An Evil Cradling

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A sudden pang of hunger twisted through Maedhros’ stomach, but haughtily he lifted his head, and with as much defiance as he could push into his voice he replied, “I do not want it… Not from you!” Maedhros’ head lolled down onto his chest as exhaustion stole through him, the tightness of the gag tore at his lips and sent waves of such horrible pressure throbbing through his head. Despair clawed at his heart as for what felt like the thousandth time he squirmed within his bonds, he near ripped his wrists bloody in his attempts to free them, but such efforts were made in vain.

To your posts, now!” the captain thundered; a blast of heat shimmered through the air as it roared: “Else I will have you flayed for insubordination, you and your miserable company alike!”Keenan took his destiny in his hands, dropping out of the plumber's apprenticeship he started, getting himself to university to read English literature, and then becoming a teacher: the only kid in his street, as he has often said - and not in a self- congratulatory manner - to do so.

This is the book Keenan has written. An imaginative exploration of the man. Another kind of cradling, you could say, though this time benevolent. Keenan visits Turlough on his deathbed, comes into the room where he is dying, much as Turlough came to him in his room when he was in despair. And through Keenan's book Turlough is reborn not as a musician, not as a historical character, but as a man. "Fleshy, honest, frail, complex." And if this sounds like a self-portrait, it may be that, too. There are echoes here, too, of Eliot's lines in his great poem Journey Of The Magi: "I had seen birth and death/ But had thought they were different; this birth was/ Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death." And ... "I should be glad of another death."Keenan's parents are both dead – his father's death was pivotal in his decision to go to Beirut. It was as he carried his father's coffin that he made the decision to leave Belfast, and to seek a new life overseas as a teacher at the American University in Beirut. At the time of the kidnap he was wearing one of his father's shirts, and that connection was a crumb of comfort to him – in An Evil Cradling, he writes movingly about how his dad became "not simply a memory but … a real presence … a presence I could feel more than see, a comforting reassurance that eased the hurt into a deeply filled sadness, yet that same sadness as it became reflective, lifted me". His mother died in 2004 having survived his captivity – something she rarely spoke about, Keenan says. "It was her way," he explains. "When I came home she didn't ask, and I didn't tell much at all. My sisters told me that when I was away she didn't speak much about what was happening. When there were rumours that I might be coming home, though, she knitted me a sweater." When Keenan is given a bowl of fruits his ‘eyes are almost burned by what they see’. This suggests that due to his the repetitive, dull and lifeless days his senses became “thirsty” for a stimulus, and when they get it, they overact. This is suggested by the word ‘burned’, as the colours seem to go through his eyes, harming his retina, just as if he was kept in a dark place and then suddenly exposed to light, blinding him. His chaotic reaction is further emphasised by the extreme, seemingly almost exaggerated verbs or adjective for their nouns. Such examples include ‘ecstatic embrace’, ‘torrents of tears’, ‘great rage’ and tears that seem to ‘tear the skin’. These powerful adjectives and verbs suggest his intense experience of the world. He seems to be flooded by these feelings and senses driving him into confusion and madness. This is also proven by his rapidly changing moods, from ecstasy to raging weeping. Keenan claims that ‘the fruits, the colours, mesmerize me in a quiet rapture and spins through my head.’‘Mesmerize’ and ‘rapture’ suggest that he is a prisoner of his senses, almost as if his raging senses rule over his logic and healthy judgement. This makes him go insane and have no control over his thoughts. Celegorm’s words turned in his mind, but Maedhros would not allow them to daunt him. For as the ranks of his retinue formed up behind him, as Gaelor loosed his banner and Orellë sounded a triumphant horn to the skies above, as the drum of galloping hooves filled his ears, grim, unyielding resolve settled in Maedhros’ stomach, and it would not be undone. He hates it, and he hasn't got used to it. "It embarrasses me." A shy, modest man, he accepts it when people come up to him in the pub, offering him drinks, asking to shake his hand. He is polite and politely unimpressed. He doesn't want this fame. "I don't really understand it. What have I done? I didn't ask to be kidnapped."

The blunt tone of knowing in Gothmog’s voice sent spears of foreboding lancing through Maedhros’ heart. For a moment then he wavered: the rich scent of the stew sent hunger cramping through his innards, and though it felt like a betrayal, it felt like a surrender, at last he nodded. He suffered the Balrog to press the spoon to his lips, though his fingers twitched feebly within his bonds as he longed to be freed. As if he were no more than an animal made lame and helpless the Valarauka fed him, but though that degradation stormed through him, still he accepted each spoonful of warm stew past his trembling jaw. Wait!” Maedhros croaked; the words sounded pathetic even in his own ears but still he spoke them to keep that awful gag from his lips. “Wait… you… You’re taking me to him, aren’t you? To… to the Moringotto, to Angband…” Keenan uses various techniques to convey the feeling of human degradation that he went through during the first period of his captivity.Slay any left alive!” A thin voice barked behind him, and with its words and the roar of orcish glee that met them, blank despair crested in Maedhros’ heart as he was led away. “Leave the dead to rot.”

verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Not to myself. To myself I never disappeared, I knew exactly where I was." Crucial, this. All the time that the world knew nothing of his existence, he hadn't ceased to exist, though he had transposed worlds. His reality, confined though it was, was his own. He didn't look outside. "My recollection is that if you focus on the real world, which isn't your real world, because your world is here in your head, then you are going to make life very difficult." In his book he writes. "It is memory that ages us not time." The mind forgets nothing, he says. "I may forget things, but the mind doesn't." In captivity he found himself remembering details from his childhood, things that he didn't even know he knew. "I could smell the linoleum in the house I grew up in. I could feel, twirl in my hand, the earrings that my mother wore when I was a child and she'd carry me in her arms." So he knows, however much he says, what happened in Beirut is the past. "It's like a book I can take down from a shelf and read it and replace." He wasn't sure about fatherhood. "I was anxious, still am. I thought, at 45, I was too old. But they are nice kids, lovely people." And tall, both of them are going to be over six foot. "As a small person I always wanted to be tall." When he was, his mum used to say to him, "'Be careful with what you want, you may get it.' So, she was right. I did get it." Much as Turlough was able to reconcile his two worlds - Ireland the physical place with all its history, "which, though he couldn't see what was going on around him, he could sense", and his own inner life, through music - this book becomes Keenan's reconciliation, the means finally by which he can take control again of his own destiny. You could also say that it signals Ireland's destiny - which is not English control. "I do believe that this island should be one land." All of which makes it a bold book. Keenan is nervous, he says. "It hasn't gone out to the public yet. I think that maybe the people who have read my books before will find this a strange departure." But then this is, of course, its point.His mother, a housewife, used to say to him: "Politics stops at your doorstep.""But I never knew if she meant coming in or going out." His father was a telephone engineer and before that he worked on the buses. A sweet man. "I remember him bringing home all these injured animals he'd find on the road and mum telling him to get them out."