We. They.

Michel Heitzmann

© Michel Heitzmann - Personal corner

Belfast, June 2026. Another riot week.

I walked the streets during a week of riots.

It is incomprehensible.

There is a wall. The road gates close at night.

© Michel Heitzmann - What time is it?

On one side: Protestant. Ulster. British. God save the King. Pro-Israel.

© Michel Heitzmann - Remember

On the other: Catholic. Irish. Republican. A united Ireland. Pro-Palestine.

© Michel Heitzmann - Anti-climb paint

Flags and accents give you the clues. So do the memorials to the barbarities.

Each side borrows a far-off war to prove itself. A colonel who fathered the Israeli army, on one gable. Ragged children and a slingshot, on the other. The same fight. Two mirrors. One wall.

© Michel Heitzmann - Holding a sling shot

I was curious. I walked. I talked. An intruder with a camera.

The Quiet Frame. With palpable tension. On faces. On walls. On faces on walls. On crosses. And more walls.

© Michel Heitzmann - Women on a wall

A tired woman waiting under God save the King (pictured above). A man on his cigarette, beside the bronze of the painter who spent his life drawing men like him. A family braced before I raised the camera. Children who have not learned to brace yet.

© Michel Heitzmann - Time stands still

Then Tuesday. A man stabbed. A video. Houses chosen in advance. Fire. Water cannon on the second night. The old line gave way to a new one. The engine found someone new. Darker faces, suddenly unwelcome.

© Michel Heitzmann - Peace Wall

I came home. Sunday my own country votes on ten million. It wears a good coat. Sustainability. The land. The trains. The rents. I believe in that concern. I live by it. But its own backers admit the number is symbolic. That the vote is really about migration. Under the good coat, the oldest question there is. Not how many. Which kind.

We.

They.

A ballot is not a burning street. A country is allowed to argue about its size. The danger was never the argument. It is the slide. From how many to which kind. From a number to a face.

Belfast is the far end of that slide.

Quiet was never a promise of comfort.

Quiet is eerie.

The walls in Belfast are loud. Loud is easy to walk past. The vote at home is quiet. Quiet is easy to wave through. These are the faces under the flags.

© Michel Heitzmann - Life is on

The same faces stand behind a figure on a ballot.

Enough.

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