19 - On the streets

It's just after 9pm. The light is going, and the streets are starting to cool. I can hear raucous laughter from the nearby pubs, the scattered clicking of high heeled girls.

I'm wearing trousers, unlaced runners and a cardigan I pulled on straight over my bra. In my handbag I have my purse, a USB key, Chanel concealer, several thousand Indonesian Rupiah, three hairbands, a compact mirror, a namebadge, a key to the office, a stub of an eyeliner, two black biros and a paperclip.

I'm standing on the apartment building doorstoop, staring blankly at its green surface. I've been staring for a good ten minutes now, but it remains resolutely shut.

I've locked myself out.

It's not that I didn't forsee something like this. I think most people who know me forsaw exactly this. But, in the same way that Irish people continually express shock when it rains, I am rooted to the spot with disbelief that it has actually happened.

So here I am. In the street, checking and rechecking the contents of my handbag with the sort of blind faith that I used to have in the toothfairy.

It's not how I imagined my last night in the city to be.

But, it being Derry, I'm not left on the streets for long. Catherine hears of my predicament and picks me up. I'm soon settled in the depths of her couch, complete with a fresh set of nightclothes, a towel and the TV remote control.

I haven't seen television in a month, so I watch greedily for a few hours, not caring what programmes I watch. Multiple rape victims, people mysteriously set on fire, something sinister happening down at the boat house. I am soon lulled into a dreamless sleep.

*************

So that is how I find myself, quite unexpectedly, spending a very civilised morning sipping mint tea and listening to Sunday Miscellany, something I haven't done since my granddad used to feature regularly on the show. In fact, I don't think I would even know what station to tune in to.
This is Catherine's Sunday morning ritual, however. The Economist propped up in front of her (because you need to know what the enemy is thinking), Catherine doesn't so much listen as use the radio as an audio comfort blanket.

I suppose it sort of fills the void Mass used to occupy, she reflects, as we listen to a droning voice talk about the annals discovered recently in a monastery somewhere in Killybegs.

Later, walking back across the bridge to await the arrival of my saviours with the keys, I notice two policemen shuffling their feet at the corner of Carlisle Road.

For the second time in as many weeks, I am forced to consider that I may have been too hasty in judging others. Clearly, I was wrong to say that there are no police on the streets of Derry.

I am feeling somewhat chastised when I see two more further up the road.

Then one at the Diamond, and another three at the top of Shipquay Street. The first suspicion creeps into my mind.

I only have to wait a few minutes for an answer. From a few streets away, the familiar rumble of drums has started up. I notice that several nearby cars are unloading elderly, cameo-brooched women and equally elderly, stuff-suited men onto the streets.

Of course, a march. There seems to be a march every weekend here.

I tune out from the sound of whistles and drumbeats, and settle down to wait.

18 - Belfast Revisted

I have been here before, a few times. A handful of visits maybe, but I feel like I know this city. How it looks underneath.

I've broken into the almost sacred stillness of the Waterfront Hall and sung a few bars to the silent tiered seats; discovered art galleries in Queens and hugged the warmth of the best hot chocolate in town; befriended half the bartenders on University Street and danced on the stage in Benedicts.; been trailed by security through the Ulster Museum, radios squawking belligerintly; taught Irish dancing to Israelis in the International Hostel; sunbathed on the front steps of Stormont.

That was my Belfast, claimed, owned.

I'm hungover today, and maybe that's why I feel such an ache when we pass the towering "peace" lines that grow every year, taller not smaller. Maybe that's why the wiremesh barricaded places, the jumble of communications towers and monitoring posts prickling with ariels and satellite discs, and the CCTV cameras everywhere, everywhere, everywhere make this city seem so alien and deserted. Maybe that's why I don't want to look at the twenty-foot walls that carve the city into fragments, or the rotting scraps of banners festooning street after street, like leftover Christmas decorations in January.

Maybe it's the hangover.

Plastic city, a friend from Belfast calls it. Everyone pretending to be something they're not. Everyone running from what they are.

I had chided him. Defended my Belfast. I had forgotten, when I partied here and thought I knew this place, I had forgotten what my friend has not.

At the end of the day, I can leave and go home.

17 - The Art of Concealment

The temperature has visibly risen in the last hour or so.

Frank has already left the room several times. Under the table, my foot is tapping irritably. Across the room, Audrey's face is carefully unreadable.

The very idea of it, a woman is saying. It says that there's something shameful about us. Look!

She puts her foot on the table in front of her, and pulls down her sock.

Look! she says. An ankle! It used to be scandalous!

Well, we have a roomful of women here wearing hijabs, Javaid says patiently. Why don't you ask them why they wear it?

We have discussed the right to seceed, the nature of forgiveness, the danger of unofficial negotiations, the politics of rape and the role of ex-combatants, but it's this subject that has proved the most difficult to get past. The veil, hijab, headscarf.

For the Irish and Northern Irish, covering the head is an act of oppression. It speaks of a husband who controls how his wife dresses, of a society that hides its women. It reminds them of the marriage bar, of not being allowed to wear trousers, of school uniforms.

But I don't see any oppressed women in this room. Coy, perhaps.

Why do you wear it? someone asks.

Because I choose to, they tell us.

