Remembering a First Love: A Story 26 Years in the Making
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — Christine Cowley still remembers what it felt like to lose her first love. She was just 19 when the young man she loved, Colm Keenan, was killed by a British army patrol in this divided city. But for more than 50 years, she’s kept that part of her life secret.
“One of the hardest things in my life was coming to terms with this,” she said, tears filling her bright blue eyes.
It didn’t happen all at once. As Cowley got married and raised a family, she kept her secret buried deep inside. It wasn’t until after her children were grown that she began considering sharing her story. In 2020, she shared a short poem she’d written about Keenan anonymously in a stage presentation at the local Playhouse Theatre. Then, in a recent conversation over a scone and tea in a Derry café, Cowley revealed herself as the author and opened up about her pain for the first time.
Cowley grew up in a Catholic family in Derry during The Troubles, a 30-year period of violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland between Protestant unionists who wanted the province to remain part of the United Kingdom and Roman Catholic nationalists who wanted to be part of the republic of Ireland.
She met Keenan when they were both 16. She was studying at Thornhill Grammar School, an all-girls school in Derry, and he was at St. Columb’s College, a nearby all-boys school, she said. Over the next three years, Cowley would come to know Keenan as studious, creative and gentle.
Both Cowley and Keenan were Catholic, but the Keenans were far more active in Republican politics. While Cowley’s parents loved Keenan, they knew about his family’s radical politics and worried about her safety, she said. Keenan’s dad, Seán, was chairman of the Derry Citizens Defence Association in 1969, and would play a pivotal role in the events that led to the creation of Free Derry.
“They believed so much in a united country,” said Cowley. “My family weren’t really like that.”
While her family too hoped to see a united Ireland, they didn’t believe in going so far as to take up arms, she said.
On Sunday, January 30, 1972, violence peaked in Derry as British paratroopers opened fire on civilians in the Catholic part of town, killing 13 and injuring 14 others. The day came to be known as Bloody Sunday, and ushered in the darkest year of the conflict — with over 450 people killed and nearly 5,000 people injured throughout Northern Ireland.
“The whole ethos of the city changed that day,” said Cowley, adding that the event led many men and women in the community to join the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
On March 14, Keenan and his best friend, Eugene McGillan, were shot by British Army patrol in the Bogside area of Derry. According to Irish news sources, both men were unarmed.
Cowley was heartbroken. The following days were hazy, but what she does remember is the tri-colored flag that was displayed at his funeral and the pain she felt piercing her heart and stomach when she saw his body, she said.
Over the coming months, her grief would lead her through some major life decisions, like applying to finish her nurse training in County Armagh, just to get out of Derry.
“I wasn’t conscious, but when I think back on it, that was the way that I survived,” she said.
As a melancholic smile stretched across her face, Cowley said life has a way of continuing. And it did for her — she became a successful nurse, married her husband Pat, moved back to Derry and raised her four children.
When Cowley mentioned Keenan in passing to her family, she said they were supportive. But she never truly revealed the impact he had on her. “I just got on with life,” she said.
In her loss and in her silence, Cowley is not alone. Although this month marks 26 years of relative peace in Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday Agreement putting an end to much of the violence in 1998, hundreds of survivors are only in recent years opening up about what they lived through during The Troubles.
Intimately involved with this process is Norma Patterson, a therapist at WAVE Trauma Center, one of the few places in Northern Ireland working specifically with survivors of The Troubles. She explained that many people keep living as if they’re still in the war because of the impact trauma has on the nervous system. But now that many survivors are older and the busyness of life has started to slow down, people have room to process.
“They can begin to think ‘okay, maybe I don't have to just survive anymore,’” she said.
In Derry, community members have started looking to the arts as a means of healing, said Kieran Smyth, community relations officer at The Playhouse Derry.
Smyth heads a program called Leaders for Peace, designed to encourage self-care and peacebuilding strategies through storytelling. He said that while it seems counter intuitive that healing can come through reliving a traumatic experience, the opportunity to do so as means of creating art often empowers people.
In 2020, when the Irish playwright Damien Gorman came to town, several survivors had the opportunity to share their story publicly. Working with Leaders for Peace, Gorman invited anyone with an association to the year 1972 to join his new production, called “Anything Can Happen 1972: Voices from the Heart of the Troubles.”
Getting people to open up about their experiences was no easy feat; many chose to include their stories on the condition of anonymity. Actor Pat Lynch played the role of The Caretaker, a narrator-type character who showed up multiple times throughout the play to perform anonymous stories.
At that time, Christine Cowley was one of the people who chose to have her poem performed by Lynch. Her poem was about a moment when she thought she saw her lost love, Keenan, and even though she had spoken about it to her family before, she still felt strange sharing about it publicly, even under the cloak of anonymity. At one point, Cowley almost pulled her submission entirely.
