27th July 1981, Maze Prison, Northern Ireland

There’s a shrill alarm ringing. I used to wake up before the alarm, but recently I’ve slept like the dead. Sleep still has its hold on me. It’s pressing down on me like a thousand blankets. I hear whistles now, and batons banging on the doors as the guards do their rounds.

“Up, up, time to get up!”

My eyes crack open. It’s a sunny day, a rare and welcome event in Ireland. I stretch out my body, carefully. Everything is stiff and mechanical, like trying to peddle a rusty bicycle.

It’s been 28 days since I last ate something and my body aches at every movement. I sit up in my bed slowly, using all my concentration, willing my muscles to pull me up. I need a break before trying to stand.

During the first week, food was all I could think about. I was obsessively drinking water and my sense of smell was heightened. I could smell food from the other side of the prison. My stomach was a void, a vacuum. I had waves of desperation to fill it with anything I could find.

As time went on, the weakness in my body took over. My senses have been fading for a while. There are times when my eyesight would fail for a few moments, a black fuzziness consuming my field of vision. I could do nothing but wait and deepen my breathing. Working so hard on just keeping my body functioning, the hunger became ignorable for a lot of the time. Now and then, the pangs would kick in and they were crippling. It was like an animal had sunk his claws into me and squeezed with all his might. 

“You alright Larry?” Sean, one of my cellmates, comes over to pull me up. The backs of my knees pulse in agony as I straighten my legs. Thankfully, I can stand ok. Now that I’m on my feet and the worst of the pain is over, I practice walking up and down the cell. The fear of losing my ability to walk is real to me this week. 

The guards are giving out breakfast. The prisoners who are not on strike eat in their cells because they don’t trust us to have a lunchroom. We spend twenty-three hours a day locked in a room, there’s too many protests and too much violence to let us out any more than that. 

The strikers are allowed to wander up and down the halls. I guess the guards figure we’re half dead already, we’re not going to be putting up much of a fight. When I walk I’m in a trance, the prison is rocking back and forth like a sailboat. The walking calms me, reminds me there’s still things to see and the world still exists. I watch the cracks in the walls, or my own shrivelling feet, and I laugh. When you’re starving, things are funny that shouldn’t be funny.

The best thing is talking to the others. There’s five of us at the moment, I know I wouldn’t have made it this far without the others doing this with me. My good mate Paddy Quinn has been at this a full 14 days longer than me, I can’t be the poor runt that gives up before he does.

“How are ya, Paddy?”

“Gasping for a pint, mate,” he laughs. His eyes are so big now, the rest of his face has withered away. I realise I must look terrible too, which makes me laugh along with him.

The guards keep their distance. They are afraid to look at us, I think. When I first got here five years ago, there was no fear in them. They were brutal, strip searching us, smashing in our faces with batons. They locked us in the cells the entire day, no showers, no exercise, no visitors. They were terrible conditions of course, but the morale was fantastic. We were all in it together against them and they weren’t going to break us. They were off duty after 9pm, so we could shout to each other, play games and quizzes. We knew we were going to win, in the end.

This was all before the hunger strikes. We’re shadows of what we once were, both the prisoners and the guards. Ten of the strikers have died so far. I don’t think any of us thought it would get that bad. It’s been quiet since then, even the guards are contemplative. 

“McKeown, you have a visitor.”

I didn’t notice the guard approach. Before I know it I’m being drifted to the visitors area. The lights here are much brighter and they blind me.

“Larry, Larry?” I hear someone calling my name but it's hard to focus my eyes. I feel someone touch my hands. I look closely and see it’s my sister. My heart starts to race and I feel a bubble of relief swell in my chest. 

“Sit down.”

She drops my hands at the sharp word of the guard. More than anything in the world, I want to hug her, but I can’t chance trying that. I’m lucky to have her here at all. She’s smiling but it seems forced - she won’t hold my gaze for very long. She hasn’t seen me since I started my hunger strike so this must be a shock to her.

“How are you feeling?” She asks quietly.

“Happy to see you. How’s ma?”

Clare won’t look at me at all now. Her eyes are teary and she keeps fidgeting with her hands.

“Worried about you. We all are.”

We sit for a moment not speaking. I wish I knew what to say to make her feel better.

“When are you going to stop this?”

“When we are recognised as political prisoners and treated as such.”

The words sound hollow to me now. I think back to myself as a teenager, I had such conviction and energy. And the cause was so much simpler then. All I wanted was the Brits out. It was the sheer unfairness of it all, the Brits could do whatever they wanted, ban us from schools, ban our football clubs, set up the guard checkpoints to hassle us. I’d be approached by kids with rifles who were from my area. They’d be asking who I was and where I was going, when they knew me well. It was about who had the power to have a gun and wear a uniform and stop me whenever they wanted. The first time I was arrested, it was for trying to tackle a police officer beating up a ten year old boy.

There was a man in my neighbourhood who was a member of the IRA. I followed him everywhere pestering him into letting me join. They finally let me in when I was seventeen. I met a man and a woman who gave me the usual spiel, the IRA was dangerous, I’d likely end up dead or in prison, I should think carefully before joining. I was irritated with all the talking. I wanted to get on with it, start taking down the system.

“You know, they’ve let so many people die already. They let Bobby Sands die. Why wouldn’t they let you die too?”

“I have to try,” is all I have the energy to say.

She won’t understand. We’re not a political family. My parents kept their heads down, did their best, stayed out of trouble. I remember how shocked they were when they found out the charges for my last arrest. I had fired at a police vehicle. No one died, but an officer got injured and I was convicted of attempted murder.

I remember lying in a hedge with the rifle in my hands, waiting for the car to appear. Two women were walking down the road at the time. They were talking about going to the bingo night at the local hall. I listened to their conversation and thought to myself, that’s normal life. You can still have a normal life. It’s not too late to stop this. What are you doing... what are you doing?

“You’ve spent enough time doing this. You won’t lose face if you stop now. Do it for us.”

She takes my hand again and clutches it hard. I love her so much.

I want to tell her that I’m doing this for her, to free us from tyranny. We can’t just do nothing in the face of injustice. I want to tell her this is what has to be done. But I can’t think straight, seeing her was too much stress on my heart and it's beating too fast now. My head is swimming.

She kisses my hand and gets up. The guards escort her out while I sit and watch. I pray I survive, so I can explain all this to her one day.

I go back to my cell and lay down to rest for a while. My heart is still beating erratically. My cellmates are playing cards and joking with each other. Listening to their chatter soothes me. Everyone in this block has been given a life sentence. The hope that we will all walk out of here one day is what’s getting me through. That we’ll soon be playing cards in the pub rather than in a cell, drinking and laughing about our time in the Maze. That our suffering strengthened our solidarity and we didn’t let the bastards get us down.