VSn evening, a police helicopter hovers over East Belfast, stirring the air as it scans the streets. The helicopters have been playing a permanent soundtrack to us since the riots began in April. I don’t even care anymore. When you live in Northern Ireland it’s amazing how much you get used to. The perpetual drizzle. Politicians who prefer controversy to dialogue. An Assembly, associated with the exercise of power, which frequently collapses, leading the country to the brink of legislative paralysis. The walls of peace and school segregation: a constant reminder that, despite our best efforts, this city remains a place of divided life. Paramilitaries are showing their continued presence with murals at street corners and punitive beatings which are on the rise again.
I was 18 in 1998 when the Good Friday Peace Agreement was signed [mettant fin à trente ans de guerre civile]. I naively believed that Northern Ireland would look very different 23 years later. Okay, she’s definitely more peaceful than before, but the “troubles” haven’t completely gone away. I believe that our complacency is partly to blame. We got used to the constant low noise of intimidation, bigotry and violence, whatever we tolerated has become the status quo. When foreign friends ask about the current situation in Belfast, I usually answer: “It’s a bit tense at the moment. “ I have been repeating this sentence for twenty years now. Peace has never seemed very stable in Northern Ireland. Today, it is almost unbearably fragile.
Shortage of goods
The tension that reigns here is most difficult to explain. In the past, there were two points of view. Catholic and Protestant. Or “Us and them”, as we say around here. Today, these binary narratives have been shattered, altered, and supplanted by a multiplicity of different points of view. There is neither a fixed narrative nor a firm notion of the truth. Thus, an event like the centenary of Northern Ireland (commemorated in May 2021) was celebrated by unionists [fidèles à la couronne britannique], and contested within the nationalist community which does not recognize British authority.
That we can’t agree on an established version of our story is not surprising; there is not even a consensus on the name that should be given to this place. It’s Northern Ireland for some, northern Ireland for others. People here often fight over semantic issues. Words can be weapons if they fall into the wrong hands.
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