“After this length of time of being married to my husband, I felt it was disloyal,” she said.
Cowley said that Gorman encouraged her to tell the story, and her husband thought it was a nice story. In September, the production opened. It was broadcast to the public because of the pandemic. Cowley only saw it once, surrounded by a group of her closest girlfriends.
“Most of the words I didn’t hear. It was weird to hear someone else read my words,” she said.
Nearly four years after the production, Cowley’s feelings about sharing her story have changed. In recent months, it had been on her mind to own those words, she said.
She said she’d encountered angels throughout her life in different people, and some of her more recent supernatural-feeling encounters emboldened her to tell her story as her own.
“I love the concept of angels,” Cowley said from her table at the café. “For me, they’re guides.”
With steady hands, Cowley flipped to a page in a bright yellow notebook where she’d written the poem four years ago. At first, she was timid, realizing that in the busy café in a town as small as Derry, she could run into anyone she knew. She put one hand over the side of her face and began reading with a tension in her voice:
“Did you just walk by me then
In the daylight
Or was that a dream
My heart surged with sadness
Tears ran down my cheeks
At the vision I had just seen.
Please, oh please, look over here.
This yearning is unreal
Your hair, your body
Your clothes the same!
My mouth wide open, to call your name”
Cowley moved her hand away from her face and continued, but this time, with a softened voice:
“You turned my love
Your loving eyes met mine
They melted like snow
Through my body
To stay with me for all time”
At the end of her poem, she lifted her teary eyes from the page, coming out of her trance.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she concluded. “It’s actually something to be very proud of, but it’s taken a long time to come out.”
When Walls Break Barriers: How an Artist’s Murals in Ireland Forged a Life-Saving Friendship From Dublin to Gaza
DUBLIN — Kneeling down on the ground, Palestinian journalist Samia Alatrash wrapped her arms around the lifeless body of her two-year-old niece Masa. Israel’s bombing of Rafah in southern Gaza had killed Masa, her four-year-old sister Lina, and both their parents — in one day. October 21, 2023.
As images of Samia hugging the tiny shroud were beamed across the world, more than 4,000 kilometers away in Dublin, it prompted Irish artist Emmalene Blake to pick up her colors and paint murals of Samia and Masa.
What followed was the forging of a friendship between two strangers halfway across the world, from Dublin to Gaza. Now, more than five months later, that unlikely connection is what has proved instrumental in helping 26-year-old Samia finally evacuate Gaza and escape the war that has killed so many members of her family.
This is the story of their friendship, from Ireland to Palestine, and how it helped save Samia’s life.
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The Night Samia Prayed Endlessly
Samia remembers the night of October 20, 2023, all too well, and painfully.
It was almost a fortnight into the war, and Israeli forces were bombing Samia’s hometown of Rafah. Samia says she couldn’t get in touch with her sister, Samar, after 11 p.m., when the bombing intensified.
“They were bombing everywhere, so no one could get to my sister’s house,” she recalls in an interview over the phone.
Terrified, Samia began to pray. “From 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., I was praying to Allah, can this bombing stop?” She couldn’t sleep. All she did was think about her sister Samar and her nieces Masa and Lina. “It was so difficult, it’s not fair. I was waiting for the morning, to go and hug them.”
But the morning would only confirm Samia’s worst fears. “Around 7 o’clock, I found out that I have lost all of them — my sister, Samar; my beautiful nieces, Masa and Lina; and my sister’s husband, Dr. Loay Khader. I felt that I had lost a part of my heart, my soul.”
Samar had helped raise Samia and their brother, Mohammad, after their mother died when Samia was only six years old. Even months after Samar’s passing, Samia struggles to speak of her sister in the past tense.
“Samar is not only my sister, she is my mother and my friend. With her death, I felt for the first time that I am orphaned. I cannot imagine that I have lost them forever. I want to hug them, and go on a picnic with them.”
As Samia embraced Masa, unwilling to let her go, photographers nearby clicked what has become one of the defining images of the ongoing war.
When Irish artist Emmalene Blake saw the photograph, it moved her deeply. “I keep crying the last couple of weeks. It’s all I can think about,” she told a friend.
Emmalene, who teaches art, design and mathematics to early school leavers, was so moved by the image that it made her want to paint Samia and Masa on a wall in Dublin. And so, the 36-year-old artist picked up her spray paints, reimagined the photograph, and recreated it as a mural in the city’s Harold Cross neighborhood.
The only change she had made to the photo: The shroud covering Masa was painted as a Palestinian flag.
