Belfast: The Indian in the Cupboard

A Story by Abishai100

A dreaming foreigner opens a bookstore in sectarian Northern Ireland and develops a life of tragic drawn diary.

A much more serious and dark UK-politics fable, set in modern troubled Belfast (Northern Ireland), and inspired by The Devil's Own (Alan J. Pakula). Hope you like it (and stay safe!),

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Something drew Amlan Satan to Omagh, Northern Ireland. After graduating from college, he converted to Christian-Catholicism and decided to travel to the United Kingdom and specifically to Omagh where there lived an Irish-Catholic majority population in a country (Northern Ireland) composed of a British-Protestant majority population descended from English colonial settlers. The socioeconomic disparities between Irish-Catholics and British-Protestants had led to forms of guerrilla-unrest, crime, Protestant street-gang activity, and police-military retaliatory force. Omagh was however a quieter place in Northern Ireland, compared to troubled Belfast (the capital), which is where Amlan found some unusual courage.

Amlan was born to an Algerian father and Indian mother and studied Algerian/Indian colonial resistance movements against France and England in the 20th Century at college. He was born a Hindu but converted to Catholicism and moved to Omagh to take in Irish-Catholic atmosphere and fell in love with the idea of 'living' in a troubled country, riddled by sectarian consciousness. He became the Indian in the cupboard.

After 2 years in Omagh, Amlan Satan moved directly to Belfast and formed the group known as the 'Foreign Irish Republican Army' (FIRA), devoted only to nonviolent media-publications and opened a book-store in Belfast with some of his inherited travel-money. Belfast was equally charming and scary because of inter-religious complex traffic...and politics.

AMLAN: There's something sunny about the quiet life in Belfast, but I wonder if this is a veil for modern darkness!

Amlan sold books in his Belfast book-store ranging in historical/fictional topics from the Easter Rising to Belfast literature to Northern Ireland commerce. He also collected old photos of the quiet and eerie life in sectarian troubled Northern Ireland to offer as 'extra-credit' items for sale along with his quaint and iconic books.

AMLAN: We wait for British police-military vehicles to drive by followed by teams of masked guerrilla-terrorists, Irish.

Amlan began making artworks and poems about enduring this sort of survival-consciousness in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He became quite fond of the neighborhood kids/youth who liked visiting him in his bookstore since he liked showing them books and photos of Irish distinction! They started calling him the favorite Indian in the Cupboard.

AMLAN: There's something quietly peaceful about the defiance of hell linked to the pure intention to live life in Belfast.

One day, a female customer or Irish-Catholic origin and shiny red hair walked into his iconic Belfast bookstore and asked him if he had a special book written by Irish revolutionary leader Eamon de Valera, about the links/bonds between India's struggle for independence from British rule and Ireland's own centuries-old struggle. Amlan took a sudden liking to this Irishwoman and told her he'd order the special book for her and was intrigued suddenly himself of such an iconic work of political literature. They'd started dating, visiting a small restaurant to enjoy Irish curry and retreating to Amlan's hidden small apartment, quite cozy/charming, to make love. She told him her brother, an ex-IRA guerrilla-man, was killed by a Ulster Volunteer Force (Protestant) gang when she was 12.

AMLAN: I parted ways with her, but I won't forget her odd courage; she decided to leave Belfast, and my bookstore.

One autumn grey morning, a terrible IRA-linked explosion near a pub visited frequently by British police-military off-duty as well as UVF-loyalists shocked Amlan who's working in his iconic Belfast bookstore at the time. He ran out and asked the police what had occurred, and they explained to him, "Apparently UK Parliament's canceled a new affirmative-action employment reform-policy that would aid the unemployed Irish-Catholics of fair old Belfast, and it's pissed off yet another new rogue faction of the Irish Republican Army, good man."

Amlan ordered a special copy of an iconic Herbert Asbury book about enduring the 'socialized drama' of clan-like street underworld/underground 'secret violence' (1800s New York city-street gang-culture) and showed it off to customers and told them, "It will remind you of the endurance of hellmouths living in troubled old Belfast, really." He was still the favorite Indian in the Cupboard.

AMLAN: I'll distribute printed postcards of old Irish Republican Army images of raids on off-duty police-military with books.

AMLAN: I wonder what my Hindu mother'd make of this Belfast sectarian hell; Hindu imagery links to Catholic prayers.

Amlan scribbled in his new bookstore diary, "I believe this 'Foreign Irish Republican Army' (F-IRA) work is insufficient for life of sanity in sectarian Northern Ireland, and I'm dumbfounded and don't know how to wrought Catholic wonder/joy in this modern life of real violence and political uneasiness; the two dominant denominations of the world Christian community today, Catholicism and Protestantism, remain hauntingly distanced."

When Amlan's girlfriend, the shiny redhead he'd courted some time ago and who'd fled from Belfast for the shores of New York, returned to visit him in his bookstore, only to discover it had been abandoned and destroyed and was being refurbished architecturally for a new police-station and that Amlan was now an underground 'rogue' agent working with the more violent rendition of F-IRA, planning violent guerrilla-actions on British corrupt barons storing/smuggling piracy blood-diamonds into Northern Ireland. She was shocked and remembered her own fated brother's death at the hands of UVF-loyalists. She wondered what had become of her special and favorite Indian in the Cupboard.