Last June I gave a talk about subverting walls for TEDxCalgary. In it I spoke about to men who defeated walls in Ceuta and Palestine by physically going over them, and about two artists in Arizona and Ramallah who subvert walls by transforming them through art.
The video of my talk is now online. Thanks to the people at TEDxCalgary for producing and posting this video, and for honouring me with the invitation to speak at their event.
Here is an article from the Financial Times on travel writing. The piece, titled “The places in between,” is a little cranky – Paul Theroux penned it, after all – but interesting nonetheless. I especially love the line I quoted above, and the following bit:
So where are we now? Of course, many would-be travel writers are plodding in the footsteps of those who have gone before and repeating or correcting the impressions. An irritating tendency of those books, and of travel pieces in general, is the use of the present tense: “I am on a bus in Bhutan and the woman next to me is smoking a cigar … ” There is a new frivolity in travel books, there is mock-drama, there is obvious embroidering, there is the frivolous quest as a theme. Such books do not interest me at all.
I have a love for reading about a really difficult trip, even better an ordeal. Such books, written with skill and appropriate detail, will always find a public, because they combine travel with problem solving and endurance, and that I suppose is the human condition. These people are suffering for us.
You can find the story here.
My return from Belfast on Monday marked the end of my travels for my walls project. I thought a little accounting might be in order:
Years since beginning of the project: 3.5
Weeks spent away from home: 46
‘Territories’ visited: 14
Continents traveled to: 4
Flights taken: 37
Train journeys: 10
Different currencies used: 11
Approximate pages of handwritten notes taken: 1300
Deserts visited: 2
Kilometres run in the Sahara: 10
Official race time: 55m 20s
Rank among Canadians in the race: 1
Number of Canadians in the race: 1
Rupees lost betting on archery: 300
Accusations of anti-semitism received after blogging about my visit to an Israeli settlement: 6
‘Green Lines’ crossed: 2
Members of Canada’s ‘Operation Snowgoose’ peacekeeping mission I met in Cyprus: 1
Percentage of entire ‘Snowgoose’ force this man represents: 100
Amount paid for chicken tikka masala in Kolkata: $2
In Parc-Extension: $7
In Belfast: $14
Hours spent watching riots in Belfast before getting bored: 4
Days spent in Belfast hostel: 23
Times bathroom was cleaned during my stay: 0
Weeks remaining before first draft deadline: 12
Chapters left to write: 4
These photos were taken on July 12, 2011 – “The 12th” – in Belfast.
My 11 year-old niece, Olivia, sent me this modest request by email the other day. She has enthusiastically allowed me to share it here:
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Hey Zio it’s Olivia (Preferably Olive). How’s where ever you are? How are you? I KNOW WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO FOR MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!!! Can you dedicate the “walls” book to me???? Or at least mention my name some place very noticeable? Thanks in advance. Nonna (She’s standing right behind me) said I should tell you why. None of the kids at school believe that you are a published author or that even if you are a published author that we are related. So for my sake (and my b-day present) please dedicate the book to me!!!! Thanks in advance…. again.
P.S I saw your son today. P.P.S Guess where i was all last week and what I did.
your FAVOURITE niece,
 Olive Rose Di Cintio
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Sometimes reality offers up such easy metaphors that a writer feels cheap using them. One of these is the fact that Qalqilya, a city nearly completely caged by the West Bank wall, is also home to Palestine’s only zoo.
Another is the fact that when the Belfast city cemetery was conceived centuries ago, a stone wall was erected underground to separate Protestant dead from Catholic dead. The wall runs beneath the strip of empty grass between the graves in the above photo.
I am in Belfast to write about what outsiders – but few locals – call the Peace Lines.
Belfast is the eighth and last stop on my ‘walls journey.’ Most of the other walls I’ve visited have yawned across international borders, disputed or otherwise, and often tracked for hundreds of kilometres at a time. In Belfast, though the ‘interface walls’ run for a few streets at a time. Or span the width of a single avenue. They slice through the city, dividing Catholics from Protestants, like a network of surgical incisions. Even the web of barricades in East Jerusalem are not this intricate. Nowhere else do the walls cut so intimately as they do here.
In a way, Belfast is the natural conclusion to my travels. I’ve gone from the agoraphobic vastness of the sand berm in the Sahara Desert to Belfast’s snug barricades.
The Belfast walls are meant to protect the residents of one community from attacks from the other. Or they are meant to delineate and claim territory. Or both. And to some extent they succeed at these aims. It takes a strong arm to hurl a bottle or brick over the tallest of the walls. Though some manage. I spoke to an elderly couple who live up against on barrier who still hear the occasional object rattle onto their roof in the middle of the night. Like most people I speak to, this couple both hates the wall and is thankful for it. They are old enough to remember a time before the walls, however, when Catholics and Protestants managed to coexist in the same neighborhoods. Young people here do not have such memories, and many of them want to see the walls grow higher.
The ‘Peace Lines’ might allow for some peace of mind but no actual peace. If the walls succeed in protecting against attacks, they simultaneously ensure that residents of both communities never look at each other face-to-face. The walls are a ‘solution’ that entrenches the problem. The barriers make impossible the sort of engagement needed to eventually bring them down. There are people working to change this, men and women from both communities who, though hardly neutral in their ideology, work in tandem for what is termed here a ‘shared future.’ I’ve had a chance to meet some of them and find their work inspiring.
That said, the height of this year’s marching season reaches its nadir tonight and tomorrow, and the prelude has already brought violence. The last few days have seen riots, cars hijacked and torched, police attacked, windows smashed and homes shot at. A summer sky filled with bricks and bottles – with stones, slurs and smoke – offers little reason for hope.