News of the mural in Dublin traveled far and wide, and a picture of Emmalene's artwork reached Samia. In early November, on an Instagram video of Emmalene painting the mural, Samia wrote in memory of her niece, “My heart is broken without you.”
Touched by her artwork, Samia also reached out to Emmalene. "You painted me and my sweet niece Masa," she told her.
Emmalene recalls, “I told her I’ll sell t-shirts and sweatshirts and try and raise funds for her.”
Samia was beyond grateful. She says Emmalene was the first person to connect with her during the war and offer to help her.
In the face of unspeakable tragedy, Samia had found what felt like a personal solidarity across borders. And so, in those most unfortunate of circumstances, the Palestinian journalist and the Irish artist forged a friendship.
“I talk to her pretty much everyday now,” says Emmalene.
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Mission Evacuation
Emmalene and Samia would keep in touch regularly, and Samia would update her friend about the situation in Rafah. It was rarely good news, but one day, Emmalene noticed that Samia seemed especially fearful.
“She got in touch with me and said there was a family 10 meters from where she was staying that was bombed and killed. And she was getting really scared.”
Upon getting that SOS from Samia, Emmalene sent over the funds she had raised till then by selling copies of her artwork on Palestine. They hoped that the amount would be enough for Samia to evacuate Gaza.
By then, Samia’s other surviving relatives had decided they wanted to escape from Gaza, too. That would need more funds.
Emmalene was ready to double down on her efforts, and she wasn’t alone.
She says, “I was getting messages from a few different people on Instagram about how they could help Samia. So we set up a WhatsApp group with everyone who wanted to help with evacuations of Samia and her family.”
Soon, there were around 10 people in the group, from Ireland and Palestine, all involved in planning and coordinating the efforts to relocate Samia and her family out of Gaza.
Emmalene said, “At the moment, we’re trying to raise funds for her brother and her cousin and her cousin’s family and her uncle to evacuate as well.”
“What's the WhatsApp group called?” I asked Emmalene.
“Evacuations,” she replied.
At the time of writing this, ‘Help The Alatrash Family Evacuate’, the fundraiser organized by Emmalene, has received more than 370 donations, and raised over $33,000 for Samia's family.
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Leaving Home Behind
When I met Emmalene in Dublin in mid-March, she had said that Samia was “just waiting now for her name to be called at the border.”
She was waiting to flee the war. And as she waited, she would often break into tears. “I was crying, crying, crying… all the time.”
After waiting for weeks on end, hoping against hope that her name would be next, Samia’s name was finally called earlier this week.
On Sunday, April 7, at around half past seven in the morning, she got on a bus in Rafah and began the journey away from the place she had always called home — Gaza.
Almost 24 hours later, at around 5 am on Monday, she reached Nasr City in Egypt.
“I am so confused… I don’t know how I feel,” she tells me hours after her arrival in Nasr City.
She says, “I am feeling sad because I am leaving Rafah, because I am leaving my family, my only brother, my grandmother…I am so, so sad.”
She hopes that her 20-year-old brother Mohammad will also be able to evacuate to Egypt. Emmalene and the others are working on it, but none of them know how long the process could take.
Nasr City is a little over 300 kilometers away from Rafah. But the distance feels much longer for Samia. She mourns the loss of leaving where she belongs, “I don’t have a home now because it was destroyed.”
She says she hopes this is her chance for a life “without bombing, without genocide, without killing.” And she looks forward to getting back to working as a freelance journalist.
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The Irish Bond With Palestine
In Ireland, Emmalene isn’t an exception when it comes to expressing a strong solidarity with Palestine. The country has had a deep history of support for the Palestinian cause.
Ahead of St. Patrick’s Day last month, at a meeting between then-Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar and US President Joe Biden, the Irish leader said, “As you know, the Irish people are deeply troubled about the catastrophe that’s unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”
He added, “When I travel the world, leaders often ask me why the Irish have such empathy for the Palestinian people. And the answer is simple — we see our history in their eyes. A story of displacement, of dispossession, and national identity questioned and denied, forced immigration, discrimination, and now hunger.”
“We were occupied by Britain for 400 years, so we definitely have a kinship or solidarity with Palestine,” says Emmalene. She compares the Great Famine of the 1840s, when Ireland faced years of hunger during British rule, to the current widespread starvation in Gaza.
Speaking of the Irish famine, she says, “The potato crops failed, but there was plenty of other food. But Britain was shipping all of the meat and all of the other food out of Ireland into Britain. So the famine wasn't a famine, it was a genocide.” Around a million Irish people are estimated to have died during the famine, and millions more emigrated from the island.
Comparing it to the situation unfolding in Gaza, Emmalene says, “Hunger is being used as a weapon of war at the moment. They're not letting the aid in. It's a man-made famine.”
