newer than the Loyalists', have murals about hunger strikes, military, elections, IRA, Sinn Féin, repression, and resistance. As were were driving down Shankill Road, hearing stories about what has happened in the neighborhood, and what was especially memorable, seeing a plague that commemorated the innocent dead from a bombing at a store a decade back, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't see what it was, but I saw the form of a body wind up and throw something. It was coming right for me, so I tried to cover myself up. It came and hit me on the neck on my sweatshirt, but luckily, it turned out to only be eggs from a couple of small kids on the sidewalk. In another instance, I saw a little kid standing on a side street, hanging out with his friends on any normal Sunday afternoon, just holding up a Union Jack. A few others who went out the day before and walked the area got asked what religion they were by more small kids. My friends said that they didn't really have a specific religion and they support anyone's choice, and in response, this little girl says, "well we don't." Nothing really happened, but it was clear to me how tenuous the peace in Belfast really is. The egg was nothing more than kids messing around, but even that unnerved me, just considering the situation and the moment from which it came. I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up in an area like that and think that there's stuff like this is normal. The city centre, where we stayed, certainly wasn't as bad as these neighborhoods, but even then I got the feeling that I really stuck out. Most of the younger population seemed to be committed to all-black dress, and the short amount of time to when the city centre went from packed in the afternoon to deserted in the evenings, save for the police, was eerie to say the least. Belfast. A memorable city that I'm glad I saw, but one that definitely left me feeling unsettled. Never threatened; just a bit uneasy.