It became a thing in the town, a break in the sunwashed greyness. The hurleys and the sliotar and the priest. Slitter, shlitter, pucks, hoorleys, hurlings, roars of laughter. An imam strolled slowly down to our quarter one still day and watched silently, then smiled at me and asked could he try. He threw the sliotar and swung wildly and missed and my young friend Halim laughed and quickly caught himself. He spoke gently with careful deference to the old man and I saw by his gestures he was telling him to throw the ball slightly higher and farther outwards from his body, to keep his eye on it all the time, to grip with his left hand lower. The imam connected cleanly on his third try and smiled in satisfaction. He raised his hand and bowed slightly and walked back towards his mosque.
A band of hooting watchers formed. We took to having our few pucks at the same time each evening, after their prayers and our devotions. The hurleys were passed from hand to hand; some quickly caught the hang of it, more swung wild and awkward and rarely connected. When leather fell square and clean on ash and my sliotar soared skyward a roar went up and rose with the swirling dust raised by the minor stampede of men and boys trying to catch the falling ball. A man brought a baseball catcher’s mitt one day and the others booed. He handed it shamefaced to me and pretended he had brought it as a gift.
I rang home for as many hurleys as could be sent. A note came one day from the station that there was a delivery waiting there for me. My curate, a small and quiet man from Clare, handed it to me with a ghost of a smile; we walked through the market and past the commercial quarter and the old traders’ mansions and along the open railway that flanked the olive plantation to the paved widening in the street of dust and stones that served as the train station. We hefted a dozen hurleys home. My quiet curate sweated under his burden of ash. He tutted and huffed and muttered under his breath about me and my blasted hurleys. But when we grounded our load in the sacristy he exhaled loudly and I saw on his face a smile of tired satisfaction, and I heard him later as I stood unseen by him at the altar door, blessing the heap of hurleys and all who would play with them.
The first long puck competition was held the same day the idea of it was conceived. Landed balls were marked in dust and each man stood by his line. Arguments over whose was which threatened to end badly, until the Orthodox lad offered to officiate. A hundred yards was measured with a hand-rolled odometer borrowed from the municipal authority by the cousin of a friend of a hurler called Ahmed. Pucks were measured back from or up from the hundred-yard line. Ah lads, call a howlt, I’d shout in an exaggerated Irish accent if a row broke out, and they’d echo me, laughing. Ah lads, call a howlt! would ring along the sun-baked street as far as the marketplace. I got off a good one, clean and high. At least fifteen yards out from the previous leader. Applause rippled upwards from the marketplace like a handful of pebbles landing in water. Halim stepped up next and smiled at me before launching a sliotar skyward. It will come down with snow on it, eh, Father? And we laughed as the Orthodox priest shouted, Tie! It is a dead tie!, and supporters of my friend Halim protested and measured with fingers and feet and squinted eyes and declared Halim the champion and the competition to be a fix. The decision that one last puck each would decide the day was greeted with silence, then Ha-lim, Ha-lim, chanted rhythmically, rising in speed and volume as my friend toed the line we had drawn in the dust and swung in a tidy and powerful arc and sent the ball buzzing low and fast through the still and heavy air. I shook Halim’s hand before taking my shot and he smiled at me nodding and my curate suddenly broke free of his quietness and roared Go on, Father Anthony, give it holly, lash into it! But my ball fell short of the mark that was scraped in the dust of the street moments earlier and Halim was hoisted shoulder-high and carried off a hero.
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.