It's a game, Geraldine tells me later. It's part of the game between the sexes. Even Naqiyah saying it's about protecting her hair, that's a game they all play. It's not about that. When they come back to the apartment and take the coverings off - what's in the air! It's about sex, about the hair being sexual.

There are different styles of hijab, I notice. Simple scarves, worn almost like shawls. More ornate ones, held in place under the chin by a glittering brooch. Modern, one-piece hooded ones, like baseball caps that come right down over the hair. Sleek, tight, folded silken ones, pinned here and there, gathered and ruched.

I ask about this over lunch: Does it reflect where you come from, each region?

Ati snorts. Not at all! Fashion. It's just fashion.

We keep talking about differences, but I am struck again and again by the similarities. Is it so very different from choosing not to wear a mini-skirt to a board meeting? Or choosing to wear a low-cut top for a first date? Or choosing to wear certain things only with the bedroom door closed?

There has always been a game played with women's bodies. There have always been parts that are covered or uncovered to send different messages, a hem exposed or hidden, tousled hair tamed into a demure plait, a lacy strap tucked away, an ankle, the nape of a neck. There has always been an art to concealment.

16 - Lost in Translation

Click.

A flash pops in the weak sunlight.

Click. Click-click.

The cameras are lowered, but several others take their place.

Click. Click. Click-click. Click.

I sneak a bite of sandwich between photos, ravenously hungry. Mid-bite, another one approaches me, camera in hand.

May I?

I nod, mouth full. The owner of the camera perches beside me, giving a happy double thumbs-up. I manage large sandwichy smile as the flash goes again.

Somewhere in Indonesia there are now several thousand photographs of me. Standing in front of buses. Drinking coffee out of plastic cups. Messily eating sandwiches. We are approached wherever we go, by diminutive men and women who want to have their photograph taken with us. Audrey and I have become overnight Indonesian superstars.

It is just one of the many oddities this week has brought.

Sixteen Indonesian participants have joined us in Derry for a training course; luggage, dried fish and cameras in tow. I have never seen so many heads covered, and at first it is disconcerting – you have to adjust to seeing faces differently. You see eyes and lips more, and rounded cheeks. We worried about names, about remembering them, about pronouncing them. But we are assured that we are saying them right, and Inna explains that most people have a pet name, a shortened version, that we should use, so we do.

They are all a head or more shorter than me. The women have neat little fingers, cool to the touch. They press your hand in reassurance, or take your arm carefully to speak to you. They are so completely absent of cynicism, so genuine and wholehearted. And then there are the photographs, and the way they gather around me at the breaktimes to ask questions.

This and the simple, slow conversation required for translation has an unconscious effect. It is all too easy to begin to think of them as children.

But they are not children. They are lecturers, heads of women’s centres, directors of courses, chairpersons of research institutes. And it is humbling to be with them.

Through the long and arduous bouts of translating there are frequent outbursts of laughter. They are so good-natured and eager that is impossible to resist. The week is hectic for the organisers but there is something comforting, calming, simple, about the neatly covered heads, bright-eyed, softspoken. It feels like being cuddled by your mother, sister, friend, classmate. The whole room has emptied of threat, of tension.

At lunch, I watch Ati unwrap several hardboiled eggs and divide them up amongst some of the younger women. Then she opens a container of cooked vegetables and spoons it out on the plates. Wiwi has a piece of bread and jam inside a folded sheet of ruled paper, and with perfect round-nailed fingers puts little torn pieces in her mouth. I could watch her all day.

********

Later, we are in a small group session; Fu’ad, Mudrik, Din, Soraya and I. Mudrik is talking about himself in Indonesian. He is talking to me, but he looks at Fu’ad, who translates into my right ear in an undertone. These peculiarities of translation have become surprisingly easy to adapt to.

Mudrik is a slow, considered speaker. He watches a lot and smiles, a calm accepting smile. He wears a long technicolour tartan jacket, natty eighties polo shirts and shiny black shoes.

He is the religious leader in his region in east Java, something roughly equivalent to a Bishop or Right Reverend. The others refer to him that way; “religious leader” would like to ask a question, they say.

He tells me, through the ever-patient Fu’ad, about how he grew up watching his father lead his village, watching how the people came to him to learn, to be taught. He does wonder whether he would always have become what he is without that experience.

We are supposed to be discussing how we feel about “others”; other religions, peoples, parts of the world that might be a threat to us. I ask Mudrik if he feels threatened by anyone, or any people.

He says no. He is interested in all people. All people are important. He says something else and Fu-ad checks with him before relaying it to me.

Fu’ad tells me; You are interesting to him. You are important to him.

The rest of our small group nod at me, smiling. Now I know what it is like to be completely disarmed.

15 - The other face of the city

Audrey is mid-conversation, one hand on the steering wheel, when her body gives a sudden convulsion. She grabs frantically at her cardigan, and the car comes to an abrupt stop outside a set of one-storey terraced houses. For a moment I think perhaps a wasp or spider has fallen onto her.

She has something in her hand as she twists around in her seat. It’s then I notice about six teenaged boys a hundred yards back, and see that she is holding a small rock.

You come back now! she says in a very loud and carrying voice. They do no such thing.

With an exasperated noise she puts the car in gear and drives on, rolling the window tightly closed.