“They can feel my pain,” says Samia. “I have received so many messages from people in Ireland, they send me voice notes in support. That makes me feel stronger. I love them because they are supporting me and the people in Gaza. The people in Ireland are with the people in Gaza, every day, every night.”
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What the Two Friends Hope For
Upon reaching Nasr, Samia reunited with her cousin Soha, who had managed to evacuate a couple of days earlier. The two of them recorded a video for Emmalene and the others who had helped them flee Gaza. Soha began, “Hi Emma, Ciara and everyone, this is the hotel we are staying in…” Samia looked on and smiled.
Emmalene shared the video on Instagram and wrote, “Samia is out! We have them booked into this hotel in Nasr City in Egypt for a few more nights until we can get an apartment sorted where they can wait for the rest of their family.” She added, “We still need to raise more funds to get the others out.”
Now in Nasr, Samia hopes to get back to working as a journalist. And she hopes for an end to the war. “Stop the war. Stop killing. Stop destroying houses and dreams,” she says.
And Emmalene, in addition to selling her artwork to raise funds for Samia’s family, plans to keep painting for Palestine. She says, “It’s the biggest atrocity over a lifetime. So, I’m going to continue painting for as long as it goes on.”
The two of them have never met. Samia hopes she can change that someday. “I hope I meet Emma face to face and all the people in Ireland as soon as possible.”
Her gratitude for Emma, as she calls her, knows no bounds. “Emma is a kind and beautiful woman,” she says. “Emma is now my best friend. Because everyday, she calls me and asks about me.”
And like she does every so often, Samia recalls the mural of Masa that Emmalene had painted. “She painted my sweet niece Masa.” She says it gives her strength to think that people in the world remember Masa through that painting.
Samia is referring to another mural in Dublin that Emmalene had created — a massive mural of Masa on a wall painted pink.
Emmalene had also written a poem for Masa to go along with the mural, titled ‘Second Time Painting You’. Here’s an excerpt of the poem.
“Two year olds don’t worry about time.
I didn’t know this about you,
when I painted you before.
Didn’t see it.
Didn’t see your smile.
Didn’t see the feather in your hair.
Didn’t see your flowery runners,
that match your flowery jeans.
Didn’t see the baby hairs
all along your forehead
you had yet to grow out.
See when I painted you before,
You were shrouded in cloth,
Your auntie clutching your lifeless body,
Rocking back and forth,
Whispering words meant only for you.”
For this mural, Emmalene chose to not paint a Palestinian flag or anything on the mural to denote that Masa was a Palestinian. “The reaction I had been getting while painting it was people going like, “Oh my God, such a gorgeous child!” So, I want people to have that reaction and then see the plaque with information about the mural — for them to read the poem and then for it to hit them.”
Emmalene adds, “I think there’s a creche down the road from where I painted it. And once it was nearly finished, a good few mothers who had kids around the same age would go by and would tell their kids, “Oh look at that lovely little girl, isn’t she just like you!””
“That’s the reaction I wanted,” says Emmalene. “It’s just a child, it could be any child.”
Next to her first mural of Samia and Masa too, Emmalene had painted three children, one of whom was wearing a Jewish kippah and another a keffiyeh. “What I was thinking was — kids are kids. It doesn't matter where they're from, what religion they are. All any kid really wants is to be safe and be happy. So, whether it's Palestinian kids, whether it's Israeli kids or Jewish kids, whether it's any other kids in the world, that's all they want.”
The mural of the three children showed them playing with letter blocks. The children had built two towers with the blocks. They read, “Peace please.”
Music as a Medium to Engage Young People in Church Life
DUBLIN — A recent Youth Mass at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin started with a song that seemed to fit better in an evangelical worship service than among the Catholic rituals. A five-piece band led the congregation in an upbeat version of “Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your Name.”
The next day at Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral, part of the Church of Ireland, a choir from the University of Richmond sang Sanctua, Oread Farewell and the Irish Blessing. A few miles away at Our Lady of Victories, primary school students dressed in plaid were practicing songs for their concert Emmanuel 2024. In an informal homily, they were encouraged to keep singing.
After the Youth Mass at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, in the Oratory, a group of young adults, and on occasion a few older folks, gathered together in a circle, and after introductions began to sing. The community is called Shalom Dublin. It’s based on the original Shalom Catholic Community from Brazil. People were drawn into Shalom by its charismatic qualities of speaking in tongues or by the spontaneous worship music.
The sounds of music are everywhere these days in Dublin’s churches. While rates of religious affiliation are rapidly dropping in Ireland, the music continues. Church leaders believe that music can touch young people and keep them open to exploring faith.
