Imran - FIRA

A wandering guerrilla-poet named Imran must grip the balances between sectarian troubles and discovery while dotting Northern Ireland!

A modern UK-politics vignette in this 2oth-anniversary commemoration year of 9/11, inspired very loosely by the unusual work On the Road (Kerouac). Enjoy (and thanks for reading!), 

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Belfast, Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) is a troubled area of socioeconomic disparities between the Irish-Catholic minority population and the British-Protestant majority population descended from generations of English colonial settlers. This schism creates poverty, crime, frustrations, guerrilla-terrorism, sectarian violence between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and divisions within the world Christian community in Western civilization. There's sometimes pure anarchy in the streets, all based on economics, culture, religion, and lifestyle, so this is a new brand of urban malaise in Western civilization, very different from the gang-warfare atmosphere in Los Angeles or inner-city general narcotics crime of New York.

For centuries, Irish resistance against British rule in Ireland and Northern Ireland has created forms/imagery regarding masked guerrilla-warfare and retaliatory police-military violence, leading journalists around the world to consider this troubled area of Europe an 'eyesore' for tourism or life itself. There have been many Irish uprisings (e.g., Easter Rising of 1916), horrible incidents (e.g., Bloody Sunday), and various levels of peace-talks between Sinn Fein (the legal/political 'branch' or arm of the IRA) and UK Parliament, leading to many kinds of cease-fires and temporary sanity in this sectarian hellhole of masked terrorist 'candymen' and frustrated aggressive Protestant police-forces.

Imran is an Ivy League (Dartmouth) student in the United States in the modern era. He's studying Eamon de Valera's book India and Ireland, comparing India's anticolonial movement against British rule and Ireland's long-time resistance against British rule. Imran has become a 'nerdist' of guerrilla-warfare, terrorism politics/dialogue, modern capitalism-globalism underworld traffic issues such as blood-diamond smuggling, and democracy-rhetoric. Dartmouth College affords Imran a special American 'den' for private contemplation about the troubled United Kingdom.

IMRAN: I shall establish the 'Foreign Irish Republican Arm' as an advocacy-guerrilla group in Belfast for actions to municipality.

Imran recruits 'agents' from around the world for this 'Foreign Irish Republican Army' (FIRA) mission in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has recruits read India and Ireland and understand/appreciate the delicate traffic-frailty in the United Kingdom created by neglect of certain affirmative-action employment reform policies/ideas between Sinn Fein and British Parliament that would otherwise favor the unemployed under-class Irish-Catholic minority and catalyze greater forms of anticolonial inter-religious democratic teamwork, modeled after historic diaries.

IMRAN: I shall walk the streets of America and Northern Ireland as a 'street-poet' or guerrilla of socialization intelligence!

Imran becomes known to Sinn Fein and a special faction of the IRA in the new millennium, as people begin to compare him to a comic book character or a folk-literature hero, since he's already organized 'Foreign Irish Republican Army' (FIRA) missions to rid Belfast of underworld-piracy catalyzing blood-diamond smuggling/traffic alluring Irish-Catholic unemployed men and even British-Protestant yuppies to exploit frailties in the legal system and destroy hopes for commerce-driven inter-religious peace in the United Kingdom. Imran also coordinates a guerrilla action through FIRA and destroys a UVF rogue hideout where chemical weapons are being developed to strike at recruit-safehouses designed to create more passages for Sinn Fein sympathizers in Belfast. Imran is now being compared to Peter Pan, though he's technically Algerian (not Irish!), despite his newfound Catholic beliefs.

IMRAN: The 'Foreign Irish Republican Army' will establish ties to Friends of Sinn Fein and Catholic academies for legal money.

Imran then goes on a secret 'guerrilla' train journey through Northern Ireland, exploring the rich greenery and lands of the troubled country, potentially a source for poetry/art but now a battleground for sectarian betrayals/frustrations. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams suggested that Northern Ireland would be like a tourist-destination like Venice but instead is a terrorism-hellhole like formerly overly-troubled Kashmir (Hindu-Muslim terrorism following independence and partition of India-Pakistan from British rule). Imran's special train journey through Northern Ireland inspires him to make sketches and artworks depicting the natural innocence behind country-folklore.

IMRAN: The guerrilla-man in modern civilization, resisting colonial rule, must create pencil-images of heroine-yearnings.

Imran's inspired to start keeping a journal of his train journey through the Northern Ireland countryside and begins to remember his idyllic studies/times in America, at Dartmouth College reading James Joyce and watching Notre Dame games on American-TV (NBC). He begins to think about the 'social distances' between peoples even in modern times, created purely out of economics.

IMRAN: The poor 'Luck of the Irish' concerns the lost pots of leprechaun-gold to the hellfire of sectarian human disparities.

INTERPOL: Blood-diamond corruption today threatens world-capitalism and can sully cities and complicate hellholes.

All this dualism between folk-humanity history and rhetoric and the hell of Northern Ireland sectarian dissatisfaction, compounded by modern era fires like blood-diamond smuggling/traffic has Imran wondering if Americans, especially Catholic-Americans, have overlooked an entire Catholic sector in modern Western civilization while living under the amenities/comforts of modern Western urban law-and-order.

IMRAN: I shall read Peter Pan and think of the strangeness between Catholic-Protestant rifts in old and new Northern Ireland.

Is Imran just a guerrilla-poet like Edward Abbey, since he caters to greenery-imagination regarding conservation/protection of Earth/nature from sectarian pollution, or is he more like Peter Pan himself, choreographing a world-travel experience regarding the 'worked' actions of inter-religious dilemmas between Catholics-Protestants in the marvelous United Kingdom?

IMRAN: I've met a beautiful Northern Irish woman near Belfast and will marry her...and settled down as a man of letters.

This s a modern Western civilization diary-tale about a man who's constantly 'on the road' because of academic/political inspirations, moved by guerrilla-intrigue, and daydreaming about achieved inter-religious sanity and love in the otherwise green-gorgeous Northern Ireland. Will this man Imran discover a road to peaceful/legal comforts in these troubling times of modern Earth? Will he work out a route to the practical dilution of FIRA with Sinn Fein?

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)