Something dawns on me then. A string of overlooked incidents come together all at once, and I realise hardly a day here has gone past without something being smashed or tossed or broken.

The day on Magazine Street there was a noise I couldn’t place until a stone bounced back to earth, and my eyes found a dent in a shop sign I thought hadn’t been there before. The evening there were shouts in the street outside, when it took me several minutes to understand that I was hearing cars revving and feet running, and looked out only afterwards, too late, to see a huddle of men regrouping outside The Tavern, comparing accounts of the attack, planning the retribution, chests out, blood high. The night we took a different route home after a concert, because up ahead beyond the next streetlight we could hear things being thrown and voices raised.

Not bonfire nights, or marching nights, just ordinary nights. They drop glasses and bottles as they leave the bar; casual, unthinking. There is a fine coating of glass on the city streets, like the glitter of frost. The crunch underfoot you stopped noticing; the background grumble of noise you stopped hearing; the CCTV cameras you stopped seeing until somebody new to the city pointed them out, that are then suddenly everywhere, on every street corner, hooded, unblinking.

There aren’t any police in the city, Catherine said last night, almost to herself. You never see them. And I thought back and realised, no, other than the marching day, there haven’t been any. I don’t even know what the PSNI uniform looks like.

There is a man that lives in a little metal cage by Bishop Gate. I see the shadow of him moving around inside, behind the wire-mesh windows festooned with crisp-packet and torn-wrapper pennants that flutter in the breeze. He is the next-but-last member of the corrugated-walled barracks that that has slowly emptied as the city settles uneasily into post-conflict life. Neither the man nor the blank gaze of the cameras he monitors make me feel safe.

It’s not political violence I’m worried about. I have long stopped being concerned that my accent, or my opinions, or even my gold shoes will mark me out. I’m worried about the loose everyday violence, of being a target of boredom, or drink, or a window rolled down on a warm sunny day.

14 - Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

I bought a pair of gold shoes the other day.

My gold shoes are small, shiny, thin-soled slippers, that sparkle slightly when I walk. They demonstrate a frankly breaktaking disdain for the daily reality of Derry weather conditions. Which is sort of why I bought them.

My gold shoes say much the same thing as lace did several hundred years ago. A lace dress took a substantial part of someone’s working life to produce, and was plainly impossible to keep clean unless one were to wear it for a matter of hours, indoors, and then have someone clean every inch of it. Which was pretty much exactly the point. A lace dress told of a life of unfathomable luxury.

My gold shoes tell everyone they whisper past that I live a life absent of long walks or rutted pathways. That if I feel like it, at eight in the evening I can skip out of my front door and down the cobbles of Pump Street, and find myself in the fresh-baked paradise of Marks and Spencer. That the muddied and rain-puddled surface of streets and I are only fleetingly acquainted. That I have no tardy buses to wait upon, or grimy bar-floors to cross. That I am living the life of the modern metropolitan.

My gold shoes say what most girls’ footwear nowadays does – that they are not for walking in at all. Spindly-heeled, peep-toed fronted, satin-covered, sequined, beribboned, strappy, fragile little things that are only distantly inspired by shoes, a witty postmodern statement to jumpstart dinner-party conversations, whose very purpose is to unequivocally rule out the possibility of anything so vulgar as walking.

My gold shoes are not what they seem. My gold shoes have carried me down boggy Wicklow tracks to sodden lakeshores, up windswept Donegal mountain-sides and through knee-high grasses, out to the far reaches of the city and over stony Derry fields.

My gold shoes lead a life no one would suspect.

My gold shoes keep their secrets.

13 - Soft War, Hard Peace

Yaser is overseeing the disarmament talks.

You must put all your weapons beyond use, he tells Conn. That was part of the terms agreed.

Conn is indignant.

These are for defence only! he retorts. The other side have to decommission first. Look - look at the stockpiles!

The international observers will be arriving soon, Yaser soothes. Please, just hand-

Meike throws a pillow. The fighting resumes, worse than ever. Yaser covers his eyes. The ceasefire had lasted all of three minutes.

It's two am in a peace centre in the mountains, after a few bottles of wine. Several people - some of whom have grown children, all of whom should know better - have been staging a vicious pillowfight around the room. I think I may have started it. I'm not sure. I do know I thumped Conn in the face with a pillow, but I can't remember why.

It's been a long day.

About twenty of us - youth club managers, journalists, cross-community project leaders, doctorate students, peace workers, teachers - have come down to the valley to develop the education programme for the coming year. Sometimes it's inspiring, sometimes it's draining. Sometimes you walk away not knowing whether you're doing anything at all.

This is one of the good times. We argue, brainstorm, get excited, meet some new people, and see some old friends. Two participants with me on the same programme back when we were fifteen have joined the group, and it's wonderful to be planning workshops with them to present to a new batch of fifteen-year-olds. It feels sort of right that we're doing this together.

The battle rages on. Yaser and I launch an offensive from behind the couch, under covering fire from Meike. We fight valiantly before going down under a hail of pillows, collapsing in fits of laughter.


*********

We lived in a tent. Where we played as kids, it was among the tents. It was dirty. My father had us, ten children, and he had eight brothers and sisters to support. He was the eldest. There were no jobs.

Yaser speaks slowly, for about an hour. I just listen.

