The Gulf of Araby

I wrote this narrative approximately eight years ago। Believe it or not, it is edited down from the original. Somehow it seemed appropriate for this blog. The pictures are from this visit.

I admit that I developed a slight crush on Natalie Merchant when I was in college. It began one day in a Borders bookstore when I first heard Merchant’s Carnival over the speakers and immediately connected the lyrics to my first experience walking the streets of a large city, in this case San Francisco.

An interesting feature of the recording was that of a smoky, raw voice that echoed Merchant’s in the chorus. The liner notes read that it belonged to a woman named Katell Keineg. I took note of the name and let it sink in somewhere into the folds at the back of my mind.

A year later, I was perusing through a used record store in St. Louis. As I made my way through the aisles, looking for bootlegs of Annie Lennox and Fiona Apple concerts, I came across a lonesome copy of a Katell Keineg CD. The cover of the album, O Seasons O Castles, was eye-catching to say the least।

Hues of reds, browns and golds shot forth from the blurred image of a lanky woman wearing what appeared to be an old dress that didn’t fit her well, smiling madly. This was Katell Keineg? How odd, I remember thinking. The CD insert was imprinted with a golden seal indicating that the it had been distributed for promotional purposes only, and that it was illegal for it to be sold. I thought that I had stumbled upon lost treasure. A rare, illegal, promo CD from the mysterious singer Katell Keineg.

I bought the CD for a couple of dollars.

Shortly, I found myself listening over and over to the album. I thought I had discovered a magical songstress. Keineg had the ability to belt out notes so high that they whistled. She had the ability to hold notes so long that they splintered into , what sounded like, the moans of a cow giving birth. Her voice was raw, powerful and, well, different from anything I had ever heard. I had discovered a new instrument.

The last song on the album The Gulf of Araby haunted me upon first listen। (As some of my friends will attest to, this is the one song I play on the piano that will bring me to tears.)

The words drew me in:

If you could fill a veil with shells from Killiney Shore,

And sweet-talk in a tongue that is no more,

If wishful thoughts could bridge,

The Gulf of Araby between,

What is and what can never be

(I've included the complete lyrics at the end of this post.)

Keineg’s knack for throwing in allusions to literature throughout the album impressed me. Surely Killiney and Araby must be references to some obscure text from the Middle East or Ireland. How could they not? I tried in vein to track these evocative places down. Unfortunately, searches on the pre-Google internet came up empty except for mention of the short story Araby by James Joyce.

Years later, I discovered that Killiney Shore was located south of Dublin along the Irish Sea.

* * * * *

This was the day that Pia and I designated to explore Killiney, in hopes of finding Killiney Shore.

We took the train south from Dublin for 45-minutes to the small town. On the way we sat opposite a red-eyed, older woman with thin, ghostly white skin and frayed grey hair. By this point in the trip, I had decided to affectionately give monikers to all of the individuals that Pia and I came across so that I might remember them in the future. I named this woman Mrs. Paddingcheek. She was quite friendly, and helped give us a sense of where we were going. Like the others we had met thus far, she was curious to learn about us as we were Americans.

We got off the train in Killiney and found ourselves in a small, seemingly abandoned train station resting on a lonely stretch of land along the Irish Sea. It appeared as if we were in the middle of nowhere save for some houses and a large castle-like structure in the distance. There were signs pointing to the nearby villages of Dalkey and Killiney. The stationmaster told us that we should walk down the road from the station for about 20-minutes and that we would then find some spectacular scenery.

As we walked, the road began to curve uphill. It was quite pretty. Misty grey clouds hovered and swirled above the sea. Grey waves pounded against a dark, sandy shore dusted with colored stones. In the distance we could see a steep hill containing a dark green forest that seemed to lead up to some kind of cliff overlooking the sea. Rising out of the trees was a brown, conic shape which we believed to be the top of a small, castle.

As we walked, we found luxurious homes and villas built along the seaside surrounded by walls of stone and iron fences. We first happened upon a man walking an overweight weimaraner. I named the pooch Killiney.

The road grew increasingly steep as we headed closer to the woods - the trees on our left, and a stone wall on our right.

Soon we crossed paths with Mr. and Mrs. Helpfulhands, an older couple entering Vico Road from a path leading down to the shore. They told us that we could go down the path to the shore there.However, if we continued to walk for another 20-minutes, we would find even more spectacular scenery.

Just as Pia and I were ready to continue our walk, Mrs. Helpfulhands asked if we had come to see Bono’s house. (Yes, Bono of U2 fame.) We said that we hadn’t, puzzled. She was surprised as she had expected us initially to ask her where his home was. We asked her why, and she told us that were standing front of it. Yup, right there at Killiney Shore, we found Bono’s estate. I had noticed that there was a good deal of graffiti on the stone wall, however I hadn’t realized that it surreptitiously protected a home. I looked closely at the wall. The graffiti spelled out notes to Bono – love letters and praise.

We continued uphill, and soon met another elderly couple. I named them Mr. and Mrs. Evergreen.

