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I never thought I would stand in the Lower Shankill,” said Jimmy McAleavey, a Belfast-born-and-bred playwright, as we stepped out of a taxi in the West Belfast neighborhood. Jimmy, a friend, gamely joined me and my husband on a Black Taxi tour of Lower Shankill, today one of the most touristy sites in Northern Ireland’s capital, yet still harrowing for many locals. During “The Troubles”—the sectarian violence that raged in these parts between 1968 and 1998—the neighborhood served as home base for paramilitary groups who fought to keep Northern Ireland in the U.K.
The…