Our food came from the UN. Whatever they decided we needed. They came on trucks and we queued.

Yaser was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, as Palestinians fled Israel and Egypt in their thousands. It is almost entirely surrounded by walls built by Israel. The majority of people there live below the poverty line.

I went to university, Yaser continues, to study. I had to go through checkpoints every day. I missed some of my exams because I wasn't let through the checkpoints. Sometimes, the soliders would say: sing us a song and we will let you through.

He is silent for a moment. I look at the cup of hot chocolate on the table in front of us, and I think what a stupid wasteful thing it is. And I wonder what we all wonder at some point, how I can spend money on something I don't need, why I don't spend it on things people do need.

The night before, another friend had told me about an Accompaniment Programme he is applying for. Volunteers from all over the world come to Palestine to walk children to school, through the checkpoints. In some places they and the children are hit, have stones and spit and rubbish and sometimes faeces thrown at them. They are not allowed to do anything, just walk the children and get hit.

Would I go to be spat upon?

I'm not religious. But I understand why people feel the need to ask god for forgiveness. A lot of days I wish there were someone to forgive me for all the things I don't do.

12 - Welcome to Northern Ireland

It's a little like walking into a bad Western. They all stop talking to look at us - the customers, the bartenders, the man with a glass halfway to his lips.

Are we in a Protestant bar? My mum whispers as we sit down in at a small table.

Look up, I tell her. Do you think that string of tricolours would be there if we were?

She looks at the flags. The harps. The framed lyrics of the Fields of Athenry.

Oh, she says. No, I suppose not.

I know why she asked the question though. An equally bewildered pair of Japanese tourists are cowering in the corner, wondering if this is the "Irish experience" they have heard so much about. And I wonder myself as I try, unsuccesfully, to catch the bartender's eye so that I can order us drinks. I'm not used to this reaction. People in Derry do stare, but usually in a very frank and friendly way.

It's only days later that I mention the bar to someone, who snorts into their drink. That's an IRA pub, I'm told.

This is how I introduce my poor mother to Derry. So, there you go mammy, and I'm sorry. I should have explained that sometimes the only ones who dislike people from the Republic more than loyalists do are the republicans. Welcome to Northern Ireland.

We should have known, really, that it would be like this.

In her first few minutes in the city, after her drive up from Dublin, my mum stopped by the bar opposite my apartment to get a cup of coffee. She had come with no Sterling, so she asked the man behind the bar would she be able to pay in Euro.

He just looked at me, she says when she meets me later, flustered.

That would be The Tavern, I say. Yes. Not the best place to ask that.

I'm not feeling very well-disposed towards the Tavern that day, its patrons having kept me up half the night with karaoke. Bad karaoke. Very bad, very loud karaoke.

It's where people from the Fountain would go, I explain. You could well be the first Dubliner ever to set foot in there.

She looks at me blankly.

I sigh. You haven't been reading the blog, have you?

So my long-suffering mother is very careful from then on to check at every step of the way. Like asking if we are in a Protestant bar. She means unionist, or loyalist, but I don't correct her, because most of the time here it is just Protestant and Catholic. Words mean different things here.

And she starts doing what we all do here, looking for signs to read. Even the tour guide who takes us over the city walls is scrutinised, as he tells us about the Battle of the Bogside, how people blockaded the streets with cars and wire and dustbin lids, how part of the city sealed itself and declared itself a no-go area for the police.

It's terrible isn't it? she says. How you start to look at everyone.

One place she doesn't have to ask about is the Bogside itself. I take her down by the overpass, and we're suddenly there, standing under a house-high mural of Bernadette Devlin shouting into a megaphone.

We grew up seeing this place in the news, she tells me, looking around in wonder. I never thought I would be able to just walk down here.

I remember how I felt when I first stood there. I remember seeing stone memorial with the list of the names of those who died on Bloody Sunday. Six of them were my age; seventeen.

We look up into the young faces of people who are now old. Around us life in the Bogside goes on.

11 - Joyeux Anniversaire

I wake a little after 7am, to find the widowpane covered in frost. From my bed I can see the sloping Cathedral grounds, framed by the great perimeter oaks. A shaft of morning sunlight always falls on the wooden noticeboard announcing the week's services.

I can't get back to sleep so I potter about the apartment, make myself some cereal and read a few chapters of Holy Cross. After a while I get dressed and go out onto the chill streets, to walk the fifty steps it takes me to arrive at The Junction, where Davey is already sitting outside with his pipe.

I shake a bag of grapes at him.

Fruit, I say. I'll have you eating it yet, you hear?

Aye, Davey grins around his pipe.

We both know he won't. Grapes are the latest offensive in an ongoing battle we have: Davey faithfully offloads his stores of fruit onto me every day so that he doesn't have to eat them - a banana here, an orange there. I parry back with plums, peaches, pink ladies, trying to find a fruit he will eat.

Oh, it's fierce cold this morning Renee, he says. He knows he hasn't got the pronounciation right, but when he asks me to correct him I tell him I prefer him saying it that way. And I do.

Can I tell you a secret? I say, as we watch Bishop Street begin to open up, the delivery trucks arriving and unloading. It's my birthday today.

I have a thing about birthdays. It's not that I don't like them. What I don't like is people feeling the need to make a fuss.

