a love letter to questioning walls

a love letter to questioning walls

I am standing at the foot of a 3-mile-long wall in Belfast.  Until today, my memories of the Troubles in Ireland were buried in my adolescent years: scenes of bombings and terror, people running through smoke under grey skies and falling bricks, and U2’s music that I loved but did not understand.  I had no idea that for more than 30 years, these barriers were built to separate Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in an attempt to curtail the lethal fighting between the two. This particular wall, known as the Falls-Shankill barrier, divided Belfast with high chain-link mesh fence and metal gates that were locked closed at night.  It is the longest of more than 100 such walls built between 1969 (I was a year old) and 1998 (I finished my master’s degree) when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, marking the beginning of the end of decades of outright violence. Still, today, the two sides’ competing memorials are graphic altars to their separate causes and to their fallen martyrs. Their stories are not reconciled, nor are many of the people who lived them or live in their aftermath. 

How do I bring this back with me to a country also divided by walls?  Are high walls capable of containing populations and their ideologies?  Do good fences make good neighbors?  How many generations does it take to forget?  To forgive?  To forget again and then repeat?