SETTLING OLD SORES

I’ve been driving in the west. Out there beyond the water margins of Yang Shang-Po, aka Oughterard, after which the landscape shifts into something quite different from that which has gone before. Something huge and beautiful and wild. Tawny now, and gorgeous, in a watery expensive way.

I cannot say that these are my roots, but this place is among them. In returning here, as to northern Wexford, and the royal county of Meath, and the melting pot of Dublin 4, and the twin redbrick ports of Cork and Belfast, I am renewed. It’s a paradox of modern Ireland. In going back, we fuel ourselves to go forwards. And sitting in the awesome blackness of Ballyconneely, with the most complete vision I have ever had of the Milky Way overhead, I am reminded of the complexities of this small island. This is Northern Connemara. There is little love lost between this place and Gaeltacht Southern Connemara. Two nations, you might say, and both west of the Corrib. Such a small area, yet such a huge landscape, a realisation that should be writ large for all the scribblers and chatterers who have now discovered Northern Ireland. They use that most awful of encomiums, “the sexy story” about it. I swear it.

But there is as much diversity in this corner of Connacht as in Northern Ireland. That is to say, a lot. And the same holds for the Mid-West, the South, the South-East, the Midlands/Shannon and of course, the Pale. Ireland is not merely North and South. It is wildly diverse.

I am sure it comes as a great relief to the people(s) of Northern Ireland that soldiers are beginning to be withdrawn to barracks, and border roads are being reopened in the wake of the IRA and loyalist ceasefires.

Many lives will be touched. A generation of constant discomfort will not be quickly forgotten, but the new ease of access will make a huge difference to border communities.

Similarly, I have no doubt that the mere fact that soldiers are no longer as omnipresent as they once were in places like (London)Derry will bring great relief to rather a lot of people, and young men in particular. These changes are part of a long process of normalisation.

I overheard a rather heated exchange on the radio the other week, in which one contributor opined that the people(s) of Northern Ireland needed time to grieve. The speaker thought that the rush to change was over-hasty and extremely insensitive, that now was the time to back off and leave the emotionally wounded and drained their space and time to deal with what has happened.

This may be true. Very many have been touched by death, injury or crime. They have not had adequate space in which to tend to their individual and collective losses.

But this is not the only process for which they need room.

Listening to the many Northern voices that have been released since the ceasefires, one detects a lot of anger and bewilderment and resentment. In a Dublin bar two weeks ago, for example, the Hog was witness to a bizarre exchange, a colossal failure of communication between two groups of students, two young women from Northern Ireland (Derry, at a guess) and three young men from Dublin.

The women were really steamed up. “The fucking South is going to sell us out again,” one of them said and “I’m as Irish as you are: what are youse afraid of?”.

The bewildered Dubliners abandoned ship. The whole line of the argument had passed them by. Basically, they didn’t give a shit. The whole thing came at them like a row their parents might have had back when they were in nappies. It certainly was a new one on them, and with an air of absolute apathy, they tossed it aside. Forget it. They had more important things to attend to: drinking and dancing, for a start.

It was a classic example of delayed grief and anger. The griever has to talk about it all. Great energy is invested in the process. Nothing is more urgent. The Ancient Mariner grabs your lapel.

But the listener has other preoccupations. Doesn’t even begin to understand. The griever is even more alienated. And it goes on. There will be thousands of these small horrible misapprehensions over the next while, all over this island and the next one east. But with a bit of sense, and sensitivity, they won’t last forever.

That recovery process is just the start. There is another process, this time of information, which the peoples of Northern Ireland must also undertake. It concerns both the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

They have been under a kind of siege (notwithstanding the rather strained assurances that everything was normal) for an entire generation. During that time, inevitably, they have focused on the local, the immediate, the personal. Like a family that is at war, they haven’t had that much time to recognise that the neighbours’ children have grown up and that the world outside has changed greatly.

Listening to the voices, it is clear that only the relatively (I use the word cautiously) politically moderate middle class in Northern Ireland have any understanding of the vast changes in the Republic, and even their views are contingent on those wonderful raunchy weekends they spent in Dublin, rather than any significant consideration.

There is little awareness that as many people live within 20 miles of O’Connell Bridge as live in all of Northern Ireland. And Dublin, brassy, cosmopolitan, European-capital-big-city is just one region of the Republic.

There’s an awful lot of catching up to be done. And many of the most acute minds of the 1960s and 1970s generations have found their outlets elsewhere, and may not be available to help that reawakening.

The people(s) of the North also have a rediscovery to make in relation to the UK, angry nationalists in particular. Nowadays, it’s a lot different, a lot more open, a lot less threatening.

But equally, the people(s) of the Republic and the UK have a lot to attend to. In particular they must become good listeners. The tendency to switch off when the Northern experience is being articulated must be challenged. The ability to listen constructively and sympathetically and non-judgementally is going to be needed now more than ever.

We are engaged in a new search for our many selves. Patience is required all round. Patience and the utmost mutual respect. Can the people of the Republic stop singing and dancing, drinking and drugging and trying to make money and score a ride long enough to hear? Can the peoples of Northern Ireland slow their expressions of anger enough to be heard? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, a small weird note on the recent outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in India. Apparently, more than eight out of ten victims in the disease’s epicentre in western India were male, and an unexpectedly high proportion of the sufferers were also HIV-positive, according to Surat hospital’s medical superintendent Dr Dinesh Shah.

This rings a bell. 90% of HIV-positives are male. 90% of drug users are male. So why would the plague be (effectively) gender-specific? Epidemics never are. A virus or bacterium can’t choose, they strike male and female alike.

It’s all rather strange, and seems to link up with many things that have been proposed by the so-called AIDS dissidents. Perhaps pollution is responsible for a decline in immune systems – but why predominantly in males? Very, very curious. One assumes that more is to come...