Music is what drew Mirielle Abreu, 39, deeper into the Catholic community. Abreu is one of the singers in the band at the Shalom community in Dublin. Originally from Brazil, she found herself going to Shalom after a friend invited her. In 2016, while she was working in Brazil as an actress, she had a back injury. “And I thought: I cannot dance, I cannot act because of my back. I think I’m gonna sing and I would like to sing to the Lord, and I started.” She moved to Dublin in 2022, and has continued to sing.
In her experience, Shalom focused a lot on the youth. “They are the generation, they are the future,” Abreu said. She sang a song in Portuguese to demonstrate. The lyrics translate into “I want to offer my life and spend my days for love, for the church, for the youth.” A lot of the songs sung at Shalom Dublin were written at songwriting retreats by Shalom members. “In Brazil, every single church that you go, they are singing Shalom songs,” Abreu said.
In the Oratory, the room was dim except for the two candles lit at the front. Music missionary and co-founder of Shalom Dublin, Meggie Teixeira Correa and Leon Dominic Thomas, two of the other singers in the band, sang Ruah (translated to God’s Spirit), a Shalom song. The words were repeated over and over again. “Come Holy Spirit, inflame our hearts, Kindle in us the flame of your life. Come and renew us by the power of your love,” mirroring the Catholic prayer, “Come, Holy Spirit.”
Abreu noted that some of the things that weren’t common to others, like speaking in tongues, were familiar to her from her upbringing in Brazil. For her, Shalom is just “one way of being close to God. It’s a family.”
Another Shalom Dublin regular, Olivia Lívia Alencar, 23, recognized that people enjoyed the singing at Mass on Sunday nights. She recalled an elderly lady saying, “That was a beautiful ministry.” Olivia got to know Shalom in Rio after her best friend invited her to a prayer group. Many of the people at Shalom Dublin were foreigners, from different parts of Europe, and the charismatic element of the group was new to them, Olivia said.
Music is also a focus of Catholic efforts to reach the youth. One of the composers of contemporary Catholic music is Ciaran Coll, a music teacher at one of the schools that participated in Emmanuel 2024, the contemporary liturgical concert. Emmanuel is a big event, spanning three days and over 2,000 students all over Dublin. Coll has composed some of the pieces performed at Emmanuel the past five years. As a teacher, he teaches his students songs for the concert from early September to February. “If young people weren’t engaged in liturgy and the church or going to church, this was a way in that appealed to them,” said Coll.
At Catholic schools, events such as the first mass of the year and school graduations that revolved around the Eucharist needed music, but teachers were relying on secular music to reach their students. Emmanuel provided students with a greater variety of music, drawing on both traditional hymns and contemporary liturgical music. “I’ve seen, over the last number of years doing it, that students love the music so much that when it comes to school masses or graduation, they’re reaching for their Emmanuel book,” said Coll.
Coll led one of the practices for Emmanuel 2024 the afternoon before the concert, playing the piano as students sang “Amen.” The main goal with having students join groups or audition for a solo for Emmanuel is to open students to a wider world of what church music is really like and to engage them in the school setting. “By doing this, you have a group of students who are there and available to then hear from somebody, to have somebody to speak to them, to do a short reflection or homily with them,” he said.
Participating in the act of creating music with their classmates can also make them curious for more. That curiosity could trickle into other areas. “It may bring them to a deeper connection that they want to seek a little bit more and ask a few questions of their faith,” said Coll.
Coll has learned a lot about teaching his students liturgical music over the last five years. He strives to keep students engaged by choosing songs they like. "Is there a buy-in from them? Will it speak to them?" he said he asks himself. "And so, I think, it’s about listening to them and being open to see what really touches their hearts.”
In Belfast, Catholic Artists Support Palestinians With Transformed Murals
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The walls that separate the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of this Northern Irish city are officially known as the Peace Walls, not so much because they are peaceful places but because they have historically helped keep the peace in a divided city. Muralists have used these walls as a canvas to express political causes both local and international.
With a war raging in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the Irish have largely taken the side of the Palestinians. They have done this both politically and artistically. One such project is called “Painting for Palestine.” It uses images originally made by Palestinian artists that have been recreated here in Belfast by Irish artists and volunteers.
These images occupy a 160-foot section of a Peace Wall known as the International Wall. To create the project, artists spent about seven weeks painting over several older murals that commemorated the 30-year period of Irish history known as The Troubles. The finished “Painting for Palestine” project was unveiled on March 3.
The project includes 12 murals, each with a different scene. In one, a man in a keffiyeh hugs a child in front of destroyed buildings. In another, fireworks light up over a city. A third mural shows two small children, painted in black and white, sitting in shock.
