Belfast Troubles
"Tour guide Mary shows visitors the city's divided past. When English journalist Tom wants to understand, she takes him deeper than the murals—into her own history."
The peace walls still stood—thirty feet of concrete separating communities that were supposed to have reconciled. I'd been giving political tours for twenty years, showing tourists the murals and explaining the history while carefully not mentioning which side my family had been on.
"I want to understand it properly."
He was English—the accent immediately marked him as outsider—but his eyes held something most visitors lacked: genuine desire to comprehend.
"You're the journalist. Doing a piece on post-conflict tourism."
"I'm doing a piece on how places heal. Or don't." He extended his hand. "Tom Murphy."
"Irish surname for an Englishman."
"Grandmother from Cork. Father from Liverpool. Identity's complicated."
"In Belfast, that's the only kind of identity there is."
I gave him the full tour—both sides of the walls, both sets of murals, the cemetery where people I'd known were buried. He asked questions that showed he'd done his homework, took notes without photographing things that shouldn't be photographed, respected silences when I fell into them.
"This is personal for you," he said at the end. "Not just professional."
"Everything in this city is personal."
"Will you tell me about it?"
"Not today. Maybe not ever." I looked at his notebook. "Some things aren't for journalists."
He kept coming back. Day after day, asking for tours I didn't usually give—to houses that were no longer houses, to corners where things had happened, to places that didn't appear in any guidebook. He wasn't writing; he was listening.
"Why do you keep coming?" I asked after two weeks.
"Because you're the story. Not the walls or the murals—you. How someone lives in a place that carries this much weight."
"I'm not interesting."
"You're the most interesting person I've met in twenty years of journalism." He stepped closer. "And I've stopped taking notes because some things shouldn't be captured. They should just be witnessed."
"You're different from other journalists."
"Most journalists want to explain. I just want to understand." His hand found mine. "Mary. Will you let me understand you?"
"That's a dangerous offer in Belfast."
"Everything worth doing in Belfast is dangerous."
I took him to my flat—a place no journalist had ever seen. Photos of people who weren't there anymore, mementos from before the ceasefire, the artifacts of a life shaped by conflict.
"My brother," I said, pointing to a picture. "1994. He was seventeen."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You didn't do it." I put the photo down. "But that's why I do the tours. So people understand what was lost. What's still being lost, every time someone decides peace is inconvenient."
He kissed me in front of my brother's picture, and I let him because healing sometimes looks like accepting comfort from unexpected places. His mouth was gentle, questioning, giving me space to retreat. I didn't retreat.
"This isn't what I came here for," he said.
"I know."
"It doesn't feel like a betrayal of the story?"
"The story is connection. What heals. What breaks people and what puts them back together." I pulled him toward my bedroom. "If you write about that, write about this. About finding something real in a place full of ghosts."
We made love slowly, with the weight of history around us. His hands on my body were careful—not from pity but from respect. He understood that touch was political here, that intimacy was an act of courage.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"I'm carrying thirty years of grief."
"That's part of the beauty." He kissed my tears—I was crying; when had I started crying? "Survival is beautiful. Living in spite of everything is beautiful."
We came together with the city outside—the walls, the murals, the complicated peace—and inside, two people finding something simple in the middle of complexity.
"The article," he said afterward.
"Will you write about this?"
"About us? Never." He pulled me closer. "About healing? Yes. Because you've shown me what it actually looks like. Not the official version—the real version. The way people survive by finding connection."
"That sounds like an article worth writing."
"It will be. If you'll help me get it right."
He stayed in Belfast. The article became a book, became a reputation for understanding conflict zones through human stories. We became permanent—him writing about places like mine, me showing him the truths that don't make guidebooks.
The peace walls are still there. My brother is still gone. But something in me has healed in ways I never expected—not through forgetting but through being witnessed. Truly witnessed, by someone who wanted to understand rather than explain.
Some cities carry their troubles visibly. Some people do too. The secret to surviving both is finding someone who looks at the weight you're carrying and says not "let me fix this" but "let me help you carry it."
Tom carries mine. I carry his. And together, we walk streets that used to terrify me, finding new stories in a city that's still learning how to tell them.