{"id":10038,"date":"2022-06-20T03:21:17","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T03:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/tw\/?post_type=product&p=10038"},"modified":"2022-06-20T03:21:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T03:21:17","slug":"suicide-of-the-ceasefire-babies","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/tw\/suicide-of-the-ceasefire-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Northern Ireland, more people took their own lives in the 16 years after the Troubles than died during them. Why? Lyra McKee finds out.<\/h4>\n

So the answer to your question is yes.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re ever really gonna kill yourself, yes, please,<\/em>
\nCall me.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Extract from \u2018I Won\u2019t Write Your Obituary\u2019 by Nora Cooper<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHe\u2019s only 17, how can he be dead?\u201d<\/p>\n

For once, Big Gay Mick wasn\u2019t saying much. \u201cI don\u2019t know. We just seen his stepdad getting out of a taxi at the top of the street and he told us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

There was no getting any other details out of him; he was in shock. Big Gay Mick was not normally lost for words. Stick-thin, with a baseball cap permanently pulled down over his eyes and a gold chain around his neck, you might have mistaken him for one of the neighbourhood hard men until you heard his voice: shrill, camp and a fair bit higher than what it should have been post puberty. In our little teenage gang, he was the only one brave enough to be openly gay. It wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

We grew up just off Murder Mile, a stretch of the Antrim Road so called because of the number of casualties there during the Troubles (the wider area was known as the Murder Triangle for the same reason). On the street where Big Gay Mick lived, beside a \u2018peace wall\u2019 that separated us from the Protestants, loyalist paramilitaries would drive down, single out a target and pull the trigger. Even though Mick lived just two streets away from me, I wasn\u2019t allowed to go to his until I was 10 years old, two years after the Good Friday Agreement \u2013 a key part of the peace process \u2013 was signed. In an area where murder and mayhem created hardened men, it was not easy to be as camp as Christmas. He managed, though, all the while smirking at a member of the local paramilitary who would shout homophobic abuse at us as we walked by.<\/p>\n

The swagger was gone today. I was grilling him and he didn\u2019t have the answers I wanted.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can he be dead?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Reference:<\/h4>\n
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