So today, in a new city where I know few people, I am perfectly content. I go to work. I get a few hugs from new friends, a lot of messages from old ones. Someone takes me out for a sandwich at lunch. In the afternoon, I go to the youth club to meet the mayor, and the parents of the kids I've gotten to know. A local man and his wife bring me out for dinner, and afterwards we have coffee and Liquorice Allsorts in their living room, and talk about schoolchildren and peacelines and what their sons are doing now.

When I arrive back in darkened apartment, there's a envelope waiting for me. I stare at the name and address on the outside, not really believing it's for me.

Inside is a piece of folded pink paper with a hand-drawn flower. I prop up my first birthday card on the kitchen counter, and go to sleep smiling.

I'm young, happy, and doing exactly what I want to be doing.

Happy birthday me.

10 - Insiders and Outsiders

I'm walking back up to the apartment at the end of the day, through the Fountain. I have something to drop into Jeanette, so I stop by the youth club.

On the wall outside is a bronze plaque, dedicated by the Irish president Mary McAleese to a local man. McAleese's name has been partially scratched out, flecked with dents. A small mural of a UDA crest is painted further down the wall of the club, with the name of the local branch sargent under it. I think about asking Jeanette about the mural, and how it got to be there, but I don't.

I remember that on the first day at the youth club, every time after I spoke to someone new - that familiar double-take, registering the accent - they would ask:

Where are you from?

When I replied Dublin, they'd look at me, then away, and the conversation ended. I wondered whether Dublin means something to them, or if all outsiders receive the same treatment.

A little later we would get talking again, or I'd get a smile. And I would be sort of part of the furniture then.

As I leave to walk back up the road, a boy comes towards me, two flags on tall flagpoles carried crossed in his arms: one the red of the Virgin City, the other the red and white cross of Northern Ireland. Both are faded in a way that speaks of age, of things put away carefully and preserved.

And I notice that they are taking down all the flags here, the Twelfth over and to be packed away, although the houses remain with their murals and their miniature Ulster shields, or a hurried spraypainted UDF, and the tired faded colours of the kerbstones. It's all a little faded now.

A couple of kids are the corner, tapping sticks against the pavement. I recognise one of them, say hi.

Above us, on the city walls, a tour group is passing. They lean down to photograph the smouldering remains of the bonfire, the flagged houses, the scrubland verges, the aimless kids, and me, and I wonder how it must feel to be an attraction, to be pointed at and looked at and captured on film each day from the safe heights of the walls, like animals in a pit.

I did that, the last time I was in Derry. I stood there and looked through a camera lens. War-tourism, they call it.

But now I have a place of sorts here, and a photography class to give at the youth club in a few days time.

I'm going to take a few of the kids up on the walls, and get them to photograph the tourists.

9 - The Night Watch

My boss (one of the real ones; that is, one who pays me) is sitting in the hotel lobby, looking decidedly out of place among the plush furnishings.

I have never seen my boss wear anything but jeans and a peaked cap. He does wear shirts, but only Chinese-collared ones, so that they can't conceivably be confused with business clothing. He lives on the side of a mountain back home, in what he affectionately terms The Shack. At least - having never seen The Shack up close - I presume this is a term of affection.

We get some dinner, and agree to talk about anything but work. My brain feels as though it's unravelling alarmingly after the week I've had, and I spend a lot of time groping for small, commonplace words, until my boss takes pity on me and we stop talking, and decide to just drink.

The Gweedore is one of those bars I would never usually choose to sit in, but we were thirsty.

The Gweedore forms part of the Irish District, a muddle of souvenir stalls and pubs and knitware stores around William Street that peddle to all your Gaelic-related needs. Some enterprising soul has even affixed an Irish language version of the street sign above the official one.

We find a table, share it with some locals as the bar begins to fill up. Halfway through the night a small band sets up in the corner, and without any fanfare begin to play. Covers mostly. None of the people I ask know who they are.

My boss grew up in Belfast. His grandfather was the local IRA man; now my boss works in a peace centre. We argue about Martin McGuinness and talk for hours that just disappear, until the lights come on to send us home.

It's starting to spit rain again as we walk back along by the Foyle. Two jacketed figures, I think maybe young people out for the night, are lounging on the grassy bank.

Suicide watch, my boss says.

I look at him. What?

I see that the jackets are bright yellow. They sit up and nod to us as we pass, an older woman and a boy of about eighteen.

They volunteer to watch the river and the bridge, my boss explains. A lot of people do try, especially at the weekends.

I search in the half-lit dark for the shape of the Foyle Bridge, great lattices of steel spanning the black waters.

It's deep, just here, he continues.

Yes, I say. Yes. Thinking how cold the water would be.

We walk on, leaving the night watch to their vigil.

8 - Jigs and reels

We're several paces into the bar, drinks in hand, when it starts to dawn on all three of us.

Do you both get the same feeling? Catherine asks.

Like we're crashing a party? James looks around. Yes, yes, I do.

I ask a lady at the bar. She considers for a moment, before saying with a broad smile:

Well, even if you haven't got an invite, I'm sure you're welcome.

It's a Tuesday night, the sort of night where nothing happens, but it feels like I'm on holidays so I cajoled the others into coming out. It turns out we've walked in on a sixty-fifth birthday party.