“Painting for Palestine” was inspired in part by Irish muralist Danny Devenny, who painted the famous Bobby Sands mural on the side of Sinn Fein’s Belfast office.
For months, even before Oct. 7, Devenny had been seeing artwork online by Middle Eastern artists that supported Palestine.
The work of these artists, Devenny said, came “from the heart.”
“These images were so hauntingly beautiful,” he said. “They were dealing with issues of death and destruction.”
Devenny began by sharing the Middle Eastern artists’ work on social media with his followers, but then decided he could have an even bigger impact.
“Instead of just sharing their images on Facebook, why don’t we paint their images on our wall?” he said. “Our wall is photographed daily. There’s thousands of people, tourists come here from all over the world.”
Devenny’s hope was that the tourists would take their photos home and share the images of the wall — along with their support for Palestinians — with their friends and family.
‘Giving Them a Space To Say It’: How ‘Painting for Palestine’ Came Together
While Devenny was figuring out how to make his idea a reality, a Palestinian artist reached out to Bill Rolston, a retired sociology professor at Ulster University and a mural expert, with a similar idea.
The artist, Rana Hammoudeh, first saw the Peace Walls when she visited Belfast in August 2023. She was inspired by the International Wall to create a similar wall in Palestine, with artists from all over the world participating in the project.
“Then Oct. 7 happened,” Rolston said. “Everything went pear-shaped. Her plan was out the window.”
Around December, Devenny decided he wanted to use the artwork of Palestinians specifically, rather than general art that supports Palestine.
“I thought to myself, a lot of these images we’re looking at on the Internet and Facebook, they’re not all by Palestinian artists,” Devenny said. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get Palestinian stuff and just show their work?”
The Irish people have felt a connection to Palestinians for decades, “because of a collective memory,” Rolston said.
“Palestine and Ireland’s stories weave in and out of each other in various ways,” he added. “[There are] so many similarities between settler colonialism in Elizabethan Ireland and in 1940s to 1960s Palestine, including that the proportion of settlers at the time of partition was almost identical in each case.”
The two groups also had similarities in their resistance. Including that the early Provisional IRA trained alongside the PLO in the early 1970s, Rolston said.
Despite their similarities, Rolston said that doesn’t mean the Irish artists should have been the ones creating their own artwork to support Palestine.
“People who go through similar political struggles in the world, other people’s struggles resonate with them, but it is only a resonance.” Rolston said. “It’s not the same experience.”
“If we do it, who knows what words we’re putting in people’s mouths, as it were,” Rolston added. “Things that were supremely important to us, may not have been supremely important to them… And also, the real risk is that we’d be patronizing in some way or other, even totally inadvertently.”
In order to get Palestinians’ artwork, Rolston reached back out to Hammoudeh, who was back in Palestine, for help.
“Rana burst into action and within a couple of days, we had a whole pile of stuff,” Rolston said.
That was around Christmas 2023, Rolston said. Devenny and other muralists decided to start the actual painting soon after the new year.
“Within days of us setting up at the corner of the Falls Road, we had dozens of people coming along and volunteering,” Devenny said.
Rolston said the support from the community was “spectacular.”
“I think maybe the best of all was the buy-in from all sorts of groups in the community,” Rolston said.
A man who runs a printing business made copies of the artwork so the painters could have physical prints for templates. A local business catered food for the unveiling. A community center across the street from the wall gave the painters and volunteers full use of their bathrooms and space to warm up when it was cold outside. And the paint shop up the road sold paint at cost price, Rolston said.
“And so on and so on,” Rolston said. “The closeness of the community, that meant that’s the way they reacted.”
In the end, Painting for Palestine included 12 murals, painted by three expert muralists and dozens of volunteers, Rolston said. When it was unveiled, there was a celebration with music and interviews with TV stations.
Rolston said he loved the Painting for Palestine project for two reasons.
“Firstly, this is not what we think of Palestine,” he said. “This is what Palestinians think of Palestine. So we’re just giving them a space to say it. The second is that there were over 30 people involved at some point or other in painting those 12 murals. Only three of them were muralists.”
None of the other people involved were painters, Rolston said.
“And yet, with guidance and support and a bit of clean up afterwards, they got it together,” he said. “To me, it’s a wonderful message to say, look, you can do this. Collectively, you can do this. You don’t need to be experts. What you need is to have an expert or two with you and you can do it. So I love that aspect of it.”
‘Are You With Us?’: Political Murals in Belfast
Despite a light drizzle on a Friday morning in March, tourists still stop by the Bobby Sands mural on Falls Road, right on the corner of Sevastopol Street.
Sands’ face fills the entire side wall of the building, where Sinn Fein has its offices in Belfast.
This mural was painted by Devenny in 1998 to memorialize Sands, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who was elected as a member of parliament in 1981, one month before he died while on hunger strike in a British prison.