Mr. and Mrs. Evergreen encouraged us to hike up into the forest and continue uphill until we came across a concrete path. Apparently the view would be well worth it.

We entered what seemed to be a temperate rainforest – lush, green, moist ferns and moss grew wildly alongside a muddy, narrow trail. We followed a path of dead leaves uphill, winding around and about. Eventually we found a smaller trail of dead leaves and mud leading away from our path and up to the incline towards the cliffs. Pia and I decided to take the road less traveled and ventured up a steep, slippery path. We hiked up and up and up; tremendous exercise, great cardio!

Eventually we found the concrete path at what seemed to be the top of the incline. We knew we were at a high altitude, but we didn’t know just how high.

We walked south, continuing uphill, and passed a number of people walking their dogs. Then we came across an opening the top of the cliffs along the sea! We had made it. The view was unbelievable. There was the long dark coast of Killiney running along the swelling seas. Green, green, green long grasses and short gymnosperms revealed large, elephantine rocks. The wind was fierce, and blew our hair madly. It was fairly cold but not freezing. There, I felt the splendor of being alive – free in the roaring wind surrounded by the sprawling earth and sea. Could this portion of the Irish Sea be the Gulf of Araby?

There were a few interesting structures atop the mountain. One was a pyramid-like monument with stairs leading to the top. A man wearing an Irish cap stood atop the pyramid looking out at the sea. Behind us was the cone we had seen from below. The structure was small, a castle-like monument built in the late 19^th-century. As we approached it, we passed the man with the Irish cap. I noticed that he had tears running down his cheeks. (I didn’t give him a name. He didn’t need one.)

Pia and I walked down from the summit renewed. The hike down was a welcomed change to our hike uphill. We wandered into the small town of Killiney and continued downhill until we found ourselves at the crossroads where we had met Mr. and Mrs. Helpfulhands. We followed their path down to the shore, walking along Bono’s stone wall. The narrow trail turned into a kind of corridor. Along the way I stopped and took a loose stone from the wall for my friends David and Irene, huge fans of U2.

The shore was magnificent. Huge, blackish, smooth stones filled with sands sprinkled heavily with smooth pebbles of different colors and sizes. There were a good number of folks and dogs on the beach. I knelt down and began collecting rocks and symbolically placed them in the hood of my raincoat. For me, I was filling a veil with shells from Killiney Shore.

We walked back to the train station and headed back to Dublin. On the train, we sat opposite a handsome, young man with dark, curly hair from sporting all black. He told us that he was from County Mayo. I named him Darkcurls. He, like many others, wondered where we were from. His accent seemed richer, somehow deeper than the Dubliners we had met, and his face turned a bright shade of crimson when he spoke.

Pia was exhausted so we taxied back to our inn to rest.

Once Pia woke up from her nap, we got spiffied up and took a bus to one of the quays at the Liffey. On the bus, I told Pia of my wish to go to as many exotic places around the world as possible. Places like Iceland, Suriname, Madagascar, Namibia, Thailand and on and on. We both agreed that we would love to travel to South Korea and Japan.

All this time, an older man with golden hair fading fast to silver, and big, swollen red eyes sat across from us. As the bus driver announced the next stop, he turned to us and said suddenly, “Make sure you go!”

“To South Korea?” I asked.

“To all the… places… travel… I could have… traveled but I… made a mistake… you only go through… life once!”

Pia was silent. I stared directly into his red eyes and asked, “Where did you want to travel to?”

“40 years ago… to England.”

That was all he said for it was his stop. He got up and hobbled off the bus, limping.

It was as if we had been visited by a prophet or a ghost. Pia thought he was drunk. “No,” I stated firmly. “He was not drunk. He might have some sort of palsy, but

he was not drunk.”

Pia nodded and said, “You know, you are living your dream.”

And the bus drove on into the night’s carnival।

The Gulf of Araby by Katell Keineg

If you could fill a veil with shells from Killiney's shore
And sweet talk in a tongue that is no more
If wishful thought could bridge
The Gulf of Araby
Between what is
What is
What is
And what can never be

If you could hold the frozen flow of New Hope Creek
And hide out from the one they said you might meet
If you could unlearn all the words
That you never wanted heard
If you could stall the southern wind
That's whistling in your ears
You could take what is
What is
What is
What is
To what can never be

One man of seventy whispers free at last
Two neighbors who are proud of their massacres
Three tyrants torn away in a winter's month
Four prisoners framed by a dirty judge
Five burned with tyres
Six men still inside
And seven more days to shake at the great divide


The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby
The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby

Well, we would plough and part the earth to bring you home
And harvest every miracle ever known
If they laid out all the things
That these ten years want to bring
We would gladly give them up
To bring you back to us
O, there is nothing we would not give
To kiss you and believe you can take what is
What is
What is
To what can never be

One man of seventy whispers not free yet
Two neighbors who make up knee-deep in their dead
Three tyrants torn away in the summer's heat
Four prisoners lost in the fallacy
Five, on my life
And six, I'm dead inside
And seven more days to shake at the great divide

The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby
The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby