Portraits From ‘Stab City’

This past May, I flew to Ireland from Toronto to be a photographer at a corporate event. The conferences were being held in Limerick and Dublin. Limerick was our first destination, an interesting welcome to the fresh and friendly country. I was a black guy from the inner-cities of Canada who somehow made his way to Ireland and so I wanted to explore the city as soon as I flung my luggage on my hotel bed. Unfortunately, Mustafa The Poet (my roommate during the trip) was too tired to entertain my taste for adventure. He wanted to be fully energized for his performance the next day. I was a little hesitant to go on my own, but then I remembered that whatever's meant to happen will happen.

As I started walking down the streets of Limerick, people smiled and said, "Hello"—just what I expected. I almost forgot the heaviness of being a black Muslim in North America; I felt redefined. But as I walked a bit further, it went from friendly to sketchy. There was a sudden cold in the air, and my gut was telling me to go back. I saw a little girl on a bike with two of her friends and, after snapping a quick photo, I asked them where their family was. They laughed and pointed at a house. After realizing that they looked like they were pulled out of a scene from The Shining, I asked myself why I was letting them walk me to their house. Moments later, I found myself talking to their full family—the mother of the children told me no one had ever taken a photo of them with a real camera. I sat down with them for hours. After zoning out for a split second to think that my life could be in danger, I remembered again that, in Ireland, almost no one had guns, I smiled and kept talking.

After taking some photos of her family, the mother advised me to put my camera and cellphone away since the sun was setting. I asked her why I shouldn't be out, and she said that some of the youth were violent and she didn't want me to get stabbed. One of the boys standing there said as he laughed, "Don't you know? Limerick's nickname is 'Stab City.'" I thought, Damn, am I really in Ireland?

As I was heading back to the hotel, I got lost, and I was forced to ask a teen on his bike where my hotel was. Waving my hotel card at him, I quickly realized that I made myself look like a rich foreigner asking for trouble. The guy looked at his watch and said "you have five minutes to get home" while pulling his shirt up and showing me a hidden knife. I turned the corner and sprinted. This was all too familiar—it felt like a dream. But I made it home safely thanks to an Irish woman who gave me proper directions.

I had so much on my mind. I thought back to the mother asking me to advise Jordan, her son, about his marijuana use. I realized then that the reason the interaction was so natural was because I knew that family. They were living in a tucked-away community like my own. They invited me into their home and the emptiness was familiar: they were poor. The son's bravado, their daughter, Aileen, whose dancing aspirations she fears may never become a reality—I'd heard these stories before, I've felt this all. Right down to my sprint home.

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