Devenny got his start as an artist when he was in prison. He had been arrested for robbing a bank for the IRA in 1973. He started drawing political cartoons that would get smuggled out of the prison to be printed in newspapers.
Later, other artists started recreating his cartoons and drawings on walls around Belfast. The murals became popular. Devenny realized that his work of creating and disseminating artwork would be much easier if he just painted the images on walls.
“What I realized was murals, you get a couple of tins of paint, you get a gabled wall, you paint the image on the wall,” Devenny said. “All the newspapers and all the camera crews, all the television crews come.”
They either take photographs or videos of the murals — and the message the muralist is trying to send — and that message gets disseminated to people all over the world, Devenny said.
So Devenny started to paint murals himself.
Rolston first became interested in political murals in 1981, during the hunger strikes. Before that, Rolston said, there weren’t many murals made by Irish Republicans. The murals were mostly done by Unionists — though he wasn’t aware of them at the time.
“In the spring of ‘81, some young people just up the road from here began painting murals and the whole thing burgeoned,” Rolston said. “Probably 300 murals in that spring and summer of 1981, where there hadn’t been murals before.”
Rolston started photographing the murals.
Even after the hunger strikes were over, Republicans continued to paint murals, so Rolston continued to photograph them. Rolston later learned about the Unionist tradition of murals, so he started photographing them, too.
The earliest murals in Northern Ireland’s history were mostly Protestant, according to the Imperial War Museum. Nationalist, or Republican murals started after the hunger strikes.
Today, there are an estimated 700 murals in Belfast, according to Extramural Activity, a blog documenting murals and street art in Northern Ireland.
But when it comes to political murals, not just street art, Rolston has a rigid definition.
“They have to be articulated as political,” Rolston said. “And secondly, it has to be done as part of a movement, even a putative movement. You know, you’re part of a collective or you’re doing it for the collective and not just to say, ‘Hey, look at how good I am.’”
Globally, political murals have one main purpose, according to Rolston.
“Political murals, throughout the world, are about drawing support,” he said. “They’re about saying to an audience passing by, that this is where we stand. Are you with us?”
On a Friday morning, the Painting for Palestine murals were achieving their purpose.
Across the street, dozens of tourists had stepped out of their black taxis and tour buses. They took photos and chatted with their guides about the paintings. And whenever the tourists went home, their photos and stories went with them — maybe even to be shared with others.
In Northern Ireland, a Long-Awaited Gurdwara Opens with a Wedding
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (RNS) — On a cloudy fall day in 2021, about 100 people were praying in Derry’s only Sikh temple when smoke suddenly choked the prayer hall. Worshippers covered their mouths and noses and ran outdoors as flames consumed each room. Amerjit Singh, the president of the Northern Ireland Sikh Association, made sure that everyone was safely outside before running back inside the burning building to rescue the Sikh Holy Scripture known as the Guru Granth Sahib.
On Thursday (April 11), after years of renovations — completed in the spirit of “sewa,” the Sikh principle of selfless service — the temple, known as a gurdwara, reopened with a joyful wedding celebration, welcoming worshippers of all faiths and backgrounds once again. The multistory beige building, resting on a sloping road near the eastern bank of the River Foyle, bears a long history: An old sign indicates it was constructed in 1915, and a newer one introduces it as the Sikh Cultural Centre established in 1995. Jimmy Singh, a longtime worshipper at the gurdwara, says the reopening feels like “the light at the end of a long, long, tunnel.”
Although everyone, including the Guru Granth Sahib, was physically safe after the gurdwara fire, Sikhs in Derry mourned the loss of their beloved temple. The space where they convened at least once a week to pray, sing, eat and serve each other through sewa had become a shell of a structure. The gurdwara leadership determined at the time that it would stay closed until renovations were completed.
In the meantime, Derry’s Sikhs gathered in each others’ living rooms and kitchens to continue their weekly Sunday prayers and the tradition of “langar,” the free meal gurdwaras offer to any visitor without question. The gurdwara was one of two in Northern Ireland and the primary place of worship for Sikhs all over the country as well as for other minority religions, like Hindus, who don’t have a nearby temple of their own.
In the gurdwara’s absence, families were forced to hold funerals in their homes for elderly relatives who died of COVID-19. Hosting weddings and other communal festivities, too, felt incomplete without the gurdwara. Sitting cross-legged on floral carpets with the Guru Granth Sahib propped on a piece of furniture, the community managed to continue gathering and worshipping, all the while eagerly waiting to return to the new building.
It was like decades ago, some recalled, when only a few Sikh families lived in Derry. In those days, they could easily gather in each other’s homes. But since then, the Sikh population in Northern Ireland has grown from a few dozen to just shy of 400, according to the 2021 Census — a number no one’s living room could fit.
