The train leaving Dublin, bound north for Belfast, flows through greeness I’ve rarely experienced. As we progress, not suddenly, but ever so gradually there’s this void ahead. An emptiness ahead. Called Northern Ireland.

The train ride itself was bland at best, which under the circumstance was perfect as I’d been reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Northern Ireland’s landscape was, lacking the rolling hills I’d just left in the South, so terribly plain that the long, macabre trip was complementing my Russian novels.

Six hours later, the train docks in the station and we empty out. I’m one of but a small handful of passengers unloading. I realize that this is Sunday and that all over the world, Catholic or Protestant or Hindu, Sunday is a quiet, peaceful empty day and there won’t be much of anything happening.

Even so, the walk from the derelict train station to dusty downtown Belfast was so barren it was lonely.

Finally, approaching the outskirts of the city itself I fall into step about twenty feet behind a lovely young lady and what was obviously her three or four-year old daughter. The small girl is priceless, dressed up in her Sunday clothes, she’s a spitting image of her mother, wearing one of those ‘Granny’ flower-printed dresses all the way down to the ankles. The picture of them together walking was also priceless, but unfortunately I wasn’t presumptuous enough to photograph them.

As the train station fades behind us, step for step I remain ten paces behind, the path develops into a small road and the appearance of the town of Belfast beckons.

The young mother, walking slightly hunched, tired and proud and strong and vulnerable, is carrying fresh fruits and vegetables in a plastic bag hanging from one arm, and her daughter reaching up is holding onto the other.

Priceless.

We are the only three people in the picture, on a lonely, dusty quiet street in Northern Ireland.

And I am happy. I am happy following behind the purity of the scene.

But alas, the sight and the sadness of what was about to happen would forever be burned into my mind’s eye.

We walk for what was probably a half a mile down another deserted side street, and I am still hanging around behind. I’m thinking my thoughts and they’re thinking theirs. We turn the corner to what was obviously going to open up to a main city street on this quiet Sunday afternoon, and I cannot believe my eyes. A British tank in the middle of the dusty street, with soldiers in full riot gear standing nearby. Machine-guns present, albeit hanging down, at rest.

I mean, come on, it’s Sunday. Faceless soldiers behind plastic shielded helmets.

Not a soul in sight except me in my ‘I Love New York’ T-shirt trailing behind the young mother and her little precious child. The mother continues to walk past the tank and soldiers without even glancing up. I follow, taking in the entire scene.

The little girl, still walking hand in hand with her mother, fingers intertwined, her face slowly turning to see the motionless soldiers as she walks, barely the faintest flicker of curiosity in her eyes.

Not one ounce of comprehension.

Yet.

Thank God.

I stop dead in my tracks and watch them until they pass out of sight. The mother never, ever looked up at the disheartening site or even broke stride. Probably not an ounce of comprehension either, having intercepted and blocked it out.

Or more than likely, probably too much understanding.

The tanks, silent, the soldiers, immobile. I see the plastic bag of groceries swinging along one side, and her cherished little girl clinging on to the other. Life goes on. It always will. I didn’t know whether to be sad or angry or disgusted or what.

But I’m not what I was before.

And there in a lonely street in a tired, dusty land sit tanks and stand soldiers. It just isn’t my fight and I just don’t understand. The overwhelming atmosphere of Belfast is sadness. This dry, dusty, poor town has seen enough, and I walk down the main street long enough to purchase a Coke Light and head straight back for the train station.

I’ve learned something out of all this, but for the life of me, right now I can’t tell what it might be. All I know is that we’re not doing what God wanted us to do.

Along the way I buy a local newspaper, and every single article I read contains some sort of local violence. The violence I did not see while in Belfast - the effects, the sadness, I did.