The `Troubles' tour
VIJAY PARTHASARATHY
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Belfast welcomes tourists. Just be a little wary of making the residents nervous.
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Most operators are usually sensitive about the use of the word terror; they prefer the term "Troubles"...
Photo: AP
Divided city: An IRA mural in Belfast.
THE flight from London Luton to Belfast takes an hour, the 21-km bus ride from airport to city centre nearly 45 minutes. The weather is nippy, not cold. I drop my bags at the hostel, call and arrange for a Black Taxi tour in the evening, and step out into the dull morning sunshine. I hike up to Belfast Castle, set on the slopes of Cavehill in the Southeast, and watch as planes approach from over the harbour. Sun traverses sky. I take the bus back into town.
There is little to distinguish the city centre in Belfast from any other elsewhere in the U.K. The same retail stores line the sidewalks on the respective High Streets. The centre itself is arranged in a confusing grid, and while the Victorian era architecture is not in any sense unpalatable, it lacks the character of a city like Edinburgh. Although Belfast has been inhabited from the time of the Bronze Age, the city only emerged as a major industrial centre around the 18th century. The people are well dressed, even if there is a pattern: gelled hair — in the West, everyone is obsessed with spikes — shirts buttoned at the sleeves and worn over jeans, nice formal shoes.
My taxi is waiting at the City Hall, four sharp. The driver opens the back door. He is squat, stout, and dressed in a T-shirt and trousers; his identification badge says James Keogh. I explain that I have three days in Northern Ireland, and that I'd like to see as much of the city as possible, experience in person what I've only read so far of its history.
Refreshing cynicism
"The Terror tour is popular here," he says. I like his cynicism. Most operators are usually sensitive about the use of the word terror; they prefer the term "Troubles" without the pejorative connotations. "Derry was bad, but the violence in Belfast was worse," Keogh continues, as if holding out the tacit promise of a value-for-money tour. I have a hard time following what he says initially: his brogue is thick and he mumbles. Every once in a while, he licks the tip of his fingers and rubs his hands. It's distracting to watch him to do this as he speaks, plain scary when he drives.
The idea, he says, is to begin with West Belfast and travel clockwise. We stop first in front of a Unionist mural on Shankill Road, a Protestant working class area. Cars pass by; people walk swiftly, hands in pockets, along the pavement. "Anyone could be a paramilitary soldier here," Keogh says. "Nobody minds tourists, they bring in the money. Take pictures of any of the murals in Belfast, but don't point the camera at people. It makes them nervous. We don't want to make them nervous." Next, the peace lines — walls constructed from brick, iron and steel, measuring up to 30 feet, and reinforced with metal netting. Nearby stands a Catholic primary school with bullet holes in its walls, long abandoned, but not entirely forgotten. Keogh shows me the most famous barrier, the one that separates Shankill Road from the predominantly nationalist Falls Road.
"The city is much safer than before. The peace process is working. But it doesn't take much for a riot to start even now," he says. "A child might throw a stone at someone, and before you know it, the adults have used that as an excuse to start a scene."
We drive slowly around the North — "It's too dangerous to step out, there was an incident here last week." A brief halt in the East: Samson and Goliath, the pair of shipbuilding gantry cranes that dominate the Belfast skyline; more famously, the cranes are located in the yard where the Titanic was built. Then, back to the Troubles. While both the IRA and the Unionists run money-laundering rackets, Keogh emphasises that the former is better organised politically; the Protestant organisations are fragmented and cannot match the well-oiled IRA propaganda machine. "The IRA is like the Mafia, the Unionists are mostly ordinary thugs," he says, spitting at his fingers and shrugging sincerely.
A puzzle
By now, I don't quite know what to make of Keogh. He is enthusiastic, constantly talking over the intercom inside the cab, offering me a consciously unbiased take on the city's history; perhaps it is a matter of professional pride. His sister, he tells me, was shot in the ankle once when she was walking home, but he didn't pay undue heed to the incident. A Catholic himself, he sent the youngest of his four children to a mixed school because this generation "needs perspective, above everything else." But when I happen to mention Denis Donaldson, the murdered MI5 mole in Sinn Fein, Keogh's features contort bluntly. "Bloody spy," he mutters.
Anyone could be IRA here.
It's strange, I tell him later, as 35 quid change hands, religious clashes in India don't receive as much attention worldwide as the Northern Ireland conflict. "In the end, it all boils down to the rich exploiting the poor, doesn't it?" Keogh says, a trifle glibly. "Once the lower middle class stops relying on unemployment benefits, they won't have the time for religious wars."
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