“On my way to work, I always drove past and stopped for 30 seconds outside,” said Jimmy Singh of the gurdwara. The space, he said, always brought him a sense of peace and meaning, even when he couldn’t go in. “I just can’t wait to come here every Sunday,” he said.
“It’s a lifeline for older people,” said Kalbinder Kaur, a trustee of the Sikh Association. The gurdwara’s closure, she said, exacerbated the loneliness and isolation of the elderly, who found comfort in the shared language and culture of the Sikh community.
Although the Sikh community has struggled without the gurdwara, Amerjit Singh says the fire may have been a blessing in disguise. The cause of the incident has not been officially determined, but he suspects it was faulty wiring in a building that’s over a century old. The damage revealed dry rot in the walls and floors of the building that could have compromised its structural integrity. Plus, the fire was an opportunity to rebuild the gurdwara to better accommodate the needs of the community.
About a month before the reopening, Amerjit and Jimmy Singh, who are cousins, stepped onto a brand-new elevator platform, clutching the railings. “It’s just been commissioned today,” said Jimmy Singh with excitement. “It’s our first time using it.” He pressed a button, and a soft whirring sound filled the echoing space as the platform smoothly drifted toward the lower level. The elevator for the elderly and disabled is one of the newest additions to Derry’s gurdwara.
Around them, the building buzzed with activity. Sawdust covered the floors, while ladders and tools lay scattered around the building. Volunteers from all walks of life and a number of faiths — Irish Catholic, Irish Protestant, Irish Sikh and Indian Sikh — paced in and out of rooms, scrubbing countertops and drilling into planks of wood. A group of men, some wearing turbans and others with buzz cuts, carried building materials down the staircase and through a doorway as Irish rock music reverberated upstairs. In a city with a long history of religious conflict, the intermingling of cultures and religions in the gurdwara epitomizes Amerjit Singh’s belief that welcoming others is the “single most important part of Sikhism.”
As he strolled around the gurdwara surveying the progress, he listed off the many people, from the architect to the construction workers, who helped rebuild the gurdwara for free or for a discount as an act of sewa. One woman wearing heavy-duty gloves introduced herself as a former employee of his who has volunteered her afternoon to help out at the gurdwara. A carpenter measuring wood in the prayer hall said he has been doing business with the Sikh community for 30 years. Gurdeep Singh and Samser Singh (no relation), two university students from the Punjab region of India who had met for the first time that morning, spent the day at the gurdwara doing sewa, lifting heavy materials side by side as if they’d been working together for years.
Gurdeep Singh, another Sikh man from India who has now lived in Ireland for several years and is not related to the others, said he is looking forward to the prayer, the langar and, of course, the gossip. “We feel very good when we come here,” he said. “We feel relaxed.”
The community is also largely united by their support for the Sikh farmers’ protests in India. Through Khalsa Aid, Derry’s Sikhs send money for food, clothing and medicine for the farmers, who, they believe, are being smeared and targeted by the Indian government. The gurdwara also donates funds to local initiatives. “Sikhs are givers,” said Jimmy Singh. “Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was a giver, and we want to follow that tradition in our hearts.”
The new building is tech-savvy and accessible. While Sikhs traditionally sit on the floor for langar and prayer, the gurdwara will have benches for the elderly and others who have trouble sitting cross-legged. An expertly planned opening near the kitchen allows volunteers to easily transport groceries inside from a car, reducing the intense prep work for langar, during which volunteers serve hearty meals of daal, roti and prasad to hundreds of people at a time. The building is more insulated and energy-efficient, critical in Northern Ireland’s soggy year-round weather. A guest room with three beds in the basement is built to host Sikh musicians, called ragis, and other visitors.
On March 24, about two weeks before the reopening, a group of Sikh worshippers hoisted the Nishan Sahib, a triangular orange flag with a dark-blue khanda symbol. The crowd stood barefoot around the silk-wrapped flagpole. One woman began a melodic prayer, and others closed their eyes in meditation and joined in.
A wedding seemed the perfect celebration to open the new gurdwara. Amongst traditional Punjabi music and sparkling chandeliers hanging from the newly finished ceiling, over 300 people gathered to celebrate the newlyweds — a non-Sikh Irish bride and a Sikh groom — with music, prayers and a langar of pakora, three different types of curries, gulab jamun and laddoo. Men wore suits and patkas, while women wore a rainbow of elegant salwar kameez.
“It was full of color,” said Amerjit Singh, after the daylong ceremony. “I saw a vision of a much more diverse Northern Ireland in the gurdwara today.”
First published on Religion News Service.