Belfast, Northern Ireland - I.R.A. still alive

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The atmosphere is heavy, with a clear tension. Breathe the air in Belfast, is breathing the bloody history of the city.

You must leave the city center for Falls Road, Shankill, East Belfast, to understand.
Down here, as soon as I get my camera out, someone is observing me. I come across an IRA bar on Falls Road.

People observe me. In here they are selling independence flags in honor of Bobby Sands, a Republican hero, member

of the Provisional IRA.

I have a coffee … The “boss” comes to ask me.
A guy comes in with a large plastic bag, which he places on a table with a dull thud …He pulls out a Sturmgewehr 44,

an assault rifle of the Third Reich from 1942, considered as the ancestor of the AK-47 Kalashnikov.
They look at it, they laugh and then the first guy shows it to me and places it between my hands. It is what ? 8:30 a.m.?  And I have a coffee with some IRA guys in Belfast with a military weapon in my hands...