Donal Ryan - A Slanting of the Sun

Tell me words said in Tipperary, Halim would say. Words of the people who would buy chips from my cousin.

Well, youssir, how you keeping?

Yerra shur I’m only dragging.

Soft day, thank God.

Begod tis.

Garlic chip and cheese, two battered sausage there please, I’d ate shtones I’m so hungry.

No bother, boy, gimme wan minute.

And on and on I’d go, filling Halim’s head with paddywhackery. He’d ring his cousin before our pucks the odd evening from a brick of a mobile. Hey, you sir, you’re some stones, this is Paddy here, from over beyond, will you do me up a takeaway until I collect it? I’d ate the arse of a low-flying duck, so I would. I’ll have … And he’d laugh and laugh until he could hardly breathe and his cousin’s roars of laughter in faraway Tipp would crackle through the ancient Nokia and Halim would declare that one day he’d see this place, Tipperary, and hear these words spoken in truth, and see these mighty hurling men. He would shake Brendan Cummins by the hand, the man with the longest puck in all of Tipperary. All of Ireland? Yes. The world? Maybe, probably.

My bishop arrived from the capital in a stately old Mercedes driven by a man who hunched himself in a semi-circle over the steering wheel. He was weary, languorous, unsmiling. We concelebrated and had dinner and the town’s prominent Catholics were invited and he was gifted specially imported cognac and local wine and olive oil. As his crescent-shaped man waited at the wheel of his idling car to return him to his palace the next day he proffered his ring dourly and said, Enough with the games. And then he was gone.

I wrote a letter to Jimmy Ryan in Newport asking for a hurley for a lad of five feet eleven, with a good bas, not quite goalkeeper size, and a grand light handle. I asked would he put a grip on it in the blue and gold of Tipperary and send it in as far as Nenagh to Brother John Daly who I wanted to write a message along the length of it in calligraphy with an indelible marker. I felt a prickle of excitement each time I thought of myself presenting Halim with his gift, crafted by Jimmy Ryan of Newport, a legendary maker of hurleys.

Clouds rolled in around that time, at the start of winter. Flurries of violence in the distant capital, lightning protests quickly doused. Militias formed in the provinces, government troops massed at flashpoints and hotspots and strongholds. Halim’s hurley arrived in the town on the same train that brought two dozen dark-eyed, laughless men with guns of unreflecting metal. The Muslim women veiled more fully and walked and dressed with greater observance than before, never venturing past their doorsteps without a male relative a step or two in front of them. The Orthodox Christians and the Catholics for the most part stayed at home, behind their gates. The olive plantation slowed production; three of their trucks were requisitioned. The police were nowhere to be seen. I had never hefted a hurley so perfect.

Halim stood across the street from my church, facing east, not facing in. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, stroking his new beard furiously, darting looks around in all directions except mine. I walked across to him. I didn’t bring my gift for him from its resting place beside the holy-water font. He stood at a right angle from me as he spoke. All sorts of accusations had been levelled against him by his mother’s cousin. Apostasy had been whispered. He had been questioned by a group of the newcomers. Why was he friends with a Catholic priest? What were these games he played? Who else was involved in this group that hit balls with sticks up and down the streets? They were rebels, and were gathering all the men to fight. Sharia was to be observed in its fullness, apostates were to be killed, infidels driven out. Leave, my friend, Halim said. Today. And the sun flashed a spear of light from the tear at the side of his eye. As he walked away I saw that he was limping heavily, his left hand pressed against his ribs.

Scattered showers of shells fell on the outskirts of the town but government forces largely bypassed us at the start. My curate said We really ought to leave. I told him go if he wanted. I declared my church a refuge for all. Mass would be said daily and devotions would be at the usual time each evening. I hurled my sliotar up against the transept wall for thirty minutes after devotions without fail. Government forces woke fully to our town, realized we had become a stronghold, a hotbed, an enclave. Short warning was given, a helicopter gunship on a reconnaissance flight above us was shot at by hotheads and that was all that was needed. The gunship retraced its earlier route, lower, its nose angled more steeply down as though the machine itself was peering, searching. Again the rebels fired on it and on its third looping sortie it was spitting death. The olive plantation lorries that had returned two days previously were rolled to the town square and ancient-looking mortar cannons were taken from beneath the tarpaulin on their flatbeds and embedded in the hard ground. Three-man mortar teams were assembled. Coordinates were hastily applied, and the rebels began a vaguely aimed pounding of guessed-at government positions.

My curate begged me to stay inside, to join him as he sat worrying his rosary beads against the stoutest column in the nave, beneath the sturdiest centre arch. Let them come, I roared, and swung my hurley as fiercely as my muscles would allow, and sweated in the still dry heat. People carried children and belongings through my church’s door and camped beneath sheets between pews shoved back to back. I asked nothing of anyone. Government troops laid light siege at first, tightening inwards slowly with the days. The rebels held the centre.

They came in ragged battle dress through our gate three days ago, six of them, in two rows. Halim was left half-forward. There were Christians and Muslims and agnostics at shelter from the storm of fire in the coolness of the inside of my church. The big lad at full-forward swung his arm back and caught Halim by the front of his jersey and dragged him forward and out to the front. Halim looked at the ground before him and up at me and around at his cowering homeless neighbours and he pointed up at Our Lord, a long finger unfurled from a shaking hand. His other hand gripped the wooden stock of an automatic rifle. Leave this place, he roared, and the suddenness and the pitch of it startled me. I wasn’t sure in my shock was he addressing Christ or me. Leave this place, FATHER , and he didn’t look at me but he spat the word. His comrades stood behind and before me; I was shoved in the back and shoved from the front until my knees weakened and I was suddenly kneeling. A rifle-butt struck the floor before me. Your saviour-on-a-stick won’t help you if you’re still here tomorrow, a voice not Halim’s said. And Our Lord on His Cross was taken from above my altar and smashed and splintered across the flagstones. As they left I saw Halim stop beside the holy-water font. I saw him see his gift and the words along it and he looked back at me and his face had a shadow across it not made by the sun. And then he was gone.

They came again the next day, and this time there were no words spoken to me. Four of them had their rifles slung across their backs while two of them flanked and pointed, swinging their barrels around in slow, threatening arcs. I recognized one of them as one of our earliest hurlers, a friend of Halim’s, a happy, smiling fellow who had always worn an Arsenal jersey and asked me once could I tell him the best way to become a doctor. How swiftly men are robbed of light. The four scanned the refugees on the floor of my church and grabbed a man each and dragged their prisoners crying away. I stood in the doorway, my brave curate to my right, and he was shot in the chest and the round made a hole in him through which I could briefly see the sixth station of the cross on the far wall and the word KINDNESS carved below it and the butt of a rifle sent stars and sky reeling down around my head.