Belfast Bookman!

Narrated 'tale' of an Ivy League (Dartmouth) man who manages a bookshop in Northern Ireland (UK) and encounters a 'specter' of normality!

A 'fable' of living proportion inspired very loosely by Notting Hill (Hugh Grant). Hope you like it, 

----

====

I graduated from Dartmouth, first as an undergrad with a degree in social science(s) and then with a business degree (master's) and was inspired by the New England landscapes and decided to 'emigrate' to Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) to open/manage an inter-religious bookshop. My name's Amlan Satan.

I moved from New Hampshire (Hanover) to Belfast (Northern Ireland) with a special interest to operate a bookshop in the heart of the 'troubled' city catering to both Irish-Catholic and British-Protestants consumers/readers alike! People in Northern Irelan (UK) call me the Bookman!

Having a respectful business-degree from an acclaimed American college/school really helps if you're trying to buy the social 'licensing' rights to operate a bookshop in sectarian troubled Northern Ireland (Belfast, UK). I therefore have mounted by degree in a prominent section of my Belfast bookshop, so my customers/patrons 'know' they're in good faith with a trusted practitioner of traffic-administration/commercial-venture!

In Northern Ireland (United Kingdom), I drive a special white vintage Volvo sedan, and I've renovated its engine and put in a V8-system to give it an extra drag-reliability in the Northern Ireland streets of Belfast and for countryside trips I take in the weekend(s). I love my car. It's the perfect auto for this 'Bookman' of Belfast.

I boast a 'wealth' of literature in my Belfast bookshop as the proverbial 'Bookman' of the modern-UK, and most are of Irish folklore, history, culture, and politics. However, I also carry great works from world-literature such as those of Solzhenitsyn (Russia), Dean Koontz (America), Edith Wharton (America), and of course, James Joyce (Ireland).

I see the many Catholic-Protestant youth (students) of 'troubled' Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK), and I envision them growing up and becoming 'regular' customers/patrons at my Belfast bookshop and perhaps learning to think of this UK-'Bookman' as a real-life 'Man-in-the-Yellow-Hat' (Curious George) of the modern Western landscape!

The books I carry in my shop as the 'Bookman' of Belfast (I think!) reflect my interest(s)/passion(s) for traffic imagination, globalism ideology, and pluralism states. This is a time of great globalism-IQ, and as the Bookman of Belfast, I try to re-present myself as a 'merchant' of the readership of inter-religious life in the United Kingdom! That's my mission, and my collection reflects this goal to say.

The books we order for our consumer/reader-shelves abound from modern times as well, so my customers/patrons know they're greeting a great 'breadth' of the volume of world-literature and Irish readership available for the UK-citizen who simply wants to indulge in the living 'sensibility' of accessible intelligence daydreams.

After-hours, I sing some songs in my Belfast apartment and read some of my own writings and enjoy Bailey's Irish Creme with some creamy doughnuts and rose-tobacco! This is the good life. However, my story here as the Belfast Bookman is about take a real 'odd' twist, folks! Follow along.

One thing I love to do is cook. In fact, I've become quite good at generating some nice blendings of Irish and Indian stews/soups for myself or for some of my guests/friends who happen to be bookshop customers/patrons and who've commented that my culinary skills are quite good. Also, I'm my biggest fan of all!

Now, this is where the Bookman-tale goes strange, folks. One day, a strange woman of eccentric demeanor walked into my bookshop in Belfast and appeared quite beautiful. She'd adorned her silky Irish red hair and approached me and said she loved my book collections and hinted she might be tied to a major Western movie-studio seeking to make a film-u-mentary about Belfast commerce and intellectualism in these complex times of traffic/globalism. I fell in love with her, and we got married one year later. She then disappeared and left me a note which suggested she might be part of the dangerous IRA organization! I didn't see her or hear from her until one season later, a friend of mine to whom I presented a photo of this mysterious woman (who never told me her real name for some unknown 'literary' rationale!) told me, to my literal/figurative horror, that this woman died years ago in Dublin (Ireland) and that his father was acquainted with this woman who'd been linked to some Sinn Fein rogue trouble. I realized that I'd been linked for all this time...to an Irish ghost!

The moral of this strange Belfast yarn is that I continue to manage/operate my beloved bookshop as the Bookman of the UK, and that I'll never forget that 'mystery-woman' whom I'm convinced really was a real-life ghost from the afterlife/eternity! I don't know what to make of this very unusual experience, but I do know this --- she'll always be the 'designed dame' of the Bookman of Belfast. Like her, I'll die and be buried in this region of the West.

====

"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)