Rothar Routes

Secret Garden

By Turlough on April 30, 2024

I was a very proud husband last Sunday attending a fabulous concert in the National Concert Hall, Dublin at which my wife Mary was conducting some very personal music and compositions. The Concert was part of New Music Dublins 2024 Programme called “Everyday Wonders”. It was very personal to Mary, to her sisters Eleanor and Patricia and to the wider Amond family who travelled from all over the country to support it.

As in all things musical, Mary brings so much deeper understanding to the words and compositions and on this occasion there was a wonderful piece premiered called ‘Today is Here’. The music was composed by a former Cór Linn choir member, Ferdia Ó Cairbre in which he delicately wove some beautiful advice Mary’s Mam, Lena had given to Ronan and his fiancée Hannah into another note that Mrs A had kept in one of her recipe books, originally written by Father Eddie Fitzgerald. A special moment and I bet Mrs Amond never expected to have her words put to music and premiered in the National Concert Hall! The main feature of the Concert was Cecilia MacDowell’s haunting Everyday Wonders – The Girl from Aleppo which tells the incredible true story of Nujeen Mustafa, a disabled Kurdish teenager who suffered with cerebral palsy, who fled from Aleppo with her sister, Nasrine, who pushed Nujeen in her wheelchair from Aleppo to start a new life in Germany, an incredible distance of 5,782 kms. That piece combined with the other marvellous compositions sent out a powerful message to all who attended and is a clarion call to the good people of this country about how we treat refugees who have endured such horrific treatment on their journeys to the Emerald Isle.

I travelled up early on a surprisingly nice Sunday morning and went for a ramble that took me into Dublin’s Secret Garden, the beautiful tranquil Iveagh Gardens. The Gardens are hidden behind the streetscape and you’d never know they were there. It’s worth seeking them out as they truly are an oasis of calm at the heart of the city. I had a lovely ramble back and forth through this green wonderland that was gifted to the Nation in 1937.

One of the entrances to the Garden is from the Museum of Irish Literature, another little gem to visit in this special part of the city. I’m not very literary but I found it inspiring to pop in for a while – its another gem!

I exited through the front door to pay a visit next door to the beautiful Newman University Church, a stunning small Place of Worship adjacent to St Stephens Green.

It was time to head back to the NCH for the Concert and I thought it was so appropriate, given the heart of the Concert was the The Girl from Aleppo, that I then came upon a lovely memorial to Human Rights Defenders from around the World who had given their lives bravely defending human rights.

Here are a few of the quotations from those who gave their lives:

‘People who can’t even read English and therefore have never read anything I’ve written, know that they are meant to hate me.. and react on that basis’. Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a car bomb, Malta, 16 October 2017.

‘Our impact may be large, may be small, and may be nothing. But we must try. It is our duty to the dispossessed and it is the right of civil society’. Cao Shunli was denied medical treatment and was left to die in detention, China, 14 March 2014.

‘We have decided to guide our future and our destiny with our own hands. Revolutions are ideas and ideas cannot be killed by weapons. If society is strong enough, then tyranny has no chance’. Raed Fares, shot dead, Syria, 23 November 2018.

‘We have one goal, which is to save lives and evacuate people. I came here to give care, not get care. I want to continue until the last day’. Razan al-Najjar, shot dead while delivering medical aid, Gaza, 1 June 2018.

Mrs Amond’s words of advice to Ronan and Hannah never meant more than after visiting this memorial…

‘Be kind, be good, be nice to everyone’. Lena Amond.