Introduction

254
Melanie Swiatloch
Later in the novel when Saoirse and her mother leave Belfast to stay with Saoirse’s
aunt and uncle in the South she notices further wall murals in Stroke City 36,
a witty name for Derry. Under the paintings she reads the words “FREE
DERRY”, “BRITISH OUT” and “INLA” (ibid. 78).
Ten years later Saoirse decides to go back to Northern Ireland to visit her father
for the first time. Still the problematic situation between Catholics and Protestants
has not cooled down. She has to pass Derry in order to get to Belfast.
Saoirse’s uncle Brendan advises her not to go directly through Derry as he is
aware of the lurking dangers. “Don’t drive through, was the last thing he said. […]
You don’t want to be lost in the Waterside (or was it Bogside 37, did he say?) with
Southern number plates” (ibid. 219). But Saoirse is curious to see the city where
her mother marched and where her parents fell in love. The picture of the city is
still a disturbing one even nineteen years after the first eruptions of violence. Saoirse
sees an Army Observatory Tower, barbed wire, metal grilles and CCTV
cameras (ibid. 220). She describes the city and its people as dull and grey; the only
marks of colour are red, blue and yellow splashes of paint on the road but even
these bear the signs of fighting: “The marks of paint bombs, they must be, I realize
with a shock, but what it looks like is as if giant-sized little children have gone
mad finger-painting” (ibid. 220). A bit further Saoirse sees Republican insignia
such as Tricolour flags and “murals of dancing girls and balaclava’d men brandishing
guns” (ibid. 220) and on the edge of the city the famous sign “You are Now
entering Free Derry” (ibid. 221). Arriving in Belfast she notes almost the same
signs, strings of bunting from the July parades hanging between lampposts, purple-and-orange
UDA flags, and again the Red Hand of Ulster (ibid. 224). Both
Derry and Belfast thus reflect the lives of its citizens, mostly being characterised
by the sectarian strifes.
These images are repeated in Eureka Street. Almost all of them very often
amount to the same thing, the markings of the two communities. On the walls it
says “IRA, INLA, UVF, UFF, OTG” and “like a diary” (McLiam Wilson 212).
The sentence “qui a terre a guerre” (ibid. 212) is mentioned, too, which roughly
means “he who has land is at war”. All these graffiti symbolise the conflict between
nationalists and unionists. This is also shown by the “green, white, gold, red
and blue” flags, also called “the two three-coloured emblems of difference” (ibid.
213). The distinctive feature of the acronym OTG is that it bears no actual meaning.
It only has meaning in the sense that it is there. Throughout the city people
36 The naming of Derry/Londonderry has been problematic among the two communities. During
the Troubles unionists rather referred to the city as Londonderry while nationalists used to call
it Derry. Due to the written form Derry/Londonderry (Derry-stroke-Londonderry) the radio
presenter Gerry Anderson invented the term Stroke City (Kerrigan 60).
37 Bogside: Catholic area in Derry where the British army was installed. In 1972 26,000 soldiers
were sent there including tanks, bulldozers, Saracens, and helicopters known as Operation Motorman.
Up to then it was the biggest military operation since Suez (Mulholland 86). Saoirse apparently
is not aware of the significance of this area because she is too young to remember.