In the corner, a group of session musicians are tuning up. They take a crack at some tunes that the crowd stamps along with, and then throughout the night different guests get up on stage and sing a song, usually with a little speech to tell us who they learned it from: their sister, who passed away last year; their mother before they went to bed.

The Ballaí Luimní is announced, so I drag James up to dance. I teach him the luasca, and as always, the steps act as props, things to grab on to and use to talk to other couples, other friends of the birthday boy, even some other uninvited guests, spinning strangers around at breakneck speed until no-one is sure which way is up.

A few nights before, Orla invited us down to her flat, to eat and play a raucous game of Pictionary that descended into accusations of theivery and deceit. Then Tom brought out the guitar, the lights went down, and we all found something to settle against as he started to play.

He has a shy voice when he speaks, but not when he sings. The guitar is passed around the circle and other voices join in, in English and Irish and Spanish, singing songs learned long ago or far away or written since or dreamed up on the spot.

There is so much music in this city.

I say that to Charlotte and she thinks about it, and then nods. Yes, she says. It's sort of - well, a place where people don't have much, so what they have they make themselves.

I think I'm falling for this place.

7 - Portrait of a loyalist

What does a loyalist from the Fountain estate look like?

When I was at a youth conference years ago, they asked us this question. We were given large sheets of paper to draw what we came up with. A portrait of a loyalist from the Fountain.

The Fountain is a fairly typical lower-class council estate in Derry, with the added excitment of the local UDA paramilitary group, rocks, bottles, bonfires and a list of dead relatives thrown in. The pictures we drew were of skinhead hobnailed men, standing on blue-white-red kerbstones, a rock in one hand and a beercan in the other.


*********

Jeanette is over sixty years old, with coiffed white-blond hair.

In the summertime she arrives into work at 8am every morning, to do some desk work for the Derry City Partnership. Then from 9am onwards she runs the Cathedral Youth Club, a centre in the Fountain estate that keeps 4- to 21-year-olds occupied all day. At 5.30 she sends them home for their dinner, does some more paperwork, and gets ready to open back up at about 7. I don't know what time she gets home at, and I don't ask. I sort of suspect she doesn't ever go home. I get tired just looking at her.

On my first day at the youth club, she's rounding up about twenty young people to head down to the park and leisure centre. I find myself taking part in an indoor soccer league against a handful of five-year-olds. We don't have much idea which goals we're supposed to be aiming for, and it doesn't seem to matter much.

This way Sarah!

Aileen, over here!

The ball the ball the ball!

We do a lot of high-fiving and cheering, and I can't believe how much I'm enjoying it. Afterwards we go for a walk around the park, and take some archery lessons. I've brought my camera, and I give it to a couple of the tinier girls to try out.

They take the most wonferful pictures of each other, the grass, a piece of knotted plastic. I don't ever want to take a photo again, it's nothing compared to what a kid's eye picks out.


This is a portrait of Macey, taken by her friend Aileen. A portrait of a loyalist from the Fountain.

6 - Travelling the highways and byways

It's on the first hill that I seriously begin to have doubts.

It all started so differently. We gathered at ten on the apartment stoop, groggy, yawning off an evening of wine and Spanish omlette, a ragged backpacked bunch. I fall in love with my loaned silver steed, and as we strike off from the kerb I get that first taste - the clean swoop of the wheels, the rembrance of how to lean into the curves, the abrupt hit of confidence through the bloodstream - and I remember that I know bicycles and their ways. We weave down to the harbour, free birds, freewheeling, out onto the open road.

And then the hill. With the traffic roaring by, redfaced, legs straining, determined - dertermined! - not to fall so early, I think maybe I won't make this. I am not fit, I do not exercise, I have no idea of where my body's limits are. I have visions, then, of being stranded in the Donegal hills, unable to find the energy to make it back.

Save yourselves, I croak to the others. Leave me, save yourselves.

But I do make it, for several hours, across the border (We're in Ireland! I yell, sure for a moment that the air tastes different), and deep into the winding hills past Quigley's Point over the way to Buncrana.

There is a stretch of pure horror, half an hour of upward roads, with James, who barely breaks a sweat while the rest of us toil, telling us unhelpfully in an attempt at cheery bonhomie that it would all be worth it - and then
suddenly,
it is -

Acres of peat-brown and moss-green fields laid out below us, our kingdom, conquered. And the exhilarating air in our faces as we race down the far side, whooping, racing, outpacing the wind, outrageously fast, a quartet of wind-ballooned figures flying in formation.

Above the freezing rush of air, Catherine calls -

Really, is there anywhere you would rather be?

She takes her hands off the handlebars and stretches her arms out to take it all in, and we all do the same. No-one says much for the rest of the ride to Carndonagh.

Back in the apartment we roast peppers and make pesto-smeared pasta, sit on the living room floor and eat, happily exhausted, showered, warm, forty hard won miles stretching out behind us.

5 - The Twelfth Day

Are we going in so?

James shrugs, gives his sandalled toes a last mournful look, and with elaborate casualness we turn into the Cathedral gates, following the stream of uniformed figures.

