I finally got around to Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and I ended up listening to the audiobook, narrated by Matthew Blaney. Blaney is from Northern Ireland, and there’s something about the way his accent carries the story. It makes these people feel like neighbors rather than historical figures, which makes the violence hit even harder.
There’s a musicality to his voice that got into my head the way a jingle does. I found myself repeating lines in his accent while doing dishes, folding laundry, walking between rooms. The one that really stuck was a phrase from a Belfast graffiti mural: “God made the Catholics, but the Armalite made us equal.” I didn’t even know what an Armalite was before listening. Still. I must have said this phrase fifty times the day after I heard it.
I wasn’t thinking deeply about the Troubles while scrubbing a pan. But the words had an arc to them in a way they just don’t in my flat American English. Which is perhaps its own lesson about the conflict: that slogans about political violence can have a rhythm and poetry to them that makes them stick and makes them feel almost good to say. It’s part of how they work.