Professor Belfast

A strange-and-dark story about unemployment/poverty/crime in 'sectarian' Northern Ireland, narrated by a 'teacher-ghost' of language-arts drops.

Signing off with this 'elegiac' vignette about the 'haunting' woe(s) of sectarian divide in Western civilization, inspired loosely by the excellent Pakula film The Devil's Own (Brad Pitt). Enjoy, 

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I studied linguistics at Dartmouth (New England) before taking up a controversial position at a Belfast high-school teaching the historical development of the differentiated contours between English and Irish language grammar/lyric trees in sectarian (Catholic-Protestant) troubled Northern Ireland (United Kingdom). My name's Amlan Satan, and this is my faerie-tale.

I have family ties to the Indian/Algerian movements against British/French colonial rule in the 20th-Century and became fascinated by Irish politics/media while studying the roots of English-Irish grammar/linguistic contouring for academics in the Ivy League. It was a certain book about the 'gritty local lifestyle' and walking dreams of the people divided by sectarian conditions in Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK) that drove me to this special academic interest in the social inquiries surrounding post-partition sectarian life/economics in Northern Ireland (before I took up my new 'controversial' teaching position as linguistics 'prof-guy' at a Belfast high-school!). This is my faerie-tale!

I studied theosophy as a single-subject in my cognitive science paired double-major (Dartmouth) before beginning philosophical study for my thesis about 'faerie' (tiny winged humanoids of the forest with messages of wisdom/warning!) mythology/roots in Western folklore. It was the special/symbolic metaphysical 'green-faerie' (a symbol of 'guerrilla-naturalism') that paved the way for my eventual 'inquiry' into sectarian-natural life woe(s) in poor Belfast (UK). The green-faerie (which I named 'Endymion') became my special 'avatar' for this journey.

When I arrived in Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK), I was instantly 'liked' by the Catholic-Protestant 9th-graders as a teacher of rather professional and handsome manner of teaching English-Irish linguistics and its impact on social culture development(s) and lifestyle 'interactions' between the living-people of Northern Ireland (United Kingdom). The kids really thought I was a 'thoughtful' and 'earnest' master-teacher of linguistics/trees and gave me the nickname 'Professor Belfast' in what became a rather idyllic 'academic' experience for me, since I love teaching --- an art-form (really!).

I'd go home from work/school and turn on BBC (news-TV) and note the various stories in Northern Ireland about poverty/unemployment angst-driven schisms between the 'underclass' Irish-Catholic minority population and the British-Protestant majority (descended from generations of English colonial settlers and settled as the dominant group after 20th-Century partition of mainland Catholic Ireland). I'd note the rallies of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) demanding Sinn Fein and UK Parliament address the socioeconomics-conditions disparities and the unemployment-rate of the Catholics creating a 'hole' for crime/depression. This was a living Hell, and it drove a wedge between the two dominant denominations of the world Christian community (Catholicism-Protestantism). It's a sad old tale, really.

Then, one day, while reading an old literature-history text in my Belfast school library about the poverty-history of sad Northern Ireland (UK), something inside me simply snapped. It was the adverse 'underclass' conditions of the Catholics in Belfast that drew more and more displaced (or 'disenfranchised') young depression-wrought Irish men to the emergent 'dark' factions of the IRA such as the Real Irish Republican Army.

Something inside 'Professor Belfast' (me!) simply and 'darkly' snapped. I joined a new 'freelance' group called the 'Foreign Irish Republican Army' (F-IRA), composed of no one but myself! After all, even though I'd been a practicing Catholic (by-faith), I was not Irish by descendancy/heritage. I was an 'American' and became a Belfast linguistics teacher in old Northern Ireland. I decided to form the F-IRA to draw attention to affirmative-action employment assistance program talks in Parliament which would finally lend voice to the horridly displaced Irish-Catholic 'underclass' driven to crimes because of poverty. I became a 'freelance' guerrilla-warrior named 'Storm-Shadow' (a man of car-bombs, targeting parked off-duty cop cars with no actual person sitting inside the car). The Belfast newspaper labeled me the Madman of the UK.

I destroyed over 50 cars, all belonging to police/military men (off-duty) in sectarian (Catholic-Protestant) Belfast, Northern Ireland (United Kingdom). These cars were simply parked cars, and no one was harmed, since no one was ever actually sitting inside the cars at the time of explosion(s)! The message I sent to the media, on behalf of my lone-shark group (F-IRA) read, "These destroyed cars are part of the consumer-market and hence remind Sinn Fein and Parliament that the problems tied to economics/capital in a place where affirmative-action employment assistance program reform needs are neglected will not go away and must be now reminded by this shock-act of non-casualty asset detention!"

I was assassinated by a rogue fanatic member of the Protestant 'loyalty' group of the 'Ulster Volunteer Force' (UVF) on my 40th birthday when it was discovered that the good-old English-Irish linguistics 'Professor Belfast' of the fun Northern Ireland high-school was, in fact, the infamous 'Madman of the UK' and hence labeled a 'dangerous' messenger counter-productive for actual economics policy contracts in modern Parliament. This ex-UVF assassin shot me in the chest with a silencer while I was, ironically enough, walking to my parked car after school/work on a Friday afternoon! I was buried in a Belfast cemetery and my tombstone read, "Either a madman or the green-faerie we called Professor Belfast."

My students in Belfast remembered me fondly, and I'm in heaven now, as a ghostly witness of the continuing problems in sectarian Northern Ireland created by poverty/unemployment and which are now (finally!) being addressed by Sinn Fein and UK Parliament, catering to the poor young Catholic 'underclass' of Catholic-Protestant divided/wartorn Belfast. The school even commemorated my time as 'language-arts' teacher with a cloverleaf wristwatch in the lobby-hallway glass display. After all, I'd been a welcomed/earnest (and 'well-paid') linguistics 'academic' in modern UK.

As a 'faerie-ghost' of Earth now, I think of that 'green-faerie' (Endymion) and the IRA book which 'moved' me to Belfast, Northern Ireland originally. I think of what snapped inside my brain when reading about poverty-linked crime/terror in Northern Ireland and why I felt 'honorable' serving as American academic in Northern Ireland, eventually as the 'single' advocate of the affirmative-action endorsing company (F-IRA). The sad truth of Catholic-Protestant schism in the modern UK is it's a story about money more than dreams!

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)