I feel like a fraud, and I am sure everyone can see it. As we cross the threshold my vision has narrowed to the pews in front of me, and I keep going, breath held, wondering wildly if there is some sign I should give as I enter, something that shows I belong.

But I don't belong. I have never belonged in churches, and this morning even less so. For the morning service of the August Twelfth parades, the cathedral is full of Apprentice Boys in their tassled jackets, rows upon rows of stiff shoulders and gold thread.

No-one stops us, the curious heathens with toes on show. I mouth my way through the hymns, trying and failing to catch the notes, listening to the words and reading them for significance. As we file out I am absurdly glad of James' safe Cambridge vowels, and I shield myself behind it as a lone Apprentice Boy begins chatting to us, feeling the gaze of many others on us.

Down by the Foyle bridge, men and women in costume read out the time-worn words, of resistance and honour. This is what the day is about, what thousands of people come to Derry to commemorate, the 103-day Seige of Derry that left all the children of the city dead.

Young boys stuff canons with wadding and the quays echo with their boom. I perch on the side of railing in the ever-present rain, fingers in my ears, grinning at James who is doing the same thing.

******

I remember a line from Ulyssess, about all those who are born and die every minute of every day. Cityfuls coming and cityfuls going, I think it went.

Today Derry is witness to these comings and goings, the city emptied and filled at once. The cityside has been cleared out, the predominantly Catholic residents leaving town for the day, shops shuttered and closed all along the parade routes. Clear plastic barriers go up in the town square, police gathering at the corners of the empty streets. The waterside hotels and roads and bars overflow with Apprentice Boy visitors from around Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Throughout the day, a river of people cross the Foyle and move down the winding streets, returning to the waterside to celebrate in the evening light.

It's a peaceful day, by Derry standards. As Charlotte and I walk by Butcher Gate there is a sudden crack as something is thrown from the archway below, to shatter against a police van. The vans here are bodybuilt cousins of policecars, burned and scarred, thick-skinned and hulking. We turn quickly up the lane towards the nearest huddle of policemen in black flak jackets, as another bottle is thrown and the van windscreen smashes behind us, the police suddenly activated, eager, and we slip through the camera crew into the waiting streets beyond, thankful to have somewhere else to be.

Later on, Charlotte and Matt sit out on their door stoop, photographing the marchers and drinking tea. I find myself in a café, losing myself in conversations, and it is only in the afternoon that I start at the clock and realise I have missed the marches. I walk back to the apartment to look at their photographs and feel somewhat guilty.

The others go to sleep, and I should too, having been woken at eight that morning to the thump of the drums passing by my bedroom windows. Instead I start to wash up, liking the smooth cleanliness of the surfaces, and when I am done and the apartment is quiet I hear the drums start up again so I let myself out on the street and down to the corner where a small crowd has gathered, mothers and fathers and children.

There's a boy standing beside me, about my age, in full band uniform. The badge on his shoulder says "Hamilton Band". He toys with the silver whistle in his hand and watches the last of the marches assemble.

With the sort of blunt friendliness that Derry inspires, I say hello, and ask how the day has been. Again I am surprised by the warmth with which he answers. Everyone here seems to be waiting to be asked, and I, who usually wouldn't, find myself rewarded again and again.

4 - Waiting for the fireworks to begin

I buy two of everything for dinner, a little lost among the supermarket shelves. Goat's cheese, onions, chickpeas. I am less lost out on the streets, where the spoken maps I have been given - straight down, turn left at the arch, keep by the walls until you reach the market square - are forming real maps I know by instinct.

Coming back by the old walls, under Castle Gate, I pass a tour group being led along the ramparts, and I - less than a full day here, less probably than they, but hugging breadrolls to my chest, mapless, tourguide-less, rain-slicker-less - I feel at home on these streets, feel almost native.

Until I see the boys stringing up metal-grilled gates along the walls, clipping them down, protectors, preparations for tomorrow, until I am reminded of the city gathering itself for the morning, holding its breath, until I meet their assessing gaze, and as one of them wolf-whistles I am an interloper again, just passing through.

Back in the apartment, the lentils are simmering, new arrivals are chatting in Spanish and Matt is grating a lemon rind, our little bubble of just-passing-throughs mingling happily while outside in the wet streets the barriers are going up.

****

We go out again to the Bogside, to dance in front of strangers. It's a bring your own drink event, so we squeeze into the tiny off licence nearby where the owner cuts us limes and winks. Everywhere I go I am struck by the friendliness of Derry people, the conversations waiting to happen, over anything - an unusual bottle of wine, the terrible music.

As we leave, the bouncer says to Charlotte, trouble down that way. i look down the black streets in the direction he has nodded, but I can't see anything.

Riots, Charlotte says, and leads us back a different route.

Riots? I ask, peering into the black.

Kids throwing stuff, she says, looking at me then closely. Not something to see.

No, I say, I didn't mean it that way.

But as we cross the deserted roadways under the overpass I feel it seeping into me, a sort of recklessness, an itch on the soles of my feet that make me think of walking the streets alone, that utter lack of caution that comes of being young and healthy and invincible. Aimless dangerous thoughts.

London Street is empty when we arrive back, but a soft orange glow lights the underside of the archway at the end, and I can see bodies slumped against each other on the ground, bottles in hand. The raging bonfire has died down to a welcoming, tamed campfire, and most of the people have drifted off home, leaving a group of teenagers behind.

They look at us as we approach, but feign disinterest and as Catherinemounts her bike to cycle home, they begin a raucous chorus of I want to Ride my Bicycle, and that's the last thing I see that night - a lone figure weaving through the scattered embers, and the great shadows thrown against the arch walls.

3 - Working Life

There are some groups I need you to meet with, Shaul says. He ticks them off on his fingers, one at a time.

The Bogside Residents Group. The PSNI. The Apprentice Boys - I'm meeting with them this afternoon at Memorial Hall.

Sure, I say, trying to look casual. Should I come with you to meet them today?

No. Shaul shakes his head, looking me up and down slowly. No, I don't think so. Not yet.

I know why he is saying that, and for the first time I get a sense that where I was born might be a problem.

Charlotte snuffs that out quickly.

If you think it's a problem, it will be, she says. People can sense when you feel uncomfortable. Matt always feels that his Essex accent marks him out, he always feels the need to explain that he's not a paratrouper, that he's just a student. Just decide it's not a problem and it won't be.

I know what she means. It's so easy here, where you become attuned to little clues - which newspaper someone holds, where they stand for the bus, what uniform they wear, whether they say Derry or Londonderry. People feel trapped by who they are, feel unable to go into certain streets, or drink in certain bars.

There's truth in these fears. But not for me.

So I decide it's not a problem. And I realise that this is why I want to stand at the bonfire.

Because I want to belive I'm not trapped.

2 - In the Thick of Things

You can stay with me, Charlotte had said, shrugging off my spluttering thanks. We have a spare room.

And this is the sort of person she is. She has very little, but shares every bit of it, without stopping to think.

Her apartment has a mosaic-topped table, and love-beads hang from the windows. People arrive in and out all day, to use her shower, bring some wine, or join in the dinner preparations. No-one calls before coming over, they just arrive. Lecturers, travellers, community workers, students. It feels like being in a very comfortable train station.

Ten paces from her front door is the city Cathedral, where the Apprentice Boys will have their morning service on the Twelfth. Twenty paces away the Fountain estate begins. Forty paces, the Bogside. When you stand on London Street you can see the city walls in either direction. From her living room window Lady Justice is within touching distance, balancing her scales on the courthouse roof. We are right in the heart of the old city district, the section that withstood the seige.

When we walk down the murderously slanted streets, under the archways inlaid with brass nameplates, someone always stops us with a greeting.

In the evenings we sit bathed in the glow from the fairylights strung about the sitting room walls, waiting for mint tea to strengthen, listening to the faroff calls of a city unable to sleep.

1 - A Tale of Two cities

So it turns out Derry knew I was coming. When I step off the bus, I find the streets strung with banners and bunting. How very nice.

The whole city is celebrating this weekend, but for two very different reasons. This is, I am told with a weary smile by my host Charlotte, typical Derry.

Along the steep city centre streets and down by the Bogside, Feile 2006 is in full swing. On my first night in the city, we traipse down to the Gasyard, past the great hulking portraits of the Free Derry corner, to hear poetry being read. I don’t notice at first, but the international food fairs, fireworks and talks are all confined to certain venues, on the one side of the city.

I had forgotten Feile was an Irish word, you see.

Elsewhere, another festival is underway. Around by the Waterside, the kerbstones are red, white and blue. Flags hang in the light drizzle and the local children keep watch over tall piles of firewood and packing crates. On my second day here we walk through the Fountain estate, past the towering fifteen-foot bonfire, wood stacked like brittle wooden bones, standing ready to be lit on the eve of the Twelfth.

The newspapers don’t refer to the same events. The football match that has the bars crowded on Thursday night, which brings tears to the eyes of grown men, is not mentioned the next day in the Derry Newsletter. I read the Sports section through to the kickboxing league tables to be sure. It’s as though it happened in another land entirely.

Charlotte says she doesn’t think she will watch the bonfire being lit this year. It took a lot out of her last time, she says, watching the children she worked with, who told her by day that they had changed how they thought, but who stood with empty bottles by the firelight and sang kill the pope.

I decide then I want to watch them light the fire.

Prologue

I'm going to Derry for a month. I will have several different masters while I'm there.

Firstly, Charlotte, who works at a peace centre in the city, has me working on developing a resource pack for schools exploring some specific issues around school uniforms and sectarianism in Derry. In addition, I'm finding her links in a number of NI government departments in relation to an integration policy she has helped draw up - they would like to make sure that the new public spaces being developed in Derry are planned so that they are inclusive to all people.

Audrey, who works for a resource centre in the city centre, has me helping to organise a training course in conjunction with the University of Ulster and the British Council in Indonesia, which among other things involves many longwinded emails to Jakarta. I'm also doing some admin work updating their contacts database for a Derry City Council initiative, and sourcing potential speakers for their networking events.

Shaul is the director of a peace programme in the US. He is writing a book on the Derry marches, and has been faithfully attending Apprentice Boys marches for several years. I will be doing some library research for him, and also harassing various groups about documents he suspects they may have, and he wants.

I may also be approaching some people about collaborating with an education programme I work with in a peace centre at home.

Now and then, I will be in the Youth club in the Fountain Estate, helping some kids misspend their youth.